Bienvenue, Marvin


dull drunken tourists sway and stare
along the brash bare-breasted boulevard

deep purple doored on Place Pigalle my own
brocaded boudoir’s broad divan du monde

we sip encore un verre de vin
is this the coda? you say oui

and who should care? who sees you leave
but for another faceless paying guest?

(by Angelica Cinnamon Bunn for Epic Tours, Paris)

https://charioteers.org/2013/09/02/epic-september-poetry-competition/

Epic (September poetry competition)

Now for something completely different. This month’s poetry competition will follow in the footsteps of the Epic poems of the past. Think Odyssey, Think Inferno. Think Paradise Lost. OK, enough thinking. The title is Earth, subtitled stranger visits third rock from the sun.

An alien, let’s call him Marvin, has landed on Earth. He is met by Ferdinand Magellan, an immortal who still lives in our present times (poetic license and all that). The circumnavigator agrees to take Marvin on a tour of this planet. Authors are invited to submit poems on the various places FM thinks will interest the foreigner. This could be a country (Latvia), a sports ground or arena (the WACA/ Royal Albert Hall), a breed of cattle (Texas Longhorn). The world is your oyster, you decide. They don’t have to be fun poems, a little bit of tragedy adds to the mix.

Multiple entries are most welcome and can be in any format. Dialogue and blank verse will be accepted, this is an Epic after all. Don’t worry about the continuity of the poems vis-à-vis locations, it’s not like in Ferdinand’s day, Marvin has a space ship so the duo can zap from one side of the globe to the other, swiftly.

I suggest poems are published separately and linked to this page. This gives readers the chance to comment on the individual entries. At the bottom of this post I will copy the entries and the huge Epic poem will grow. In a further twist from the norm I hope no one minds if I contribute a poem or two of my own. Naturally, after the closing date I won’t vote myself the winner!

Closing date: Midnight UK time, Friday 27th September.

Earth
stranger visits third rock from the sun Continue reading “Epic (September poetry competition)”

Photo comp results.

Sorry for the tardiness in assessing the entries in the photo comp

https://charioteers.org/2013/07/10/photo-comp-for-august/

My excuse is that Mrs FEEG and I have been celebrating our Ruby Wedding with the family! Thanks for your entries.

Soutie’s Statues: Certainly wierd and quite impressive

OZ’s two views of sunset: Very interesting effects there, especially #2

Ara’s chandelier:   Quite a strange arrangement

Christopher’s Hiroshima dome. with a weird lighting effect.

All very good and interesting in their diferent ways, but my favourite and this month’s winner is OZ number 2, Reflections of the Sunset. Over to you, my lupine friend.

Historical legitimacy

Not content with upstaging Kerry’s French kiss (‘our oldest ally’) – Obama gave us Brits a hug (‘our closest ally’) – the Prez entered even deeper archival waters with a reference to the USA as ‘the oldest constitutional democracy’.

Well! Where to start? If he had said ‘written’ it would be easier to swallow – since our well-informed schoolboy is aware that the UK’s constitution ain’t – at least not in one convenient volume; and nor was the constitution of any of the other oft-quoted candidates for the honour – like Ancient Greece, Iceland or the Isle of Man. We of course prefer the term ‘parliamentary’ to make our claim to being first, ignoring inter alia the three just mentioned.

But why, you may ask, did Obama make the claim at all? Backside is of the opinion that the White House speech-writers cannot resist any opportunity to reasssure the citizenry that Uncle Sam might make warm noises about his friends abroad but they’d better not forget who really brought power to the people first. In the beginning was Uncle Sam. The word was with Uncle Sam and the word was Uncle Sam. Amen.

Name game

I suggested Louis, he is after all unstable on his feet and bites 🙂

He’s a 7 week old abandoned youngster picked up by our local animal welfare society last week, as luck would have it, an out of town friend of ours has been looking for a Jack Russell pup for some time now, he drove through yesterday and took him home.

And the winner is….

Old Backside has had his morgenmad and done his early morning chores, this bright humid morning. So there’s time to look at this month’s pomes, three in number from our all-male contestants. Who said men can’t multi-task?

The summertime offerings were all good fun – thank you, all (FEEG, papaguinea and the royalist) – and I had to choose between PG and JW for sticking to the letter of the brief: a pome set to music of your choice. (Apologies, FEEG, if you akshully had a toon in mind!)

And the winner is – with some striking imagery and extra points for almost making the words fit the toon (!) – theroyalist! Congratulations! And over to you for September.

The winning pome: https://charioteers.org/2013/08/22/summer-caving-august-poetry-competition/

Who wouldn’t smile when Debbie laddered her tights on the stalagmites and Jack got a cave dust infection? Excellent stuff!

All’s fair in love and war

As every schoolboy knows (Hugh Blair, no relation), Britain has had a special relationship with Uncle Sam. Until today – when John Kerry referred to France as the USA’s ‘oldest ally’. (Pause for thought.)

Just a minute. “President Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s integrated military command in 1966, saying it undermined France’s sovereignty.” (Wiki) And Nicollula changed that – presumably for good, solid, French reasons.

So we got jilted for refusing to obey Obama. No doubt there’ll be more reprisals against us for our presumption.