Pop! Goes the We-Easel

Welcome to your (Dis) Orientation

I hope you are wearing something that wipes down. A pair of waders and a waterproof coat with a drawstring hood would not be too extreme. There is much to digest here. Simply cooking this stuff up, I have found myself dribbling.

Note: There are no fire exits, and all the safety nets have massive holes.

Ready?

Splendid.

Question One: How far up your own backside do you have to be to lead a tour of your personal creative topography for a Vocal challenge?

Answers in the comments, please.

While you prepare your witty responses to the first question of this disorientation, shall we indulge in an ice-breaker?

"Fun Fact": Did you know that Shakespeare was responsible for the phrase "break the ice"?

I bet he never foresaw ten out-of-shape accountants sitting in a beige-papered room talking about their claims to fame when he penned it.

Moving on...

Our Ice-Breaker: The Smarts Before Hearts Challenge

To keep myself creatively focused, I keep a notebook with me when writing to note down all the work-related biz-schiz that floats into my brain. You know what I mean, those annoying shards and icebergs that threaten to freeze your flow.

Without a way to distract my left lobe, I struggle to get anything done. That said, my day job still has a way of sneaking into my creative waters. It appears in my language, in the structures I choose, and in metaphors like this one.

Note: I may very possibly consume myself before this orientation is complete.

For forced fun, let's dip a toe in the frozen waters of corporate-speak clichés and, collaboratively, damn some of that pesky corporate vernacular to hell.

As we go through today's "disorientation", I shall highlight and "quote-mark" all the itchy-gnat fleabag phrases I use. If you could add any you hate but use/hear in the comments, then, later, we can all have a therapeutic post-sesh group-scratch.

As an example, here is a trio of shite trite to get your juices flowing:

"laddering-up"

"reaching out"

"cycling back around"

Now, with our collective brain's left lobe distracted with word spotting, it's time to let our right lobes frolic freely through the nuanced and psychedelic heathers of creativity. And, because these heathers are simultaneously wondrous and frightening, I have chosen to take with me a creative construct to run amok with:

The Poetic Palindrome

Gorgeous word.

Pal-in-drome

It has a pleasing consonant-to-vowel ratio and rhythm. Likely this will have something to do with its Grecian origins or its Latin syllabic components, but, really, it is neither its sound nor its etymology that truly dings my dong.

For me, a Poetic Palindrome conjures up a structural nakedness, a stoic open-mindedness. It is a 'Literary Expectant' pensively waiting for language to curl and writhe as blood and flesh around its bones. It has both strength and virtue: words scale it, eyes flash over it, yet the Palindrome's rippling poetic folds effortlessly —no, magnanimously — carry the burden of existential duplicity and depth.

Unlike other poetic structures, such as the sonnet or the villanelle, a Palindrome feels anthropomorphic. I want to touch it, name it, or dub it: "The Sage of the Oxymoron", or "The Poetic Paladin of Cognitive Dissonance". I admire how cleverly it layers up, both hiding and showing its heart as every syllable of its whole slithers, slipping up and down and side to side across the page, comprehensively ensuring every word of its whole works as one.

The Palindrome is an indefatigable romantic, a philosophical champion riding into the night searching for dawns and sunsets.

It is a Knight of the Poetic Arsenal.

It is NOT what Co-Pilot produced when I asked it for a visual:

My-oh-my! Rest easy, everybody, our creative endeavours are safe from the clutches of AI for a while longer!

And on that note... to give us all a moment to stare up into the heavens and wonder what the @$%* is going on here, let's take FIVE.

Break Time

Welcome Back

Question Two: Has anybody had an epiphany of where I may be going with this?

Answers on the back of a cig packet in the comments please.

I tend to look at my creative journeys this way: All great sex starts with incredible foreplay, ergo all great poetry should be preceded with...

... yeah, not this.

I do get carried away with description.

Perhaps it's time for me to "Segway" or "dovetail" to my poem.

Yes! As far-fetched as it may currently seem, there is an actual act of Palindromic creation within this disorientation!

Note: I shall get that couplet of corporate crack in the comments later. BUT can we have a moment to reflect on that adjective: PALINDROMIC... Oof! Sexy, or what?

What?

Hey, CJ - Self-Awareness here - You've reached the point where you are in conversation with yourself because everybody reading this is losing the will to live. Just land the blasted poem already!

Message understood, Self-Awareness, you darned dastardly creative assassin!

Going in...

My Poetic Palindrome:

The We-Easel

a full spectral rainbow

burst from one tiny prick

one solitary pixel of white noise

split

a crackle inside a vast black and white torrent of tidal waves

risen, roused, and raging

screams into space

richochet from the Big Bang!

God?

trying to shatter

the core of Earth

iron at the heart

of the anger

We lie down in the dirt

pride burst

silence

Pop! Goes the We-easel

Thank you for reading "top-down" and "bottom-up"

Note: We are now mid-way through our Disorientation, approaching a moment of review/analysis/reflection. If you have travel sickness pills, I suggest you take them, because the last half of our journey will not pass through calmer seas.

The Palindromic Analysis

Hey, we all know how it goes. If you like a word, you over-use it, right?

Pal-in dromic. PalINdRomIC. Paaaaaaaaalindrooooomic. PALINDROMIIIIIIC.

Question Three: I am going to ignore the singing, but I have to ask, are you asking yourself questions now?

A: More than likely, I cannot envisage anybody holding on for this ride.

How very Metamodern of you.

I think the word you're looking for is "ironisty"

You are such a K*&b

Getting back to the disap point...

The phrase "Pop, goes the weasel," is cockney rhyming slang for pawning your coat. I know —if you didn't know, you wouldn't know. (Doesn't really work in the negative, that phrase). To explain, Pop means "to pawn", and weasel is part of the phrase "weasel and stoat", which rhymes with coat. (Thank you, Wikipedia)

What have these historical linguistic gymnastics got to do with my Palindrome? Well... here's where my flippant "ironisty" stops being funny.

Like most Victorian nursery rhymes, Pop! Goes the Weasel is not a jaunty romp through fields of clover followed by lashings of lemonade and cucumber sandwiches. It's a rhyme about poverty, about the capitalist machine, about how buying half a pound of tuppenny rice and half a pound of treacle means you have to pawn the coat off your back to fund the purchase.

What the old-fashioned nursery rhyme "Pop! Goes the Weasel" is, is a nitty little ditty about a shit state of affairs.

My Palindrome "hooks" directly into that. It's about creative diversity fighting against the binary —the black-and-white. The word WEASEL being split into compound parts for metaphorical effect.

We-Easel Definition: The collective creations from our mutual consciousness.

(I did warn you about wearing something wipe-down)

I do not mess where there is mess.

That is where art is born.

Pretentious much?

Yes.

Don't worry, we are going to "ladder-up" out of this in a minute.

Actually, no, we are not. I have had enough with ladders in my life, whether they be in awkward corporate jargon, runs up my hosiery, or superstitious lean-to threats on pavements; I am "wrung" out with ladders. Besides, we are never going to get to the space metaphor at the heart of this palindrome by taking it "one small step at a time".

No, even in serious mode, I cannot help myself.

Let's strap on a jet pack and zoom up the verse.

Words like Pop, Bang, and Burst appear throughout the Palindrome, underscoring the theme of propulsion, momentum, and impetus. The We-Easel has not just popped; it has detonated; it has ignited. It is storming out of the dirt, germinating from a core of iron, surging up and into space, challenging God, raging against the black-and-white monochromatic seas of righteousness, trying to find what it is because it knows it does not fit into what already exists.

Its propulsion is its survival pathway.

Just as the Universe blooms around us after its own Big Bang, so does our own creativity.

From pawning the coat off our backs for survival because we do not make sense, our voices drowning in tides of righteousness, through to horizons shimmering with a dazzle of rainbows.

From being lost and meaningless to being seen and recognised.

Spectacularly.

In a full, spectral, glorious rainbow.

Goodness me, creation is GORGEOUS!

Because there's more...

Of course, this is not simply a poem about artistic or poetic creation. This is about the colours of life blooming, it is about variety, about diversity. It is about being seen for who you are and what you bring. It is a poem that stares down the abyss, subverts barriers, turning all chasms and blockades into opportunities, flipping them into strength. It is a poem that believes there is more than one way to be: in form, in interpretation, in essence.

It is a prayer.

It is a rallying cry.

But... and there is a very big BUT here.

It is NOT a very good poem.

Please, do not provide any commentary on this. I have no question here to answer.

I read the work of real Vocal poets like Gina, Kristen, Teresa, and Cathy, and I know that, as a poet, I do not measure up. I am NOT asking for pity, or arguments to the contrary, I know this stuff is subjective, and I am more than happy with my "performance review," I have other strengths, all good.

Poets write words in blood from the heart, cervically sweeping Mother Nature to bring about a birth. I am afraid I only scratch among the nits in my head—smarts before hearts. The truth is, no matter what tools I try, I cannot break my protective cryosphere. There is always a cause with me, an ambition, a motivation. Creative? Sure. Inflective, resonant, alive? No.

No.

My poetry reads like a "mission statement." Fact. No "ironesty". Many of my poems may be wild —lots of them are completely feral —but none are works of art.

Great poetry hums in vibrations that cannot be spelt out with words. They may have rhyme, but they do not need reason. Sadly, I, in my corporate bubble, despite my penchant for beautiful words, phrases, and descriptions, will never be able to float in the same slipstream, or land, as all great poets can, amongst the budding, dewy florets of a thistle to sleep.

Perchance to dream.

Here's the rub: Poets are butterflies flitting among wildflowers, whereas I am a hammer, walloping a nail: a thug, a slug, a snail without a silvery, moon-kissed trail. I should not write poetry. I do not fit with poetry.

And yet...

Perhaps. Possibly. Maybe. One day. Something inside me may split, to enable me to show which of my colours run deep, and then, on that poetic, wildflower stage, I may be able to find my wing-ed beat. For now, I scratch my head and I bleat, about saving the world and denying defeat. It is my modus operandi, and it has been with me since I began my...

Journey, on Vocal.

With the Colours Challenge, all those moons ago.

... And on that note, I am going to stop this madcap show. My Palindromic We-Easel Poem, and I, must go.

On with the flow.

Thank you for being brave with me, you glorious technicoloured wonders of creativity.

See you in the rain.

Keep your coat on.

Bring a pen.

With Love, CJ. xx

Final Note: My answer to Question One of this disorientation is entombed in my 2023 Author's Note in the above story.

No weasels were harmed in the making of this tour.

It's alright, little weasel, you are safe.