Rats (had a fiddle!)

[kozmikdave]

Rats in the ceiling
look through cracks.
They see my every move;
they twitch and scratch
barely moving ‘til I go off to sleep.
It’s then they come on down;
dance around my dining room
and check my calendar;
then plot to send me mad.

Rats in the ceiling
playing psychic games;
sending telepathic signals
to rob my rationality.
They seem to know when I’m awake.
They whisper words I barely hear,
or fall back into ticking stillness,
lest I should hear their plans.

That rustle in the trees – rats!
That ripple on the water – rats!
That rattle in the grass
escorts me here and there to silence me
should I reveal the secrets that I know
of rats and their rat world schemes
to overthrow economies
and hypnotise with beady eyes
the brokers of world power.

[calxaed]

This has a very schizophrenic feel to it. The first stanza is good,

In the second

They know when I will enter
the world of nightmare wake
and fall back into silence
lest I should hear their plans.

I had some trouble making sense of this, is it a punctuation problem. 'The world of nightmare wake / and fall back into silence.' Missing comma or odd line cut?

In the third the first two lines are great. The rest is very breathless, no punctuation, I guess this fits with the insanity angle, but it's difficult to read.

Final two lines finish it off nicely.

Cal

[Jester]

Nice one Dave.

"Rats in the ceiling
playing psychic games;
sending telepathic signals
to rob my rationality. " - and I thought I was paranoid .

Feel there's a punctuation problem here -

"They know when I will enter
the world of nightmare wake
and fall back into silence
lest I should hear their plans. "

Thought you increased the tension well with each verse to parallel with that awful "can't get to sleep" feeling.

Mick

[barrie]

Have you been overdosing on Browning again?

Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

But there's a Poe-like paranoia in yours - It could be McCarthy writing about communist infiltration - Reds (rats) under the bed!. If there was no such thing as a 'bogeyman' we'd invent one.

I think it would say much more without the two out lines. It has so many possibilities, the last two lines really narrow the scope.

cheers

Barrie

[Robert]

Once again, really enjoyable. I love your economy of words Dave and the total lack of unfamiliar language. This combination makes your poems easy to understand and accessible. Even if there is some other meaning they stand alone as good narrative verse.

The accessibility of your poems reminds me of one of my favourite poets - Jacques Prévert

Cheers Cobber.

[lemur]

At first I thought it was the punctuation putting me off a bit, but I think it's the overall form - felt you could make more of it generally. I was expecting 'games' in the second stanza to then rhyme with some other line. My eye snagged on the 'beady eyes' phrase; felt a bit too like a cliche there.

I also didn't quite get the 'world of nightmare wake' line, maybe just because of the punctuation?

Having said all that, every night I imagine the water pipes in the loft bursting above my head and no doubt tonight I'll also be picturing rats gnawing at them, so it's obviously worked on some level:)

[twoleftfeet]

Dave,

I enjoyed this, but I wasn't quite sure how to take it - whether it was about just not being able to sleep, or paranoia.

"escorts me here and there to silence me
should I reveal the secrets that I know
of rats and their rat world schemes
to overthrow economies..."

- is quite dark and made me think of conspiracy theories, yet the "dear rats" at the end is jocular. Hmmmm.

The only line I can quibble about is
"Brokers of the power"
- why not "power brokers" ?

Thanks for the read
Geoff

[Saul]

/

[kozmikdave]

Thanks for all the +ves and encouragement. I wasn't sure about the last two lines when I wrote it but thought it needed a stopper on the end. Perhaps I can come up with something a little more srious than the lines I cut out.

That's about 3 people suggesting problems with the middle section. I think it needs a rewrite. I will get to it.

Geoff - the last line was a matter of rhythm and having said that, it still needs one sonic to trigger the mental reaction I was hoping for. I don't think it is your suggestion, but thanks for focusing me back on that section. I will try to find it. Every time I get close it makes no sense.

Hey, it's off to school for me then.

Cheers
Dave