If I had a time machine, I would visit Samuel T Coleridge
My favorite poet of all time, the author or Kubla Khan
"The wailing of his demon lover” sticks in my mind
Delighting me every time, especially today, May 1st, 1803.
As I was speaking to Samuel, his pal William Wordsworth would drop in
They would ask me if I wanted to write a ballad with them.
I would be thunderstruck with happiness but too shy to do it
However, I would clap in rhythm as they created
Wordsworth would talk about his deep love of the
“Beauteous forms of the natural world”
I would be amazed by their vocabulary
They would both blow my mind out into the hills
I would set my time machine to 1858 next.
To visit Jules Verne, one of my favorite authors.
I would ask him how he thought to create
Around the world in eighty days and twenty leagues under the sea.
Amazed that we still speak of him in 2025,
he would have a zillion interesting questions to ask me
I would set the time machine to year 1868 next. .
My last stop would be to visit Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women.
the whispers were barely perceptible
there was scuffling and shuffling
were ghosts up here then?
I took a peek expecting to see people
there was a steampunk like robot facing the door
his eyes were made of hubcaps and he had coils for legs
who made this? And when? It was curious to me.
I halfway expected this robot to move.
there was a brocade tapestry hanging behind the robot.
dark in color, scarlet or deep forest green, impossible to say.
the threads could have been gold.
Wait, it might have been an old velvet crazy quilt.
The darkness of the room hampered me getting it right.
I saw a hobby horse, leaning against a two-seated couch.
One of those crazy ones where you faced each other.
Who lived in this place? I was thinking Jules Verne.
Or Poe. Or a Victorian miscreant. This is a strange place.
a creepy place. there was a stuffed raven in the corner.
With yellow glass eyes.
Definitely Poe.
If I were a submarine
I would jump out of the water
Checking to see if other ships
Were doing what they ought-er
Jules Verne would come back
And write lively stories about me
I would be deemed the sheriff
Of the Mediterranean Sea
#3: Tis Twilight Time
Goal hour is here ... the spirit joins the soul,
ephemeral or twilight ... or two worlds,
dreams; exchange facts for fiction ... a black hole,
furtherance, lying on a bed of pearls.
The Ancient Mariner, sailed all seven,
--but know that all of creation matters,
Jules Verne starts your voyage, you'll break even,
the journey will seem endless ... but crackers!
The choices lay at your feet, just explore,
"Around...," "Center...," "Under...," "Mysterious...,"
most productive voyager--go ashore.
This would be the trice of time, serious,
for the twinkling has arrived, tis Twilight,
Time, inspired, now expired, on-site, sit tight.
Colonoscopy
Colonoscopy,
strikes dread. It’s not too bad - when
Colon trouble free.
Jules Verne-like travel,
up your ****, spelunking through
strange, pink-ridged caverns.
Hunting for the snark,
or boojum, or polyp, who
feasts, darkly, in there.
Snipety-snap - jaws,
polyp-snatch; dragging from view,
miscreant tissue.
Pathology dock -
destined. Tried in the morning,
suspected malign.
Tried.. judged innocent.
Callooh! callay! It vanished
softly — my boojum.
Excited steampunk creators
Designing in dastardly studios and attics
Working with fascinating gears and copper levers
A whole new world envisioned in a collective remembrance
Jules Verne watches from his heavenly seat and smiles
Admiring his octopus box from 1869.
SYRACUSE DEPARTURE
Twelve degrees at seven AM
and the weather a sharp bitter
force off Lake Ontario
The daybreak is luminescent
gray, the bright star rising, the
cloud cover glowing like the
opalescent door to the mysterious
power source of some
Jules Verne wonder
Passengers board
Instructions are given
Men and machines withdraw like
medics now useless to a resurgent
warrior
On runway twenty-eight / ten she
turns into the wind
Bright light splits the clouds
The big fan jets roar and her
man-made mean heat makes her
airborne and silver, crashing through
the morning, banking east above the
city, screaming toward the sun
Emanuel Carter
To Jules Verne
A man feeling drowse at the top of the mountain, fell asleep.
He dreamed dreams
emanating from floods of seas.
In remote droughts,
he gave his fruit of smoke
on a simple altar.
Curd quartz opened
solidifying thousands of stamens,
they glowed
like the warm reflection of the stars on the sand,
the man kept close watch of the r.e.m. hour.
life is the strife of one baptized
in the depths of all his memories,
yet he forgets before awakening.
Founding himself face to face
with another man holding a frozen fish
and a bucket,
they begun the climb down,
What do you fish when you fish,
he asked,
for a bolt of fire, said the man
as he released the fish into the ground
and rubbed his hands,
cryogenics?
no, fisherman.
You have the hysterical look of mutes
that roar through narrow straws.
I see in your yellow eyes – a Jules Verne winking moon.
Soon that ribbed pink cave will release
another flock of demented coots
hacked from the craw of an ancient macaw.
Soon the whip of your vocal squawks
will pluck my eyes from their trembling stalks.
Maine Coon, part Persian, part whiskery herring,
grimalkin mouser,
I love you not when you sing.
Verne goes to the movies, a flickering French theater
of painted malarkey, where mice threaten to Can-Can.
Buck Rodgers shoots rays of hyperbolic sound
from the open nozzle of your mouth.
We're on a journey of exploration, a long-deferred vacation
There's room for you too … Come with us, and your essence renew
We've been so busy surviving, striving, never quite thriving
It's time to live life large, hire a sea-worthy vessel, a sturdy barge
First it's off to Africa, to distant shores, hottest jungles and desert sands
There to unearth unknown civilizations, man's oldest bones, in buried lands
Then we set sail for the Isle of Atlantis, with the help of a 'sea sherpa(nt),' who in Atlantis will plant us
We're sure to find this isle 20,000 leagues under the sea, with the help of
Jules Verne and Walt Disney
After that we'll blast off into Space, bidding adieu to terra firma's rat race
We'll rocket past Saturn, Neptune, Uranus---and learn how our galaxy works
to sustain us...
When we return, we'll have stories to tell, a feature-length movie, a best-seller as well
About our journey of exploration
and how we managed it all
~ from the comfort of a virtual play-station
Entry in "Dealer's Choice Poetry Contest" (Going My Way)
Sponsor: Caren Krutsinger
A Side of Fries
Verne had never had the nerve before.
He stood before her, looked into her eyes
asking “you gonna eat all of those fries?”
Hunger’s hands holding hollow hope.
12/20/2015
submitted to - 4 lines – Poetry contest
sponsor – Silent One
For many an historical generation,
you scintillated man’s imagination.
The subject of numerous films and books,
your presence was worth some astronomers’ looks.
From writers such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne,
the fire of man’s curiosity would burn.
With mankind’s ingenuity and labor,
could we travel to this planetary neighbor?
If we arrived there, what would we find?
Are there living creatures similar to earth’s kind?
With man’s advancing technology,
space probes to the planet became reality.
However, what we discovered was not as expected.
Hardly any form of life was detected.
With cold desert-like terrain and desiccated atmosphere,
no life as we know it could live here.
No canals as previously conjectured would exist.
As a planet with life, you are crossed off our list.
There is nothing at all that appears on the norm.
Our surroundings are strange after the wake of the storm.
The ship was ripped apart like tin foil.
On this surface, we are slipping as if covered with oil.
We pause on the edge of a deep abyss.
Draped and muffled in a mist, everything is amiss.
Normally heavy objects are light and easy to throw.
This big heavy stone feels almost like a pillow.
Where do we dwell right now, I really don’t know.
We are not on the earth. That is a fact we can’t deny.
The stars are in different configurations in the sky.
Things look so strange to say the least.
Even the sun appears to be setting in the east.
The comet must have hit the earth, and we are on it right now.
Thank God we have survived this disaster somehow.
draped/ slipping/ pause/ edge/ muffled/ foil/ wake/ deny/ dwell/ pillow
Based on the science fiction novel "Off On a Comet" by the late Jules Verne
I was asked, "What is important to you?" by a friend-
she was just making conversation...
I was silent, deep in thought of diversity-
The true meaning of important.
Other than the worldly treasures of love,
money to survive, intelligence and adventure-
WORDS- was my answer.
Words. Power. Intelligence. Knowledge.
Adventure. Love. Death. Birth. God. Evil.
Conception. Contemplation. Life. Living.
Ovid, Homer, Ducasse, Rimbaud,
Patterson, Rice, Strieber, Jung, Darwin,
Verne, Grisham, Seneca, Christ...
As I read the words from the greatest,
and not so greatest, of minds-
It is all encompassing. I am in their world.
Writers bring their world to life when simple
words are written.
I can go to Atlantis, dissect a human, kill mummies,
be a vampire, see into the mind of a beagle, fly with eagles,
see the center of the Earth, view a rose in a way alien to me.
I can do anything. I have yet to do everything.
WORDS- little configurations with infinite
meaning.
The city of Prague
In a different world
Its centre ripped
The whole world heard
Its now separated by
Canyons so deep
The day it happened
To hear a country weep
Beautiful buildings
Fell away
Architectural delights
Toppled on sway
But the city recovered
No bridges to be seen
Ingenious in genius
Sky Gondola's reign
To cross this great city
From north to south
Over the gaping rift
Above the canyons mouth
Gondola shaped
Zeppelin for lift
Tiller propeller
Propulsion shift
Sky taxis
In ariel flow
With their lanterns lit
Like glowworms glow
This sight i view
With my pal Jules Verne
Inspires his writes
As generations will learn
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/fantasy4.php
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