Keeping pace in Kendal

[barrie]

I took a short cut last night,
down one of those steep,
narrow lanes that run
like varicous veins through
the surgical-stockinged legs
of this grey town.
I kept pace with destiny
as it trickled alongside in the gutter,
before disappearing down dark drains.

---------------------

Original first two lines were

'Heading home last night,
I took a short cut'

[Minstrel]

Seems you take quite a lot of solitary 'short cuts' through late night passages Eric........mmmmmm.

Another Gud un.

Although not sure about introductory line, do we need to know you were heading home?


Read 'The Moth Signal'. What an innovative way to catch someones attention. Moths are intriguing.

Cheers

[juliadebeauvoir]

Seems you didn't take the scenic route on this one.. Very dark and dismal and trickling down into a spiral. I liked it much, especially the slightly morbid surgical stocking legs (not very sexy, you know). This poem ran like a movie in my head--each scene flowed until the last. Maybe another word for grey but sometimes a color is just a color.

Cheers,
Kimberly

[khansaa]

Heading home last night,
I took a short cut
down one of those steep,
narrow lanes that run
like varicous veins through
the surgical-stockinged legs
of this grey town.
I kept pace with destiny
as it trickled alongside in the gutter,
before disappearing down dark drains.

Hi Barrie,

I agree that the first line is unnecessary.
L3-'one of those', could probably be cut and replaced with a simple 'a' after all we don't know which narrow lanes your poem refers to
L4- varicose spp.
great image btw
L7 grey town is rather cliche Barrie,
L8 destiny is vague, I cannot touch it or feel it, I think this is by far the weakest part in an otherwise good poem, if you could show how you kept pace with destiny then those excellent last lines would really finish a great read.

hope this helped,

best of luck

khansaa

[barrie]

Thanks for the replies.

I sort of anticipated the comments on line one, so I changed it from
'Last night I took a short cut', to its present form because I expected to be asked ' A short cut to (from) where?' So I'll change it again. I should have seen that really - thanks.

Kim, Khansaa - the 'grey town' is a refernce to where I live - It's called 'the auld grey town', or just ' old grey town'. I'll have to remedy that by naming Kendal in the title - maybe that'll clear the lane thing up too
Thanks for the spelling correction - That's my own fault for playing with words; I always call 'varicose veins', 'various veins'.
'Destiny' being vague is part of the theme, you can never say what it is until it's gone.

Thanks everyone.

Here's a link which may help clarify one or two things.

http://www.britainexpress.com/villages/kendal.htm

cheers

Barrie