Ph: Kim: Three Minute Attention Span Poem by Brian Johnston
Ph: Kim: Three Minute Attention Span
If reading a poem takes more than three minutes
Then most poetry's out of your grasp,
Your life's barely a popular song.
Might this not explain why other's demands tire you?
A symphony has no place on your plane since its
Dense rhythms poison you like an asp,
And even tennis games can seem long.
Other's dubious passion for life can't be true!
I can't help but wonder what purpose such lives serve,
What evolutionary niche filled
By focus so seemingly abstract…
The act of leaving a reward all its own.
For those of us drawn into your life's subtle curve
What chance really our fears might be stilled?
Being hired means you're soon to be sacked,
No true permanence in any place by your throne.
If an engineer's mind's a tumultuous zoo
Where almost everything has its place,
You're more like a sack full of feathers.
You are soft to the touch but quite hard on the mind.
The Uncertainty Principle's you through and through,
Your reality spreads out through space.
Pinning you down just photographs blurs
And my memories are all that you've left behind.
May 3,2014
My 2nd Wife Kim (now ex-wife also) and I used to have a standing joke between us. I would ask her to do something with me (like watch a TV show that I was really interested in) and invariably, after about 3 minutes, she would disappear. I learned not to take it personally with time, but as an engineer, my ability to focus must also drive people crazy on occasion. I can be listening to a favorite piece of classical music, for example, and not even notice when my wife comes home from work, I am just on another planet!
My poems usually determine their own rhyme scheme. I was troubled at first by how this poem's rhyme scheme developed until I realized that the emotional distance between people of short attention span and me is actually reflected in the distance between lines that rhyme in the poem. Now I kind of like the way it work out. What do you think dear reader? Or did you even notice that this poem rhymes perfectly. I suspect many will think it is in fact blank verse? !
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/16/2024 2:32:02 AM # 1.0.0.1119
i'm working my way through this, searching for rhymes. none! ok. The act of leaving a reward all its own...............leaving what, or where or what where? ? Being hired means you're soon to be sacked, ...........iIS you a potato? ? You are soft to the touch but quite hard on the mind...............soft to the touch sounds nice. :) :) i'm not so enthused about hard on the mind! : ( : ( except for penises and nipples, i think body parts should not be hard. ok, bones also. ;) now to Poet's Notes (thanks for them btw; i was thinking Kim is your present 'girlfriend'!) : until I realize that the emotional distance between people of short attention span and I is actually reflected in the distance between lines that rhyme in the poem..........OH! there ARE rhymes? ? ? i'll go back and look again. and i think here: ...between people of short attention span and I.... ........... the proper/correct pronoun to use is me, not I in this instance. hmmm? ok, i see the rhyme scheme. it probably would have been more obvious if my journey through the poem hadn't been so ARDUOUS******! ! ! ******i may have never used this word, arduous, in my lifetime, but i've heard it used. that reaching for a rhyme explains the use of sacked, which i hadn't figured out! i think i would have preferred 'blank verse'. better yet, blank page. hee-hee. HA HA! bri ;)