Poetry transcribes emotions into words. It can extend the image and voice of a visual art. DiVerse have now turned novels and great stories into poetry. Not just a condensed version of the original medium, but a poetic rendering of works you know and love. Let us know what you think.

the worst thing on earth is us
- after Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris.

by Robert Kennedy

how we construct pain
our lives
tedious
part of the evolutionary small
masked
hideous torment
that can’t be mentioned
under the skin
things that don’t remove
every strip
every part
weighed down
with that look of taste
upon our faces
skinny black features
on white romantic wants
plays the part
of ultimate release
dissected
the unquiet seconds
the last movements
of what
we contained

Seeing Leonardo da Vinci's Notebooks

'A bird is an instrument working according to a mathematical law.'

Illumination in the gloom, little more than
the moon's lustre. I mirror read tight tendrils
of spider writing to the future mind
of genius.

Spirals of harmonic flight, perpetual motion,
equal angles, the confluence of double helix,
percussion and the eddying of tides were stuffed
in his cerebellum.

One intellect to conjure earth's flesh, human bone,
the sun's skin, to transfuse the quill and spill it
onto parchment, black ink flowing in reverse
of synapse.

Unravelled skein of inspiration, mesmeric
lilliputian script, sketched prettier than Belgian lace.
A cosmos joust, to charge and lance conundrums,
grey matter bearing down, giving birth
to concepts.

I wander glass crypt to crypt, intermittent pulse
of light to glimpse the theories of his age
as artist, scientist, engineer. Breathe in museum hush
and gloom and feel our limitations nothing more
than alchemy.

Renaissance god, his bird mind soaring higher
than Icarus, preening mathematical law, submariner
in contraptions, reflex cogs and springs. This dynamo
siring movement, space, weight, force, as wheels turn
keeping time.

And in the shadows, hooks and pulleys crane
my mind's wilderness, desert to this fertile genius
too much for one skull. His magic, marching
in battalions, black pygmy letters in formation
shoulder pressed to shoulder, in the darkness
inventing light.

© Sheryl Persson

Irish Ulysses

(A response to "Ulysses" by James Joyce)

Woolgathering on city streets
thoughts are not a conscious stream
more a river, running swift and deep
beautiful as the Liffey.

All life crammed into a single day.
Odours of body-sweat and fish
the smell of cabbage and a taste of bile
jostle with noises on the quay;
cart-wheels, whistles, hooters, cranes
while the sea cradles the isle of Eire.

Beneath the pub’s unholy lights
as guilt and sorrow drown in beer
the talk’s of poetry, birth and death
the men they knew or never saw.
Humour, prejudice, certainty and doubt
meld with the lilt of fantasy and youth
as voices of the sirens swell
to fiddles, pipes and solitude.

The myth and more, the flowers that bloom.

© Paula McKay

A New Life

If I could bring back the dead
who would it be, and would they agree
maybe they were resting comfortably
unlike me, in my mummified world.

I wonder if *Osiris made a choice
said, hmmm not sure about this one
maybe it was he that cut me into
fourteen pieces, oh well I’m in a good mood
let him in.

The dead, there’re a funny lot
always got so much to say
talk so loud about what they’ve done
where they’ve been, their favourite music
their favourite wine, and they’re always on about
their complaints, Alzheimer’s, gastritis, ulcers
and of course schistosomiasis.

But what if I could bring back the dead
they could see the changes, to see what we’ve done
and feel the connections to what we’d become
but I think they might be a little bitter and twisted
when they find out that death still existed.

Robert Kennedy

- after the Egyptian, Book of the Dead.

*Osiris, the god of rebirth

Lolita
- after Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Love me Lolita
you’re on the tip of my tongue
fire of my loins
sin of my soul

Love me Lolita
laying there in the garden
looking up and down
at a widowed white male

Love me Lolita
I’m not too old
you’re another country
we are removed

Love me Lolita
light of my life
lying on my bed
your toe nails a mess

Love me Lolita
this damaged man
I’ve torn you from your childhood
into a hundred degrees

Love me Lolita
your mother is dead
I didn’t kill her
she died of fear

Love me Lolita
you are so many people
in your changing hues
but in my arms you are always Lolita

Love me Lolita
as you love another
leave me Lolita
I can’t bare the pain.

Robert Kennedy

The Blood
-after Carrie, by Stephen King

Carrie White burns in hell
dancing like a moth in a flame.

Through a twist of thought
and a mind unparalleled
time shifts, objects move
as a force of nature

Spinning in a paradise of doubt
young woman on the edge of life
kneels to the taunts of others

Disgraced, lonely mother
scared of sin, crucifies
her only daughter
with claustrophobic fear

Burning away at an emotional core
the dizziness of dreams unfolds
into a nightmare of crushing revenge

A stage splits a body in two
fired from the heart of burning hate
all that laughed cindered to dust

Carrie White burns in hell
dying like a moth in a flame.

Robert Kennedy

Brave New Poem
- after Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The pencil scurried illegibly across the page
there was a sound of light regular breathing
and a faint voice remotely whispering.

Then a shock of startling pain, it was something desperate
almost insane, like an explosion of bells, which slowly died
from tone to tone into silence.

The more advanced emotionally engineered
explained the rhymes of moral propaganda
to the victims, the savagely possessed, for enormous superiority.

The savage looked at them reproachfully
then suddenly fell on their knees, taking their hands
then kissed them, and whispered, if you only knew.

Suddenly somebody started singing, they all caught up the refrain
dancing around beating one another in 6/8 time.
They stopped then covered their eyes, crying, Oh My God, My God.

One young woman stood silently, smiling, a peach bright doll beautiful face her blue eyes grew larger, brighter, with a quick emphasised gesture she stretched out her arms and screamed, I want the whip, whip me.

She stood like a magnetic center of attention
her face a pane of fascinating horror
as they slashed at her with whips of small cords.

Oh the flesh, the savage ground their teeth, then slowly
very slowly as an unhurried compass needle, their feet turned
towards the north, north-east, east, south-east, south.

Robert Kennedy

4891
- after 1984, by George Orwell

Things of green and darkest blue
tumble down in snow white fields.

Against the window
touching freedom.

In a sea of grass, waves form
as you look back.

Copies of words eat the truth
trapped in fear and solitude.

Transmitted thoughts policed by unity
ministered through the banner of truth.

We are ordered, completed by torture
screaming out the name of it.

Our age, abolished manipulated trust of the absolute
of our brother, enormously small.

Each moon shadows our path, like it's watching us
and there’s a boot stamping onto our faces.

Robert Kennedy