Companion to the Five in Five

[Homburg]

Angry/bitter is a not a good inspiration for me. I'm not going to edit it, or do anything with it. Better to leave it be and hope that it is out of my system.

 

[Homburg]

T minus 2

I'll just move this to the proper thread...

 

[unpredictablebijou]

pssst - hey hat boy. wrong thread.

I'll join you. I'm up for another five.

bj

 

[Homburg]

pssst - hey hat boy. wrong thread.

I'll join you. I'm up for another five.

bj

Well, fuck. I'll fix that.

 

[Angeline]

I tell my friends
style means nothing to me, yet, inside,
where no one goes,
I long for the days when men wore hats.
Not ball caps
or trucker hats, but real honest to
god fedoras. When
a suit was not something
you wore because you were forced to,
but because you were born to.
When women
wore snazzy dresses and
thigh-highs with the seams
proudly displayed on shapely calves.
When young boys wore short pants
until they were old enough to be
called young men.
When what I am wearing now might,
might!
be acceptable to mow the lawn
on a hot summer's day when
clipped grass tossed about by
the whirling scythes
of my push-mower
might stain my summer-weight
linen pants.

Bring me some tea, honey. It's hot out here.



(Wrote this in time, just didn't get it on the boards in time. Mea culpa, and all that. ETA: Even better, I posted it to the wrong thread. I sucketh mightily.)

Nope. You do not sucketh mightily. You writeth goodly.

Good run. You've got some really good stuff in that thread.

 

[Homburg]

Nope. You do not sucketh mightily. You writeth goodly.

Good run. You've got some really good stuff in that thread.

Thank you

When I wrote that, I saw the speaker in a hazy room, black and white, cigarette in his hands, wearing a sweat-stained linen shirt, suspenders and sharp-creased pants, shoes polished too often, with a snare behind and a smooth cat on a stand-up bass giving it his quiet worth.

And, of course, the hat...


As usual, with me, some treasure, more dross. I'm off to listen to some Royal Crown Revue and maybe smoke a cigar. I count myself humbled by your words, Angeline, as I hold yours in such high esteem.

 

[Angeline]

Thank you

When I wrote that, I saw the speaker in a hazy room, black and white, cigarette in his hands, wearing a sweat-stained linen shirt, suspenders and sharp-creased pants, shoes polished too often, with a snare behind and a smooth cat on a stand-up bass giving it his quiet worth.

And, of course, the hat...


As usual, with me, some treasure, more dross. I'm off to listen to some Royal Crown Revue and maybe smoke a cigar. I count myself humbled by your words, Angeline, as I hold yours in such high esteem.

Thank you for the compliment.

I use the visualization technique a lot when I write. If I let my imagination run wild, I can visualize (and hence write) with the kind of detail that gives strong images.

 

[Homburg]

Thank you for the compliment.

I use the visualization technique a lot when I write. If I let my imagination run wild, I can visualize (and hence write) with the kind of detail that gives strong images.

I tend to enjoy either brilliant imagery, or brilliant lyric.

And I rather enjoyes the 5 in 5 challenge. Surprisingly so.

 

[Homburg]

these two hands are supplicant
palms up on flat thighs
because I am ready
to wait

for what you give me

these eyes are clear
calm water
open and purposeful
in my waiting, in my ask

of you to do

to make use of this pale body
of these bright lips
of this small heat of breath

offered because your need sings
from you like the watersong
of a stream under brown earth

I have lain my head to hear
the trickle of question
and now I offer

the possible answer
my body a prayer

I'm getting that "fingers tapping on the desk" and "heel bouncing on the floor" sort of reaction from this. Very, very... mmmm, yeah.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Thanks, Homburg. I've been really inspired by reading yours and Bijou's. And now with Champagne and RainMan, it's a party!

 

[Homburg]

Thanks, Homburg. I've been really inspired by reading yours and Bijou's. And now with Champagne and RainMan, it's a party!

If anything I wrote helped to inspire that, wow, I'm feeling happy with my writing

 

[TheRainMan]

poetry is an amazing thing.

Pandora just pointed out to me (privately, because she has so much class) that a portion of the poem i posted today in the 5/5 seems, in her words, "racist, frankly."

and damn if she isn't right.


this:

. . . Grandpa died, so did everyone else
who couldn’t pass a piece of paper without picking it up,
who’d weed an untidy yard. Stay still too long
and everything just grows up around you, gets black.

