Holiday

[Babbit]

Melbourne balm.
Midori spliced between cerebellar folds.
We were untouchable, do you remember?
Beloved; almost.
I forgave your perfection, grew to admire it.
Bare feet.
The mind retches back drunken moments.
Sand-worn soles and sun-weathered arms.
Blue ribbon.
I grew tolerant to second place, grew to feel safe there.
Is it possible to let someone win, or was your title justified?
Foreign porcelain dolls.
We danced for them, they paid us in cocktails.
Always a flip-flop behind where your mind placed you in my soul,
And I was happy.
Watching the sink.
Hemispheres change in time.
Copper currency rosining Howard’s dollars, xanthochromic anti-clockwise swirl.
When did my values invert?
Vodka memories.
Miniature vessels tremble with turbulence,
Moncrieff with no remaining entourage.
Your stiletto steps
Trick the world into loving you, needing you.
I believed.
Forgave your perfection, admired your charm.
Expected the dull ache of sobriety to be faced alone.

[David]

Well, welcome, and well done. This is very good. Made me work hard too - I don't usually have too google so many references on the first reading of a poem. (Thinks: is this a good thing? Not sure. Not necessarily a bad thing. But ...)

Some remain unamenable, even after googling - Midori, for example ... what, exactly?

Always a flip-flop behind where your mind placed you in my soul - I could not make sense of that line at all.

It's very terse, very punchy - practically no enjambement - works well. Very. (Name that fictional character.)

But ... beginner? On yer bike! (Straight to the Experienced section next time.)

Excellent first offering. I hope there'll be more.

David

[Babbit]

Thank you so very much!
Midori is a green, rather disgusting looking spirit that is mixed to make green, rather disgusting looking cocktails... and the line with the flip-flop is clumsy now I re-read it, possibly could have done without that.
I am really touched at your comments and an upgrade - yay!
Am promptly going to search out your works

[David]

Hi Babbit - Kate? - it is a really good poem, but I suppose I should point out that I'm not actually a moderator, so I can't personally authorise an upgrade ... but I'll fight anyone who disagrees - come one, come all! - so that's just as good. Isn't it?

In fact, I see the mods here are Geoff, Kim, Dave and (sigh) Dave again, good lovely gentle people all, so I'm sure they'll agree with me anyway.

But seriously, you're not really a beginner, are you?

And don't you be feelin' obliged to be sayin' somethin' nice about me own stuff. That's not how it has to work at all. Good hard knocks here, given and received. Ah well. I'll leave it to you.

Cheers

David

[barrie]

David's right - Post in the Experienced section in future.

I remember going to my local when there was a Midori promotion going on - It tasted foul. Looks good 'spliced between cerebellar folds' though - good 'tipsy' image.

It's written as if you were catching bursts of memories and writing them down - There's no real flow from one line to the next, it's a staccato poem that punches out it's lines - very effective.

I was impressed with your comparison of inverted values with the reversal of the plughole swirl - good one.

Needs a few reads to do it justice - to let things sink in. 'I grew tolerant to second place', this gave me the impression that there was someone else in the relationship on the first read (maybe just me being thick).

Impressive first post.

Barrie

[Bombadil]

Yes Kate. Move to experienced.

[kozmikdave]

Done!

Nice work.

Cheers
Dave

[Wabznasm]

Welcome to the forum.

I just want to echo: great first post.

I'm having difficulty telling between frivolous lines and important lines. But I think that's the charm of this, it doesn't really create that boundary.

I am often a little in fear of, as David puts it, staccato poems. It seems they plague the 'emo-poetic'. Short sharp stabs where everything is powerful, everthing is blamed, and images are loose. Often, and this is my opinion, single sentence/line poems are signs of... well, bad writers. But you pull it off. And that's what is so pleasing about this poem. I think the disconnected retelling works here, vodka memories indeed.

A few things I particularly liked:

The inversion of a cliche: I forgave your perfection, grew to admire it.

opper currency rosining Howard’s dollars, xanthochromic anti-clockwise swirl. - oof! Is that your degree I detect? Bloody marvellous line.

Foreign porcelain dolls.
We danced for them, they paid us in cocktails. - great use of combining imagery. This is the finest part of the poem in my opinion. It makes the useless feel connected.

A few personal things that probably won't matter:

This atomised story telling is a bit easy in my eyes. I don't know. I just can't help but think it's simpler to tell a quickly changing story like this than it is to try and involve these jumps to the mind's world in a stricter, more conventional narrative. Dislocated memories often strike me as experimental. This just misses that for me. It makes the memories too normal, too easy to change time and place. This is more of a cut-up than it is a deft manipulation of past and present. I'm sure you'll soon learn that a deft manipulation of past and present really zips up my poetic jumper, sits me by a warm, familiar fire and presses play on a omnibus of Spaghetti Westerns. I bloody love it.

Beloved; almost. - I'm not a fan of this line. The semi-colon just doesn't do it.

Blue ribbon. - everything in this poem is engorged in significance. But I don't think 'blue ribbon' is. Too redundant by itself.

Always a flip-flop behind where your mind placed you in my soul, made me re-read quite a bit. So 'your' mind places itself and the body it inhabits in the narrator's soul? Wouldn't 'you placed yourself in my soul' be better? Or something more 'poetic': 'your mind led your whole self to my soul'?. I'm not a massive supporter of 'soul', especially in semi-love poetry, though.

Your stiletto steps
Trick the world into loving you, needing you. I don't know if this is a strength or a problem, but I'm assuming the 'You' has changed to a different person? Another seducer is what I'm guessing, taking the first 'You' away from the narrator...
If so, then Forgave your perfection, admired your charm. great repetition here. Good change of subject.

A solid ending. But possibly too predictable?

Anyway, you should definitely post the rest of your stuff in Experienced. This is solid, powerful writing.

Oh and welcome to the forum. From the looks of your recent posts you seem a great and active addition to PG.

Dave

[oranggunung]

Welcome to the forum.

I'm not going to effuse as much as others - we're all different after all (see Life of Brian for details).


Copper currency rosining Howard’s dollars, xanthochromic anti-clockwise swirl.

A dense line, but I have an idea.

rosin – to supply with liquor

copper currency – spending a penny?

xanthochromic anti-clockwise swirl – a flushing toilet?


I’m afraid I find this fractured style difficult to cope with. I appreciate there’s good writing here, but I can’t admire the whole. What’s the opposite of gestalt? A curate’s egg?


og

[Dagdason]

Babbit - I did enjoy the cryptic aspect of fractured moments drawn in what seemed to be a mind atempting to remember a drunken moment or one that was recovering from one.

But then after the second reading I recognized a person attempting to reconcile love lost and admiration grown stale. I enjoyed the means by which you painted the feelings, describing them with dulled senses. It seems as if the experience was profound but disfunctional, as so many can be.

This also made me think and the more I reread the more I sought to put my mind in that state to relfect upon my own similar experiences. You brought forward alot of feelings and the structure helped to sustain the feeling, at least in my own mind.

Take what I say with a grain of salt; experienced I am not, this being my first critique on this forum. So most of my critiques will be emo-based, please bear this in mind, since I read poetry from the emo-side of my brain.

Dagdason

[beautifulloser]

You had my brain jolting there, excellent read. Thank you.