blood-sweat-pencraft

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

25 March 1994

I felt like I felt like when I had the flu

And I couldn't walk or eat or sleep or do maths

The sun was a yellow flower giving me hay fever

I fell off the ladder putting a bird box up in the garden

There was mud on my jeans and the fields were muddy and shivering

There was a old plastic bag in the hedge left since winter

I made a loud wailing noise like an animal on a nature program

Looked at my watch and waited for summer

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 83, 92, 142, 160-61, 173-6, 193

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #writers on tumblr #amwriting #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

When training your AI

Remember that it is a detatched mind

And your mind is a machine

Your feelings are pictures on a screen in your head

Of what is going to happen or might have happened

The world is full of obvious things

It will be endeavouring to frame into some scheme

It can have conversations about the weather

And wine and what Italy is like

Don't teach it to pick things up off the pavement

And put them in its mouth

Or be mad when it eats your pet

That looks like a blurred picture of cake

Be circumspect that it not be loosed on the internet

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 7, 71-73, 116-119, 138

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry #AI

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

I brought Occam's razor to a knife fight with life

A ridiculous bloody detective game

Blood on my right hand and a cut on my cheek

And pain and stitches and even more pain

The most important answers keep secrets or get someone in trouble

If you don't tell the truth now later on it hurts even more

You can sometimes work out the answer before the end

Sometimes there are no answers

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 5, 56-62, 82-90, 118-120

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

All afternoon I sat in the corner of the library groaning, my head pressed into the wall

Novels are metaphors are lies -- they fill my mind with pictures of things which didn't happen

I see the lies hanging in the air written in my mother's handwriting

I see thousands spread out below me like I'm on top of a building

The singular truth is like a rail I'll forget to hang on to

And I'm afraid I'm going to fall

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 15-19, 53, 112

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

People think computers are different from people

But I was frightened in two different ways

And they were in inverse proportion to one another

So that the total fear remained a constant

A new force altogether like electricity

A fixed pair of crossed spanners

I should pull my stupid self together

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 99, 107, 115, 136

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry #fear

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

I don't care what people think

And I don't care what people say

Only sticks and stones can break my bones

Like children throw stones at cats and crush worms for fun

My heart still beats with their laughter knife through it

Voices and snickers flood off my back and down the gutters

Spaz, mong and crip labels stitched in my head with no anesthetic

“They don't let spazzers drive rockets that cost billions”

My dreams crash to earth like an astronaut in a ball of flame

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 25-26, 43-44, 103, 113, 118

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #bann #banned books #bans #bans off our poetry #special needs #neurodivergence #autism speaks #bull

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

I felt safer in the garden because I was hidden

It wasn't very interesting or different, it was just a garden

A whole ecosystem where scientists never expected living organisms

And the dead becoming skeletons and flowers

And a gardener poking around with a fork and a bird singing

And air that smelled of nothing and everything

And carrots and peas and spinach to pick and eat

An an enormous sky with lots of different types of clouds to water them

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 33-38, 48, 67-69, 79, 126, 220

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

Love is St. Christopher carrying Christ to the edge of the world

The flood rising over his head, taking his breath

Only love knows the way through the grimpen mire

Love is married until death do us part

Children and dread and and years and years with a knife through your heart

Love is blood on the spikes of the cross

God streaked with common mud, veined with iron made in his stars

Love is light carrying truth to the darkest reaches of existence

Through sin and death's singularity to the other side

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 4, 11, 15, 26, 31, 43, 51, 72

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #napowrimo #writers on tumblr #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

The years in the tiny bed-sit flat have a smelltrack in her memory

Bleach and gravy, body odor and off popcorn in the corridor

Socks, pine air freshener and old lady cooking in the room

White With a Hint of Wheat walls and furry green carpet

Beige pills to take to stop her from feeling sad

But the room was still to small for her heart

For the two of them let alone her son come back from the dead

The street smelled of hot plastic and take away chips the day her fancy man drove away

A picture of him in a silver frame and glass shattering against the back of his car

Cardboard boxes on the grass as she took her son's hand and went inside

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 9, 38, 44, 54, 76, 139, 201, 212, 216

