Category: Art
Invisible Cities
JavaScript Poetry
Perpetually struggling to combine my love for English Literature and the joys of wrestling with JavaScript, I started remixing my favourite poems with code.
These are the results.
These are amazing: forEach()
.join(‘ing’ + ‘ a neighbour’), as though console.log();
Were a still document.write.
Arranging by Math.Floor(Math.Random * infinity);
From the original John Ashbery “Some Trees”:
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
The DOM is lovely, dark and deep,
But I had Promises(); to keep
And functions to call before I sleep,
And functions to call before I sleep.
From the Original Robert Frost “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Let us unshift();, You[0] and I[0],
When the arrays.length spread out against the DOM
Like a query delayed upon a database;
From the Original T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
there’s no break;
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
while(1);
From the Original Charles Bukowski:
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
JSON.parse(), what are you looking for?
After many strings you’ve returned
with objects you’ve tended
under foreign domains
far, far away from your own HTTP://
From the Original George Seferis “Return of the Exile”:
Dear friend, what are you looking for?
After years abroad you’ve come
with images you’ve tended
under foreign skies
far far away from your own land.
These functions
Are a kind of loop, an entity of iteration
Into which data enters, and is apart.
From the Original John Ashbery “The Skaters”
These decibels
Are a kind of flagellation, an entity of sound
Into which being enters, and is apart.
Two objects diverged in a yellow array,
And sorry I could not .join() both.
From the Original Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
So much depends
uponthe red semi-
colonunderlined with
errorbeside the white
closing parenthesis.
From the Original William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow”
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
The Sun
Crossroads
between the wake
of spring and shallow summer.
In the æther of the marching months
may you return one day and remember
this April,
if only to forget.
From the Archives: Displacing Garbage and Pigeons 2009
It was a chance meeting on the street, an inescapable occurrence in the city. We’d last spoken only days ago, a marathon phone chat, but you looked at me as if we’d never met — newly acquainted, friendly strangers.
You asked me how I was but, try as I might to give the usual answer, the one you were looking for, the effortless ‘fine’, nothing happened. The casual lie I’d spewed forth instinctively, like everyone else so many times, had suddenly grown barbs and latched onto my vocal cords. A truth spewed out instead; one with no business seeing freedom.
“Today’s not a good day.”
You apologised for having to hear that, but I wish you hadn’t. That you would reply with a mechanical response expected from an ordinary person, any other person, made me remember that you had always been one of them. I tried to pretend otherwise. I attempted to thank you, another automated response, but the words stuck their spikes in deeper. I shrugged instead.
We stood there for some time, you, upright and awkward, me, slouched and fidgety, not the person you’d known. People rushed around us displacing garbage and pigeons on their way to somewhere.
You started talking, filling an imagined silence while skirting around any lurking questions. I imagine you were afraid to get another answer, another truth, and make this meeting all the more strange.
If only I could have lied! If I hadn’t projected this on you, we could have carried on talking like we did before, in that stilted friendly way that we’ve had since I threw the tumbler at your head.
The scar was still there, you know? There, just above your right eye. A pained look, badly hidden, passed across your face as you noticed me glance at it.
Do you remember that night?
It was a calm evening, as it always seemed to be for us, coiled around each other on the couch, watching some cop show. During the show and commercials, we watched without a word uttered, but at the end, when the bad guy wasn’t caught as he usually was, you huffed and shut off the TV.
I asked what was wrong and you gave a speech. You got up, standing in front of me, going on and on: lecturing. I can’t remember a word of it now, but I can remember the anger that bloomed as I grabbed for anything that would shut you up.
The glass flew from my hand with unprecedented accuracy breaking against the opposite brow I’d aimed for. I was sure then that you were angered more by the fact that I’d interrupted your spiel than the trip to the hospital.
And here we were now. You were standing in front of me again, going on and on, while I stayed deaf to every word. Instead, I wondered if you’d ever get the scar removed. I hope not. The longer you talked, the more pride I felt. I was proud that I was the one that gave it to you.
You made an excuse, or maybe it was a truth, about having to meet someone in a few minutes. There wasn’t an offer to call later before you strode away, but your retreating back gave me everything I needed.
Garden Walls
Winter Diamonds
Turning the corner toward the field, the coach found the diamond populated by frozen players playing a pickup game. Snowmen. Silent sentinels, left by the elementary kids at recess play. In the thin winter sunlight they would glisten with joy – hats added to their snow-bald heads and mitts to warm the twigs – every bit the perfect soldiers of merriment. Tonight, as he ambled among them, they glowed in a pagan moonlight vigil over the diamond.
The coach picked up a mitten that had fallen off, replacing it carefully on the stiff limb of the pitcher. In the twilight there was no glittering from the blanched body, or winks from the stone eyes. They only cast long shadows with unblinking stares.
The coach shivered. Turning his back on the diamond, and continued his walk toward the parking lot and the forest beyond.
