Written in 2002, the poet was expressing his approach to writing as framed by George Gordon, Lord Byron. A long standing advocate and practitioner of single-draft poetry (no rewrites), he was pleased to discover that Byron employed and defended the same technique, comparing it to a tiger, pouncing out of the jungle. The poet took Byron's comment and merged it with the name of a class of starship he had designed in the computer game Pax Imperia, Radiant Tiger, and this was the result.
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welcome to the land of radiant tigers.
bright eyes like coherent beaming ruby rods
fiercely piercing the fearjungle of life.
pouncing like Lord Byron on a first draft.
poets glide on the slip and slide emotions
whetted and wet with the potions of passion.
sweetmeats met in a feast of least persistence,
an insistence on the order of a random universe.
roadwork with the soda jerk mixology of words
that effervesce with a laugh in the daft draught
of expressions caught caterwauling to glance
off the silvered glass mirrors of albedo'd radiance.
welcome to the land of radiant tigers.
citrus stripes on cocoa black, warm as memory.
cold as calculations in an impatient ledger,
counting found funds, lost time, and three deep breaths.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.