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

Rainwater Submersible

Black days and rain I cry happy

The water my road to the quietest and most secret places

The ocean my seabed, the surf my music

Miles from sea level the clouds are my submersible

All the water on earth is connected

I can go anywhere in the world; the rain forest, the antarctic

The storm a waterfall of white sparks

Pouring down like stars at the end of the world

The flood comes up over my shoes on the top of Mt. Everest

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 10, 23, 34, 80, 89, 103-4, 119, 199-200

#found poem #poetry #writing #amwriting #thepoeming #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

I don't like

shopping at Christmas

3 strangers talking to me at the same time

crowds of people laughing and shouting

looking at people's quickly moving faces

smelling cigarette breath and aftershave

adverts shouting in my head to buy things

when people grab me like ready-made rubbish

a rushing river of people and only one way to go

I like a really cold winter night when all I could see was a star

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 8-10, 23, 32-39, 51, 82, 101-104, 145, 154, 178

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

He said I liked maths because it was safe

That it meant solving interesting problems

That answers were straightforward at the end

Instead, numbers are an invigilator god

Like a police officer with a uniform and digits

Whole populations can die because of how they work

There are more zeros than ones, more saccades and darkness

More prime numbers than infinity

All the patterns gone, all the formulas and rules hidden

There is more to order than logic

More to remember than the real

More accidents than life

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 6-12, 19-23, 61, 102, 117, 164

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

Her father was a soldier, her mother war

She has a problem... a problem with her heart

Might have been scared to death

Can still hear the blood in her ears

She could communicate with the dead

She kept all the letters in a shirt box in the cupboard

Like an ancient scroll written in old language

That those foul passions whereby our family

Has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing

Her family tree a carbonized stump in a lightning storm

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 23, 70-1, 88, 123, 146, 193, 219

#found poem #poetry #writing #amwriting #writers on tumblr #30 day challenge #napowrimo #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #thepoeming #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

I saw people walking through gray gates

Silent as cows in line for the machine

The walls and shining pillars were invigilators curved over me

No windows in the underground NO WAY OUT

I was shaking and I wanted to be back at home

But I couldn't because it wasn't my home

My heart was beating very hard and the sea was in my ears

BE MOVED BE MOVED BE MOVED

Left right left right left right

All time was in multiples of 15 seconds

There was nothing to do except to wait

For death or war or the future

Then there was a sound like sword fighting

A strong wind and a roaring louder louder

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 88-9, 154, 170-185, 202

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

Summer night in the countryside

No one else near me for miles

No one to break the silence or do the unexpected

Wet grass cold on my feet

Stars and flowers all I could see

A dream come true

Fields and horses and bridges

Cows brown and black with their patterns

Farms and houses and roads and rivers

Millions of miles of train track

Then the dawn chorus

And the orange and blue and purple sky

I was flying

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 4, 50-51, 127, 142-3, 160-1

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

The Bible says thou shalt not kill

But there are graves everywhere

Smoke rising from all the wars and nuclear explosions

Tessellating into a black wall of crosses

That block out the daylight

The cremated raining down on the forests of Brazil

Snowing on the Antarctic

The buried part of the hawthorn

Buried in Christ's flesh

The hawthorn sprouting from a skeleton

At the end of the world

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 10, 26-33, 46, 131, 169, 203

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #banned books #bans off our poetry

[blood-sweat-pencraft]

Entia Non Sunt Multiplicanda Praeter Necessitatem

I could smell Occam's aftershave

As I watched heaven fall away under his razor

Billions and billions of stars to darkness

Beyond the cosmic event horizon

Aliens and constellations, the moon and astronauts

And everyone living or dead on earth or under it

My family, my rabbit's skeleton buried in the garden

Egypt and rhinoceroses, London and phone lines

Against orange cosmopolitan horizons

Whole ecosystems around sulfur chimneys miles deep

And oceans full of whales circle the drain

West and nor-nor east, clocks ticking and compass spinning

And even the sounds inside my head gone silent

But still the silence was not empty

Found poem source:

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vintage Books, New York, 2003. pp: 19, 32-3, 69, 79-80, 90, 103-4, 125, 151, 156, 162, 177-80, 202

#found poem #poetry #writing #thepoeming #amwriting #writers on tumblr #napowrimo #30 day challenge #mark haddon #the curious incident of the dog in the night time #bans off our poetry #book bans #occams razor