Poetry Forum

Lovers.tif

He uploaded their pictures;
stripped her of encryption.

Jpegs compressing her trust
into downloadable shame.

The black box across his eyes
fails to hide pixelated morals.

Her hexadecimal flesh tones
wait for web-spiders.



________________________
Original:

He uploaded her secrets.
Stripped her of encryption.
A Jpeg compression of trust,
in hexadecimal flesh tones.
The black box across his eyes
fails to hide his pixilated morals.

On the web
she waits for spiders.

Clever - I like it

'The black box across his eyes
fails to hide his pixilated morals.'

Can't find anything to pick at here, except - Don't show disrespect for spiders - We're not all the same you know!

Arachno

Good one

Loading each line with a tech reference / pun makes this a bit laboured for me, a bludgeon where a thrust would be better. Nice idea; I'd prefer to see it toned-down (or expanded) a bit.

8

Like Barrie, I appreciate the clever language here. I’m not sure I understand the story though. Is ‘she’ an internet vigilante and ‘he’ an internet criminal?

As I read it, jpeg is an awkward word within the flow. If this were something more generic, would that spoil the idea?

The punctuation of the first section doesn’t feel right. I can see the first line ending in a semi-colon and the third line not needing a full stop. Maybe even a hyphen at the end of the second line. Perhaps that wasn’t the emphasis you intended.

I’m not sure you need the second ‘his’. It seems to read just as well without.

Is the use of ‘pixilated’ here meant to mean “Behaving as if mentally unbalanced; very eccentric”, or did you mean 'pixelated'? I’d guess at the former, by the construction of the poem, but just thought I’d check.

It also looks like the split between the two sections is in the wrong place. Shouldn’t it come after ‘flesh tones’? Isn’t there a change of focus there? Perhaps there should be three sections.

One last thought. Why does she wait for spiders? Another trick of language, clearly, but rather an obvious one don’t you think?

A linguistically accomplished, if slightly frustrating, piece imho.


og

Thanks for the advice oranggunung and everyone else. I tried to make it a bit clearer but not sure whether it's worse now?

I did mean pixelated, bit of a typo there

It was supposed to be about the type of man who posts naked pictures of ex-girlfriends, or photos taken during sex of them, on the internet, usually with a claim that the ex ran off with their best friend/father/brother/priest....

The spiders line might have been a little forced but it was a reference to the programs that internet search engines use to find images and documents, which, are called web-spiders or crawlers. Barrie I have nothing against real spiders.

F8

Compressing her trust into
Downloadable jpeg shame.

???

It's a thought.

I almost missed this one, F8 - good to see you around again.

I like way you have used tech-speke in this.
For me "web-crawling" in this context would also call up images of "kerb crawlers" going online to look at the pictures.
But then again, Barrie might get annoyed if you ditch the spiders.
"web-crawling spiders" perhaps?

Nice one
Geoff

much prefer the re-draft. The techy language isperfect for the topic. I'd disagree with the bludgeon comment, the poem is short enough for it to remain fresh and interesting.
payback 21rst century style. Ouch!

thanks for posting

benjy

a clever new title


og

I too much prefer the new version. The structure is tight and each line delivers to me an image that contributes to the theme.

I do however like the line "stripped her of encryption" with its internal half rhyme and imagery and wonder if it would make a better second line than "in revenge for her leaving". The act of stripping her of encryption delivers the meassage that this is an act of revenge.

Elphin beat me to it there - I agree, stripped of encryption is a far better line. Shame on you for cutting it!

Barrie

Thanks for the advice. I agree the second line was weak so have made the suggested changes, I wanted to keep the stripped line anyway but couldn't work out how, but this still seems to work.
Fig8

Ha ha,

Clever title.