[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Joe - I love Bob Dylan's response. There's something about the false eyelashes that turns the image from half-real to real. I'll have to listen to that tonight.

RCL - thank-you so much for joining the game! Your poems are clever and funny. I am quite genuinely in awe of anyone who can manage to dash off witty metrical poetry so quickly. The end is brilliant -and the 'darts for hearts'. That's a whole other image in itself although I'll let someone else jump in to that one (I'm going to have a go at the Route 66 one though)

Ann - yours made me spit out my tea laughing. I love the range of unappetising possibilities, and 'bastards with impermanent intent', and the end is wonderful.

Sarah-Jane

[RCL]

Thanks, Jane. I played with it a bit more during a prolonged power outage in LA. Glad you like it.

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

RCL - Nice edits. For me, that latest reads more like a complete poem and less like part of a game.

The only change I wondered about was in the last line, although it did make me want to know more about 'No Heart Jack' who sounds rakishly piratical.

Work has left me very little time to play, but I got to the scissors and glue tonight!

So, here's my visual response to RCL's After Walter’s No-Man by Jack:

[Ann Drysdale]

Jane, that's weird. Scrolling changes it. If I look at the top half, it appears that the edges are bent backwards, but if I scroll down, lose the top half and look only at the bottom, the edges are folded forwards. Hmm. bending. Maps and metaphors... poem coming...

[Ann Drysdale]

Here Be Dragons

They told us first in stories
Here be Dragons
and we would warm ourselves at the familiar fire-breath
knowing the saint would save us.

They told us next in sea-charts
Here be Dragons
and we would know it meant the unsafe place
where the not-known met the misunderstood.
We were safe, knowing better.

They warned us, did our elders,
Here be Dragons.
Washing our hair when menstruating killed us,
sitting on cold stone benches gave us piles;
we survived all their nonsense.

They dared us in the doorway
Here be Dragons
but the room breathed out careful conversation
as bright light glittered off the splintered laughter
and there were no dragons.
Only a silent, shifty-looking elephant.

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Ann, that's amazing.

I love the ending, and so sadly, deeply true - the shifty elephant in the room is the monster.

I also love how, in my reading, this moves from hearth-fire to renaissance voyage to early (20 folk-myth to the fractured half-truths of (21 conversations.

if no-one else picks this up I will.

Sarah-Jane
(any strange effects of my previous image are complete chance btw)

[Ann Drysdale]

Thanks, Jane, you get my drift. I wonder if anyone else noticed the optical illusion of the bends or sees a coy little elephant in the centre of your image.