Poetry Forum

I think

a chain-link fence shed a pale, snakeskin shadow.

is my favorite line. A lovely image.

K

Agree with Tony's choice: those are the strongest lines. Also agree the poem could do with some paring down, but careful: a pristine little jewel would hardly seem appropriate to Mr B.

Nicely done. Line lengths and breaks suit the balancing act. Would "balanced/on" suit better than balanced/in"? It's seems a more finely balanced state to me to be balanced on something, e.g. with apologies to Leonhard, like a human bird on a wire.

Tried ringing the telephone number provided, but it's always busy. Must be quite the place. :D Read the revision first - which I thought well enough done, that I stopped reading the original part way into the second stanza! The revision seemed that much better than the original. Much better rhythm a...

I wonder if a comma after "another" might clarify the "both simultaneously" on a first read.

Fun piece, k-j. I quite liked the cavorting down the jetway, as a reflection of a traveler's relief that the traveling and the traveling state of mind are done.

And maybe an invisible "n" in

red-flags in the status widow...?

Or is there a bereaved person hanging about on the sub?

Very well done, Ray. Witty. A first read had no hitches at all. Loved 'as clear as the cratered moon" And the patients like poems, never finished, only abandoned. Very nice indeed.

K

Hi, C.

What fun. Really like the chopped weather report up front followed by the cloudiness/water being blown about. And I think my finger found its way and traced the maze into and round about...

K

Hmmmn...I wonder....

I take the exclamation on the comma as some measure of the person, a trace of self-importance perhaps; if not a blowhard, at least a bit of a maker of a mountain centered on himself...

or not...

*slinks quietly back under the leaf mold...

K

Lovely. Wouldn't change a word. The reveal at the end is very well done.

K

Hi, C. Just me, of course, but I'd be inclined to make L2 carnivorous rubies blaze: treasure because I find "blazon" a bit awkward (as a verb) and a bit awkwardly "antique". I assume peat's dark mirrors are the standing water you get in a bog; I'm prepared to accept that there mi...

Hi, David. Re title: Since many would know or guess Elvis is buried in Memphis, would the name of of a small local cemetary (even an imaginary one) serve.... ( Have to admit I had to google his burial site to be sure.) Brompton Grove Cemetary. Hampshire Hillside Cemetary, Ayrshire ....??? Or does th...

Ray, not time for a closer read at the moment, but the Russian dolls led me to expect/hope that each stanza would be enjambed as S1 is into S2.

More later I hope. Not a lot of time these days: house sold, finding rental that is pet friendly, on and on...

Ken

I wondered about breaking line 5 after Pope; it would seem to leave the hand hovering a little more and perhaps picks up on the blessing of the previous line a bit more. It also seems to concentrate the 'here' from his splendid palace. (Or not...just a thought.) In any event a nice sketch oof evanes...

What fun. Brought a definite smile.

Thanks for the link, Ros. That is fascinating: camera with a motor drive, chainsaws! Amazing. Makes me wonder about their potential to imitate speech. Good, old David. We are the next great extinction, rolling blithely along. We seem incapable of caring enough even for our closest cousins, the prima...

Hi, Ros. Quite liked this. I wouldn't know a lyrebird if it perched on my shoulder, but I don't need to to enjoy this piece. A sense of Keep your head and carry on. And also a sense of fiddling while Rome burns... but made more omninous by the bird's complete inability to affect the sawing/burning d...

And today's winner of the Oblivious One Award: me. I looked up syldexia. "Now there's a word I've never seen. I wonder what that means." Of course the search came up empty. DUH.

Hi, Ian.

I'm struggling with this piece. The first point of real uncertainty for me happens in line 3: the past tense 'did' amongst all the present tenses. Still chewing on it. I'm obviously missing something.

Nice piece. Gentle. Very nice. I wonder about replacing "the lizard" in line 10 with a pronoun: it changes the stress count but quickens the pace, and I don't think doing so risks ambiguity. As the others have noted, the last line is great. It comes as a complete surprise but not at the co...

Egnulp is plunge backwards, is it not?

I concur in the sentiments of the last few posts in this thread. It is a poorer place without you, Luke. I'm hoping it is just "life" getting in the way as it does sometimes.

Hi, Mic. Very intiguing. I hope you won't mind a bit of stream of not-so-very-conscious consciousness commenting. A single blossom falls. I wonder why it finds no ground. Because in the dark the fall can't be followed visually all the way to the ground? Love S2. Moon swells. In monochrome. Long gras...

Nicely done, both.

Loved the hesitation waltz of the pencil flitting about the sum. Lots of good lines and images and very evenly handled throughout.

Well, done. Sounds like you had fun with this.

*and the crowd cries out for more*

Hi, Mac.

I keep wanting to read a comma after the ginger cake. Hmmmn.

For what it's worth, I find the "then" in the "rock, we then slide our limbs" line rather jarring.

P.S. Looking forward to a Cornwall piece. Been many a long year since I was last there.