Poetry Forum

Yes, I know they are not all drop-dead beautiful
but we can imagine that they are, help them along,
and from the imagination springs the seeds of truth:
even the most ghastly girl is a Marilyn in her mind.

Leaving the marginals aside for the moment,
gaze adoringly on the madly wonderful remainder.
They dress so well. They smell so good. They look so fine.
No wonder they do our silly fuckin heads in.

It’s like they want us to … ahhh … without touching.
Looking, looking ... well, looking is eternally free,
and there’s an awful lot of nice things to look at.
Their springy walks, short dresses, the sidelong glances.

Every day when you go into town you see 3-400 women
and you want to, well, try it on with about twenty.
There was this girl in a shiny blue mini earlier today
and I followed her from the bus up the escalator.

She grabbed her skirt and stared down daggers at me:
God, they are so so aware of our attention and intentions!
Too bad she turned back, she was right fuckin ugly,
such a tantalising prospect (Oooh) from the rear.

Mother Nature is relentless: she never lets you go
until you are old and toothless and gaga and even then,
a flip of a skirt, a wicked eye, the casually unbuttoned blouse
gets you going all over again. It’s not bloody fair!

Nothing’s ever been fair about it. The girls want us, the boys,
on their own terms. They make their own precious decisions:
you can be in heaven today and slapped up in jail tomorrow
because your little ickle sweetheart changed her mind.

Men are control freaks, yes, I know that.
Moslems put them in headscarfs and hijabs
(Afghani girls have these tinkly tinkly ankle bracelets)
as if to accentuate frustrated sexual obsessions.

The Chinese forced young girls to maim their feet,
Africans jam on rings to extend young women’s necks.
Victorians ladies wore bustles to accentuate their forbidden arses,
girls after the Great War tried to look like breastless boys.

In the West, now, we rip off all their clothes, do Page Threes,
encourage silicone boob jobs, do a lot of heavy panting,
then abruptly slap people into prison for sexual harrassment
like nudging shoving penguins on the edge of an ice floe.

It’s just so repressively stupid. We want to … engage … a few times,
men and women, before we die, not just hormonal teenagers,
but people in their 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and …
however long you can keep the damn thing going!

This thing called physical love.

Enjoyed on the whole, prosey and blunt. A sit up and take notice piece of writing from a male pov that might not be everyone's cup of tea (I'm thinking touchy women here) but works in that it keeps you hooked till the end. However, I'm guessing there may be some who will stop short at line 4, publishers included, which unfortunately limits the poem's chance of success which is crazy really considering the double standards which are applied to many works (lines) of this nature written from the female pov and passed off by their readership as 'humour' or simple observation.

Now to the nits - and they're not many. Verse 1 'help them along' doesn't seem to make sense considering what comes next. Surely the knowledge of what the woman is like comes before the imaginings, so does the truth really 'spring' in hindsight? To the woman, maybe but not to the man. I'd expect line 3 to read more along the lines of 'before returning to the ugly, undeniable truth.'

Capital letter at 'mind'? Typo?

'awful lot' in verse 3, though this may appear pedantic, seems lame.

similarly 'stared down daggers' in verse 5. Cliched.

Too bad she turned back, she was right fuckin ugly,
such a tantalising prospect (Oooh) from the rear.

I love this, not least because it brings back to mind some prose I wrote on the subject and had forgotten about - and, yes, as a member of the fairer(?) sex , I, too, can't help agreeing women's bodies and faces should match and so often don't.

you can be in heaven today and slapped up in jail tomorrow
because your little ickle sweetheart changed her mind.

Indeed. Well written. Like the little ickle.

tinkly, tinkly works well as a follow up. Good use of onomatapoea (sorry spelling's probably all wrong).

slap people into prison

reapeat of 'slap' from previous verse.

The end line, hmm, I wonder if you need something stronger than unforgotten? Constant, contemptuos - along those lines - but harsher in tone.

Completely reprehensible, no doubt, but largely naggingly true. I like it a lot.

I'd love it if you sent it to Myslexia and told us how they liked it.

Cheers

David

Mslexia. Just did a Google.
Yeah, right, they'd fuckin looooove this!!
No prisoners, no excuses ...
(but I did tone it down).
Never know, though.
I mean, why not?

I'm going to speak for the excellent Myselxia (OK - some of the articles are shit) and say that they would not object to it because it's a rant about women but because practically 100% of the poetry they publish in practically every issue is excoriating, insightful, challenging and original.

calico wrote:I'm going to speak for the excellent Myselxia (OK - some of the articles are shit) and say that they would not object to it because it's a rant about women but because practically 100% of the poetry they publish in practically every issue is excoriating, insightful, challenging and original.

That's interesting, Megan - I never really rated their poetry. However, I agree that they'd object to this one on account of quality rather than rant.

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend any devotees of Mslexia.

But is this a rant? I think not. A romp, perhaps. A canter. An enjoyable gallop. Not a rant.

That's interesting, Megan - I never really rated their poetry. However, I agree that they'd object to this one on account of quality rather than rant.

That's either good or bad. Let me guess ...

calico wrote:I'm going to speak for the excellent Myselxia (OK - some of the articles are shit) and say that they would not object to it because it's a rant about women but because practically 100% of the poetry they publish in practically every issue is excoriating, insightful, challenging and original.

So that would be an A grade "A" Level then, as only some of it is shit.

Brendan,
the problem I have is that while you write very well in writing stories, tales, spiffing yarns, history; your lines exceed the blag of the story: You go on too far and that detracts from the money.
Oh to write less and tell more!
This one, like much, is cheeky, interesting, controversial; but too long.
Perhaps write to suit you then condense to suit us.



J.

There was this girl in a shiny blue mini earlier today
and I followed her from the bus up the escalator.

She grabbed her skirt and stared down daggers at me:
God, they are so so aware of our attention and intentions!

Probably the mac gives it away.

Like this a lot. I'm thinking 1st line includes a cliche,drop-dead gorgeous,not sure if that matters, just an observation. I'm wondering if there's scope here for a bit of trimming: Perhaps, for example in 1st stanza and from the imagination springs the seeds of truth seems to unnecessarily substantiate, and I'm wondering if most of the last stanza, & final line are perhaps necessary as they're summing up what's already been implied. Just a thought. Nowt like a bit of pruning, I always say

I had to laugh Ray ... truth is I was looking everywhere (the sky, birds, surrounding buildings) except where she thought. I was on my way to the ATM which was on her way. Some of them have such suspicious minds! That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it!

John, Sid ... Yeah, I get a lot of that.