The Truth About Lies: #483

The Faces of Men

How quickly
the Light of the Sun
diminishes.

12 February 1978

This is my shortest poem if you don’t count the title. If you include the title—and why wouldn’t you?—the shortest poem was a nine word haiku—my only haiku—written in 2008. I’ve never been the most loquacious of poets but even by my standards this is short and yet after all these years it still satisfies me. I don’t feel anything more needs to be said. The only changes I’d make would be to get rid of the capitals on ‘light’ and ‘sun’ but that’s what I was doing then and so they stay.

Whenever I think of this poem I imagine one of those motivation posters so popular in the Soviet Union and China where everyone is happy and healthy and smiling at something funny that’s happening out of our field of vision. It’s not meant to be a political poem. It’s actually about mortality, my version of Pozzo’s “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.”

Works available online

Short stories

McStorytellers
□ Blank Page
□ Zeitgeist

Metro Mums
□ The Pooh Brooch

Vine Leaves
□ The Contraption (p.17)

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ Shoeboxes

Paragraph Planet
□ Control - 4th July

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ Ugly Truths

Ranfurly Review
□ Just Thinking
□ Disintegration

Static Movement
□ Jewelweed

Poetry

Vine Leaves Journal (p.4)
□ Hiding Places
□ The Human Face

Waterhouse Review
□ Foretastes and Afterglows

Mused
□ The Language of Hands

Ink, Sweat and Tears
□ Touching Poem

BlazeVOX
□ IT
□ An Honest Poem
□ Do the Right Thing
□ Suburbia II

Snakeskin
□ After Pinter

The Lake
□ A Matter of Fact
□ The Seasons

The Socrates
□ In the Wake

The Open Mouse
□ The Only Way
□ Schisms

The Rusty Nail
□ Deconstructing Jimmy
□ Seek and Ye Shall Find

Ink, Sweat and Tears
□ Fugue

The Pygmy Giant
□ The Wrong Nudes
□ War on Words

The Weekender Magazine
□ Shit Poem

Qarrtsiluni
□ not a Bukowski poem

□ Wee Fictions
□ The Linguist
□ The Bedroom
□ The Things We Knew

Poetry Kit
□ 7 poems

My Poetry and Prose Place
□ Loneliness
□ Messages
□ The Insides of Words

Sixth in Line
□ Lacunae

Wee Fictions
□ Empty Days

Salamander Cove
□ Still Birth

Osprey Journal
□ Anticlimax
□ Tweezers

Right Hand Pointing
□ Hands

Eclectica
□ Silent Echoes
□ Casual Poetry

The Pygmy Giant
□ The Rape of Language

Gloom Cupboard
□ Still Travelling

Apple Valley Review
□ Visitation Rights
□ Marks

Snakeskin
□ Poem Without a Flower

Camroc Press Review
□ Old Haunts
□ The End of All Illusions
□ On Consciousness
□ Beckett

Ranfurly Review
□ Bloody Foreigners

Eclectica
□ The Answer
□ The Other Side of the Poem II

Feathertale
□ Naïve Poem

Caffeine Destiny
□ Sometimes
□ Scrap Values

Gloom Cupboard
□ As Is

The Linnet's Wings
□ Reading into Things

The Linnet's Wings
□ A Matter of Fact II

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ Truth's Last Gasp
□ Synaesthesia

Apple Valley Review
□ Communication Gap
□ Petrified Poem

Right Hand Pointing
□ Cut the Blue Wire

Ink, Sweat & Tears
□ If Only Pigs Could Fly

Writers' Bloc
□ Something to Think About
□ A Thoughtful Poem
□ The Skeleton of a Poem
□ Lowest Common Denominator
□ Second Draft

8 comments:

Gwil W said...: don't question

without our books
of guidelines
where would we be

9 words
11 with title; 3 June 2015 at 15:27
Jim Murdoch said...: Okay, Gwilliam, you win. I’m off to sulk. Either that or to try to think of something very pithy to say.; 4 June 2015 at 09:15
Gwil W said...: The shortest poem I know is titled Fleas. Here it is in full.

Fleas

Adam
had them.; 5 June 2015 at 12:32
Gwil W said...: I've linked my blogpost of today to your masterpiece.; 5 June 2015 at 13:03
Jim Murdoch said...: I suppose the various pwoermds that are kicking around would be the shortest form out there, Gwilliam, the very smallest (at least according to Geof Huth) being the four letters of Aram Saroyan's "Blod." As far as ‘Fleas’ goes I know it well. It used to be my party piece. I hated those kinds of parties where you were expected to get up and do a turn and so that was mine. Before my audience knew what had hit them I was sitting down again. If we’re being pedantic though my shortest poem is my visual poem #1051.; 5 June 2015 at 15:39
Jim Murdoch said...: Now sure why the link to #1051 isn't working (at least it's not for me) so here's it in full: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_kmVGrSP_9gU/TVT4PURo0oI/AAAAAAAAD3g/Mo55eVrnedY/s1600-h/clip_image012%5B5%5D.gif; 5 June 2015 at 15:42
Gwil W said...: Is the visual poem on video?; 6 June 2015 at 13:57
Jim Murdoch said...: No, Gwilliam. Can you not see it? It's from this post, if you scroll down to 'Day Two'. I suppose it could be animated but I wouldn't know where to start.; 6 June 2015 at 14:08

Wednesday, 3 June 2015

#483

The Faces of Men

8 comments: