Thomas Ship. 2024. 04/09/24 15:34 PM. GMT
Note on the poem: written by taking American Batman slang from the 1966 series and incorporating the slang into the poem.
Unlock the door,
Reveal the secret,
Of less becoming more.
Write it in quatrains, or tercets,
But don't show me the pathway
That you took.
Methods and techniques,
All very well and good,
Yet not always proficient.
Quarternary, divided by the Holy Trinity,
Waggishly unearths a discrepancy,
Leaving me dissatisfied.
The lucre of our sleight experiment spoils
Is never enough for us,
Uncovering via those trapdoors won't yield any more than more.
Regalez vous, nous, please take all you need.
Wearing your Tam O Shanter, like you've made a significant score,
Pouring from life's decanter, a switcheroo mimicry,
Rather, you're a phoney lounge loafer.
Criminy and gee-whizz, it's very droll; we've failed at the scientific lam.
Where those winkle dreams, residing like thoughts in a spiralling seashell, persist.
An interface between the nix and the loitering ongoing continuance.
Blundering varmints, haul the skinflint chump in; I wager it's thin.
Hoist him on his own petard, and send 'im above the cowl of carnival eyes unseen.
This caper has reached its final corny novelty.
Open the oubliette for me,
Pull away that benighted shawl,
Let us in!
Splitting apart, denuding,
Appearing out within,
Yet don't tell me how.
Ways through the hailstorm,
Fine and dandy,
But not sufficient.
A quandary, halved by quarternary fractions of the fragmentary,
The Mad Hatter uncovers a dichotomy,
Marooning me unfulfilled.
Clairvoyancy sees all of the fork-tailed petrels, alongside the Albatross, at sea.
Recherche psychology, in a hidden auld compendiary, ever grows more dusty.
Chuckling goodnik, those earworn icky beatniks, a bullwinkle lost in.
Devour the neon Kool-Aid and swallow the electromagnetic airwaves.
Pedigrees of lineage ricochet, a whimsical jukebox of genealogical soundwaves.
That bonanza has become as vogue as it can be.
The loot of their kook aspirations only supplies a natch offering,
From the jaws of complacency, snatched, only to be placed in a pillory.
Shocking pangs of a thief's cape, in disillusion.
Donning makeup outfits of the magician in top hat and tails, Tally Ho,
Chocks Away, Old Bean, it's only a jape, after all.
Nab them; jolly good, you've caught the one-armed bandit.
Discard the disguise,
Show me your face,
Of masquerades.
Sing it in five-four, or six-eight,
But don't tell me the key, or scale,
You used to play it.
Pathways through the dark,
Most pleasing to me,
Can be inefficient.
A paradox multiplied by infinite fractals, of doubly quartered quadrangles.
The insane malefactor unwraps diametrical stratagem,
Casting me asunder, disappointed.
Decoy dropout crooks ought to leave us some jeopardy clues.
Perilous precipice from the maw of the fraught lampoon.
Afoot is the knockout masterstroke: gosh, we've been sassed.
Dressing in fancy dress costumes,
Oh really, you do look and have made a boob.
Ouch, you've been led astray, buster; I'd stay off the juice if I were you.
Good gravy, we're caught in an epoxy of madness; it's a sticky lollipop charade.
Gadzooks, we've been utterly duped.
Double-dizzy merry-go-round, twixt the malodorous fairground,
In a tizzy of diabolisms, hitting two stones with one bird,
Oh, I just want to go home.
They've got belfries in their bats: excruciating predicament, of a flurry of groans, proceeding.
Battered over the head with Punch and Judy quotes, in the jailhouse of alibis.
Ridiculing and flouting the accents of their falsified delinquency.
Dealing with counterfeit specimen statutes in their villainous hosts.
Peel off the facade,
Tell me your name,
Is it legion?
Say it in Babel tongues,
Yet don't say which languages
You've written it.
Signposts in the wilderness,
I thank you,
Navigation was insufficient,
Leading me nowhere and everywhere at once.
Through unequal equalities, simultaneously divided and multiplied, in multifaceted fractures,
Wishing I had not been put on trial.
The Quandary Caper - Form and Style.
Poetic form:
Free verse with absurdist, surrealist and lexical-collage qualities. The poem uses deliberately unstable rhythmic structures rather than a fixed traditional metre.
Stanza style:
Irregular stanzas, predominantly six-line and seven-line blocks, interspersed with longer eight-line passages. The recurring six-line sections act rather like refrains, repeatedly returning to the central paradox of revelation without explanation.
Line-length style:
Highly variable lineation, moving between short, clipped lines and long, expansive, prose-like lines. This produces deliberate rhythmic expansion and contraction.
Metre:
Predominantly free verse with intermittent accentual rhythm. Short lines often carry two or three strong stresses, while longer lines deliberately disrupt regular metrical expectation.
Stylistic classification:
Absurdist epistemological collage / lexical-caper surrealism, combining 1960s American slang, comic-book language, mathematics, science, magic, crime, music, religion and theatrical imagery.
Structural effect:
The irregular stanza lengths, fluctuating line lengths and shifting rhythms mirror the poem's central quandary: **the continual search for an underlying pattern that refuses to reveal its method.**