To a teenager’s eyes, the walls of the slums leaned
at malevolent angles, yet I didn’t dream of brownstones . . .


it was totally unintentional, of course -- all of you who know me know that -- but that doesn't change one way the poem could be read --

i was going to take the poem down pronto, but thought an explanation was better -- it's no big task to see the meaning that was intended, anyway.

if anyone gapsed, or was offended, my apologies.

P

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Eep. It isn't class. It's embarrassment. And fear I could be dead wrong.
I also said I liked the rest of the poem, particularly the image of the floating crates.

 

[Tzara]

Eep. It isn't class. It's embarrassment. And fear I could be dead wrong.
I also said I liked the rest of the poem, particularly the image of the floating crates.

Honest comment is always useful, PG. And you can't be "dead wrong," since that was your reaction to reading those lines.

We need more of that around here.

 

[Eluard]

poetry is an amazing thing.

Pandora just pointed out to me (privately, because she has so much class) that a portion of the poem i posted today in the 5/5 seems, in her words, "racist, frankly."

and damn if she isn't right.


this:

. . . Grandpa died, so did everyone else
who couldn’t pass a piece of paper without picking it up,
who’d weed an untidy yard. Stay still too long
and everything just grows up around you, gets black.

To a teenager’s eyes, the walls of the slums leaned
at malevolent angles, yet I didn’t dream of brownstones . . .


it was totally unintentional, of course -- all of you who know me know that -- but that doesn't change one way the poem could be read --

i was going to take the poem down pronto, but thought an explanation was better -- it's no big task to see the meaning that was intended, anyway.

if anyone gapsed, or was offended, my apologies.

P

dammit I hate disagreeing but I feel that I have to do it yet again!

Firstly, let me say that I don't know that I know what "Stay still too long
and everything just grows up around you, gets black" means. (Does it mean, "turns into death" or some such? I'm not sure. Not every American idiom is transparent to me.)

BUT, no matter what it's meaning I don't see how it can be "racist, frankly". Isn't this representing the viewpoint of someone else? The poet is not saying anything in these lines about what he thinks or how he sees the world — it is about someone else, how THEY see things. Someone who may — and here I'm just taking worse case scenario for the purposes of making my point — dislike Blacks. Describing the viewpoint of someone who dislikes Blacks doesn't — surely? — make one racist and doesn't mean that one dislikes Blacks. How could it? If I describe someone who dislikes spoons no one would think that I thereby dislike spoons.

And everyone — even we in the Antipodes — know what a brownstone is!

Sometimes American political correctness can look downright bizarre to foreigners. It's a wine that doesn't travel.

But then, as I say, i really don't know what these lines mean, so I may not be getting something that you can see clearly.

 

[Eluard]

I also said I liked the rest of the poem, particularly the image of the floating crates.

Agree about the floating crates. Great image.

 

[TheRainMan]

. . . no matter what it's meaning I don't see how it can be "racist, frankly". . .

as i said, that was only . . .

. . . one way the poem could be read -- . . .

good to have you back around, El.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

It was this bit that made me uncomfortable.

who’d weed an untidy yard. Stay still too long
and everything just grows up around you, gets black.

To a teenager’s eyes, the walls of the slums leaned
at malevolent angles

Of course, one can say that discomfort is one of the roles of poetry and I agree. What made me uncomfortable was the idea I got from this that if one doesn't weed, if one doesn't take care of one's property, it becomes a slum. I hear my grandmother's voice complaining about blacks moving into the neighborhood making her property values go down and how "those people" don't take care of their yards.

Clearly, the narrator and the poet are not one in the same. I would never say that of a poet here. I did say that the line seemed racist, frankly. I don't mean to be the PC police, but to see if that was what the poet intended and to see if I was getting a proper take on it. It is nice to have that luxury.

 

[Homburg]

and everything just grows up around you, gets black.

This, in context with the rest of the poem, just put me in mind of sooty black stains (from coal smoke and other sources) that used to be prevalent on high-rises in some cities, and just soot and black dust. It never crossed my mind to think of it in a racial context.

Not sure what that says about me.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

This, in context with the rest of the poem, just put me in mind of sooty black stains (from coal smoke and other sources) that used to be prevalent on high-rises in some cities, and just soot and black dust.

Ah, I could see that too.

 

[Eluard]

You up for another 5 PG?

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Sure! After I finish this run tonight.

Start it up, Eluard.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Champagne, lovely to read your poems on the 5/5. This made me laugh.

It's like some sort
of gibberish in poemish
spoken by poemy natives
on the island of poem.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Yay! A Child is in and with a good start, too.

 

[Homburg]

PG, I'm digging on what you've been putting out lately. Nothing substantive to say about it, but I do want you to know that I'm enjoying it =)