Week 4 - Performance Poetry

The following poem I composed mainly through thinking of my favourite aspect of performance poetry; rapid shifts in rhythm, pace and the impact of the sounds. The creative process can effectively be reduced to: "What is a good subject for building tension and leading up to a change in pace? A bomb!"

The poem does have a natural way of being read and the pace does pick up, but ideally it would be heard rather than read, it may be worth reading it out loud if you want to get an idea somewhat closer to what I had in mind with the piece. See what you think...

The dust lies undisturbed.

It’s cliché I know,

But you weren’t there:

so,

I’ll tell you what happened.

Sat in the centre

Of an arid test ground

The small black pack of

Explosives and fuses

Lay dormant waiting for the green light.

The wait became tense

Hence my own nervous tears

The culmination of years upon years

Of science and madness,

Indulgence of fears

But the dust lies undisturbed.

The signal to go,

get this show on the road

and start the test.

Fizz…

The fuses catch light

And the bright dusty ground

Is silent, save for the fizzling sound

As the tension is building and everyone’s wondering

Will this be the next deadly weapon we’ve found?

The fuse ever changing, turns black from the white

And the goggles go on to protect our eye-sight

And the nervous sweat runs

From the fore of my head

And the hope that this fails

And we keep peace instead

That we don’t have to use

These machines that abuse

That we don’t have to kill

Have diplomacy still

And we’ll talk of the matter

Instead of the clatter

Of shooting and shrieking,

Of foul gases reeking

Of acidic rain and untold new pain,

Of the hurt and destruction with nothing to gain –

BANG.

The dust is disturbed.