neoformalism!?

A wise man named Cleary said to me yesterday that the good thing about going to readings it that it makes you want to write, and I had to say ah, yes, this is good and true, because sometimes in the face of the million billion readings I go to, I forget this. And the last reading I went to, which was at the superfantastic Club Waziema, featured a pantoum about a zombie fight by one Jacob Evans. I was quite taken with it, and so I said, hey. I could try my hand at the pantoum. Moreover, I can write it in an excel spreadsheet with formulae to fill in the lines. It was a really neat thing to see the poem getting constrainder and constraineder as I was writing it, and the last stanza writes itself! Which isn't to say I didn't backsolve for the one I wanted...but here's what I came up with. v. 1.0 anyway.

high altitude

the pretty and the pointy, simultaneous.
the slightest effort might sew in your side a stitch--
concentrating on breathing, on the fact that
deep lakes don't freeze.

the slightest effort might sew in your side a stitch
out of wispy air pulled taut.
deep lakes don't freeze;
a vaporous sailboat navigates the bay,

out of wispy air pulled taut--
i'll call it a fjord because of the scandanavian castle.
a vaporous sailboat navigates the bay
past it, sitting derelict on the sandbar.

i'll call it a fjord because of the scandanavian castle,
and you just need to get
past it, sitting derelict on the sandbar.
all the water bottles crushed themselves on the way back down.

and you just need to get
concentrating on breathing, on the fact that
all the water bottles crushed themselves on the way back down.
the pretty and the pointy, simultaneous.