Poetry Forum

200 Yards Johnny Avocado : 2007

Ratted running squeal through the ear split head,
Hot wind burning through the shell
For the cool of drink, the heat of tar is red
On eye and dark to the edge of rim, of smell.

Screaming cars, glinting whispers of a week
With furring spins and distant grins, that simply see
The slowly start, and faster weave and angry sleek,
To turn and grind on steel let free.

Go curse the swine who hides “our” line
No, hear the whine who steals my course
To leave the break, that should be mine and
Kick the floor and damn to punch for force

To swim behind and lose my feel
Dont turn the wheel to break the seal
Of tyre and stone to slide with speak and call
To break the shell upon the wall.

This certainly grabbed my attention, all the way through. And after I had read it three times decided it was about stockcar racing. At first I thought it was about the beach but 2 shells in a poem doesn't make it a beach. Then I thought it must be about war, but then would you bang a shell on a wall, only if you wanted to hear a bang and die. There was a reference about swimming and discounted this as too obvious, maybe snooker I thought, a break but then there was no mention of balls. So I settled for stock car racing.
Ratted running in the first line made me think of pigs squealing as dogs grabbed the poor pig by the ears and dragged from their warm smelly sty to the vehicle of transportation and an early brutal death. An image from my childhood when pigs supplemented the poverty just after WW2. The rest of the lines in stanza 1 did not confuse me at all because I could not fathom remotely what they meant. I could assemble a kind of metaphor to car racing, the shell of the steel car, a wreck, the red eyed tar, is tar red to the red eye, it could be. Certainly, there could be lots of smells in the open window of a stock racing car, tyres screaming, rubber burning, the resideues smarting the eyes.

Strangely enough once, I had chosen stock car racing as the subject of the work the 2nd stanza made sense. And even stranger, I liked it, I loved the play of the words and thought they blended together quite nicely.

The 3rd stanza hardened me on my naïve view that it was car racing, and the driver is ranting on the (s)whine who breaks his course, he got in the way? And I enjoyed that stanza too. Just don’t tell me it’s a poem about fishing, Or might give up critique altogether.

The 4th was good and I feel I’ve done the best I can under the circumstances. I notice no one else has jumped in already which is unusual as they seem to flock to my poor efforts like gannets at a feast.

Overal, I liked it; it was powerful writing, concise, good use of words and exciting. I just hope it is about car racing, I would feel such a fool if it was not.

Regards

Ioan
(pronounced: Ih (as in bit) o ( as in Bow) a )as in can) with a nice n sound on the end.

Ih-oh-an, easy peasy to say, just pronounce all the vowels, ot do as most English do and call me Ian, but never late for dinner.

Jav,

Loved this, great word use...and your very good punctuation enhances it immensely.

This is a good original work – I really have no idea how you may improve it…if you even can…

By the way…I think its about rallying……

Well done and thanks…

Rally cars and racing...very, very interesting. Awesome imagery, and I loved the way you captured the fervency and...anger (?) of cars battling for supremacy. Very nice.

Your comments are very much appreciated.

Formula 1 was my attempt and specifically the first corner at Monza..

JA