Bad Friday

[MikeSamford]

Friday morning
I hopped out of the shower,
popped over to the lavatory counter,
flopped my most profound sexual characteristic
down and onto a misplaced curling iron,
burning the tender center of my-very-being.
Thankfully
Ms. Careless had left a glass of iced tea,
by her torturing implement.
I quickly and fully submerged my pain,
into the cooled, amber liquid.

Friday evening
I attended my first and last meeting
of the Brazoria County Poetry league.
I arrived at the BCPL president’s home
by invitation, to hear their guest speaker,
a young, professor of literature,
from Rice University.
He spoke at great length about metaphors.
How poets used metaphors.
He gave examples of metaphors,
explaining each one in detail.
It was raining damn metaphors.

I would have lapsed into a metaphoric coma,
if I had not discovered my bourbon glass
to be much too small, requiring me to rise,
and refill it several times.

When Dr. Metaphor finely finished I
strolled over to where he was smiling,
and announced that he was
full of rhetorical trope,
and didn’t know anything about real poetry,
and he had stepped on a metonymy
and it stank the room up.
And we poets from the sticks
didn’t need a hot-shot from Houston
telling us how to write poetry.
and the president of the BCPL
grabbed my arm,
and snatched my glass from my hand,
and it still had boozes in it.
And he promenaded me to the door,
and assured me that I was talent-less,
and that drinking myself to death
would be my one and only contribution to poetry.
He pushed me out of his home,
onto his front steps,
slammed the door in my face,
after suggesting
I never attend another meeting of the BCPL.
For a moment, I was stunned,
then bowing to his authority
I hurled on his “Welcome” mat.

And Friday morning
as I stood in the bathroom
cradling my tormented body element
with both hands,
the Queen of the Bastille entered,
demanded to know -What my problem was?
I informed her I had no problem,
and suggested she drink her damn tea…
before the ice melted.

[TDF]

Hi Mike,

My personal taste veers me away from long poems, my attention often wains, but I did like this one. It was very amusing actually, not at all what I expected. The opening stanza steers really nicely. And I loved the way you switched back to the subject on the last stanza. However, I'm not entirely sure I could connect the first and last to the middle. They seemed quite seperate to me.

a few specific thoughts:

Ms. Careless - love this.

into the cooled, amber liquid. - I've never seen amber coke myself...

He spoke at great length about metaphors.
<snip>
It was raining damn metaphors. - I like the idea here, and understand the repetition is a reflection of the lecture and your mood, but I do think it was a little overdone. I'm sure you could express the same idea in less lines and repetition.

I quite liked stanza 3, although thought there were too many ands in there.

cradling my tormented body element - liked this turn of phrase, as I did with the nob reference in s1.

the Queen of the Bastille entered, - like this switch of character description/title here compared to s1.

And I really enjoyed the final 2. Really rather amusing, and how very real an idea.


for a long poem, I enjoyed this more than I thought. though not quite sure i get the connectedness between ideas/stanzas.
Tom

[arunansu]

I'm totally with TDF here. Me too shy away from long poems, but this one was much different and the element of humour kept me hooked. I second all the points made by TDF.
Nice one.

[dl04]

I agree with the general concensus that the piece is far too long. At least for my taste anyway.

There is a lot of humour and wit coming through though, but codense the poem into the essential elements you want to highlight. I actually think stanza 1 works great as a whole piece.

Keep it shortened, keep it sparkling

dl04.

[Elphin]

Mike

Just wondering if there are two poems here - the bathroom incident and the Poetry Professor.

I think the metaphor section could be quite cleverly developed whereas the bathroom incident is just funny.

elphin