Saturday, October 22, 2011

The army in my house

****


Cake crumbs

black ant
black ant

ant ant ant ant ant ant Cake
                                        ant


jaws                                b a c k
    closed        food       to the nest
        around   back     to the queen
    crumbs       who     sits pregnant
carry                               w i t h


ant ant ant ant ant ant
ants
   ant
     an
       a
          a
        h i ll
    ant     ant

and all around, soldiers
    ten times the size of workers

stand around guarding the line of
ant ant ant ant ant ant ant ant
stand around guarding the line of

order
   |
single

ant cleaning feelers, or
taunting human

ant ant ant ant ant ant Cake
                                         ant


****

I saw some of the excellent entries for dVerse FormForAll where they were doing shape and concrete poetry this weekend and was inspired. But alas, as usual, I'm too late to put my link in.

In any case, I had fun.


12 comments:

Brian Miller said...

this turned out great though...ugh...we had ants this summer bad....they did not care about bait they just ate it and kept right on going....this is really wel done...

Anonymous said...

Glad I caught this from Brian's twitter feed - I love the ant words kept in line or streaming around or over and the sense of order that permeates the poem. The march of ants up and down the page, the mirror rows of soldier ants, and bringing it back to one ant taunting are cleverly played!

Unknown said...

Raven- really nice, I love the concrete- You did a great job here. Ants have always fascinated me, their strength and loyalty to their queen has always been intriguing, well actually their entire way of life really is, so cyclical and routine in nature. You gave it a really nice feel here. Love the repetitive ant-awesome touch here, thanks

Anonymous said...

This is really cute. You did a wonderful job with this prompt. Ants are fascinating to watch but not in the house!

Ravenblack said...

Brian: the baits only work for a while, they soon become immune to the poison. :/

Anna: yes, I wanted to create effect of lines with them. :D

Fred: Ants are orderly to the extreme. I am fascinated at how the swarm one single mind/body and different ants are different parts of a body.

bodhirose: not in the apartment but there they are, living _in_ the coffee table at one point. sigh.

Thanks for dropping by and for the awesome feedback, everyone. :)

dsnake1 said...

i think it's a great shape poem! i must try something like this too, but it's tough formatting the html in blogger. :)

i like the way you let the "ant" crawl all over the page, very creative. and i like the part about "taunting human". one spill of forgotten sweet drink on the kitchen top and very soon there's a small army marching towards it.

Ravenblack said...

Dsnake: thanks! The compose mode does allow more freedom in single spacing now. Or else I would have had to do an image capture.

It doesn't even have to be a sweet drink. I don't know why, but the ants in my house simply love plain water and would sometimes jump into the kettle. Have to leave the kettle on the stove to keep them away.

Laurie Kolp said...

Such a creative, well-done piece... wish I could have some of that cake.

Ravenblack said...

I wish we could before the ants got to it. :D Thanks for the visit, Laurie. :)

Jannie Funster said...

That's a cool shape!!

We have sugar ants from time to time. Wish i could follow them home to see their cute little organized homes. :)

Ravenblack said...

Thanks Jannie. :) And your comment made me smile -- I don't know if they are cute, to me they are quite scary, but you are right that they are organized. :)

steveroni said...

you say YOU had ants galor! WEhsd so many--still do...i think they broight the UNCLES!