Showing posts with label sounds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sounds. Show all posts

Saturday, 12 October 2013

Sound Off

I sit in my silent room.

No noise except for the whisper of wings on the window.

Flit flit flutter fly, go away butterfly.

I sit on my still kitchen stool.

The absence of sound is so sonorous.

Like a nervous or starving stomach,

the percolating coffee pot gurgles and pops a puff of steam.

The tick-tock clock metronomes my minutes.

I need noise to work!

I sit in Starbuck's sighing sipping some espresso.

My pen pauses poised over the pale passive paper.

I close my eyes. Open my ears. Open my heart.

Shoop tinkle jangle the door opens.

A gaggle of giggling girls.

A trio of teasing teen team members.

A wild wailing waif and it's musically murmuring mother.

Loud laughter here. Determined debate there.

Tink tink tink stir the coffee. Sssssslurp.

Cha-ching! 'Here's your change, sir.'

The whirring whine of grinding beans.

The whoosh hiss fffsst of steaming milk.

The staccato sibilance of beverage orders bellowed.

Caramel Macchiato. Salted Caramel Mocha

Cappuccino. Frappuccino.

Cafe Latte.

Repeated with a Latin beat playing on the radio.

This is my kind of symphonic cacophony.

As warm and thick as foamed milk,

The poems slip and plop onto the page.

'Speech is silver and silence is golden', they may say,

But the sounds of life are pearls and diamonds to me.    

Tuesday, 9 October 2012

Kablooie!

On-----o-----mat-----o-----p(o)e-----(i)a

On----o----mat----o----p(o)e----(i)a

On---o---mat---o---p(o)e---(i)a

On--o--mat--o--p(o)e--(i)a

On-o-mat-o-p(o)e-(i)a

Onomatop(o)e(i)a.Onomatop(o)e(i)a!

What a long mantra making word.

It means sharp and punchy words, but is neither.

It means words that sound like sounds.

It sounds like nothing I've heard.

If I heard a thing rasping like that in the dark,

You would hear the slap of my feet on the floor as I fly.

There is a repeating rhythm to it's staccato syllables

Like a conga line melody.

OnomatopoeiA!(shake your hip to the right)

OnomatopoeiA!(shake your hip to the left) 

There is a cruel irony to it for those who can't say words.

Almost as cruel as using the word dyslexia for those

who find reading and speaking complex words complicated.

For a word about the full richness of sound written down,

Why are silent letters softly squished between the others?

Oh, but this is all tongue in cheek, whatever sound that makes.

As a child of the era of comics and the funny pages,

I have been spoon fed and loved these chaotic, crazy words.

BAM! POW! ZIP! ZAP! KABLOOIE!

BIFF! BLAM! KLANG! KA-KA-KABOOM!