Re: Taste Ghazni by eliastemplar	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/10:07 AM
incense, burqas. Otherwise, good. How's the kebab these days?
Re: Night song of Pattaya by Caducus	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/10:04 AM
"Masterpieces" seems an extremely poor word choice. Not only does it add nothing of significance to "painted", but "painted" doesn't add anything significant to it. They're not redundant, but they're the closest thing. And aren't these kids much more comparable to bagatelle or objets d'art, something cheap, mass-produced, and marketed for the poor unaesthetic masses? Even better: painted-tin Virgin icons!!!
Re: Due Consideration by Dovina	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:51 AM
Well, at least ignoring reason ignores any ways of determining whether you're better off unreasonable except the unreasonable ones.
Re: a comment on Us Sinners by BrandonW	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:49 AM
You still don't get it. When I use the word "trump" I don't mean "to trounce someone, as in bridge or cribbage or whatever". I mean "to make a trumpeting sound with one's buttocks in the interest of escape." The confusion might arise from the fact that the -=Dark_Angel=-,P.I. who originally used trump on poemranker meant the second meaning, while the -=Dark_Angel=- you're talking uses the first. The original context of trump on this particular page is the original, negative, poemranker meaning. I never intend to trump. When I do, I almost always admit it. For example: "I don't believe you. Sorry, I'm well-aware this is the comment-equivalent of a spaz." 1. I considered using lines from your poems to argue that you assume Christian-God, but then I thought, what the hell? For one, the facile (and totally correct) response is going to be that your poems don't necessarily reflect your assumptions, and besides your poems are too vague in most cases to pin them down to Christianity (the one that's a plagiarized psalm included). And for two, this is an open dialogue, right? Why don't I just ask you? I've noticed Islam, Judaism, and African animism (at least) entirely lack the following concept: Whatever you do for the least of my people, you do for God/the good of the whole. Keeping in mind that responding positively does not "pin you down as Christian" (you could be Buddhist or Confuscist, at least), how do you respond to the aboveposted concept? That's a start. 2. Having by now researched or personally experienced all the world's major religions, I've never heard anyone but a Christian say something like 'There either is a God, or there isn't'. That's nowhere near conclusive, but I'm not trying to trounce on you, I'm running an idea past you. Moreover, I'd say that only Christianity at present coexists-with/allows/encourages the kind of critical inquiry required for a person to think 'There either is a God, or there isn't.' Those are my experiences anyway. I'd be interested in hearing yours.
Re: a comment on Beneath the Willow Tree by cyan9	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:25 AM
I'm young enough to accept. Actually, I pretty much have; at least, I've wasted the last year-and-a-half of my life doing good deeds in an Arabic backwater. And I don't even have the certainty of saving Arabs from extinction.
Re: a comment on Beneath the Willow Tree by cyan9	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:23 AM
The comment's deleted. I got what you meant. The most common comment on poemranker is some variation on "I know exactly the feeling" or "I've had this same experience" - the commenter praising himself, rather than the poem.
Re: a comment on Random Sandwich, or, The Scavenger's Chocolate Wrapper by impert&ent	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:21 AM
I got two. -10-
Re: a comment on Love letter by zodiac	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:20 AM
During a brief stint teaching at an adult high school, I helped a guy with pretty bad dyslexia get his G.E.D., including getting him through Algebra and Geometry. That's still one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
Re: Night song of Pattaya by Caducus	Caducus 172.203.50.222	21-Nov-05/9:19 AM
Grey as kerbs - grey upon grey, plinths for statues frozen in time commemorating nothing but filth.
Re: a comment on Night song of Pattaya by Caducus	Caducus 172.203.50.222	21-Nov-05/9:17 AM
Your're there. Child prostitution and the occasional murder and cover up. Noone their cares though so covering up the invisible is ironic. As usual I'm in a happy mood lol.
Re: Amber's Witness by cyan9	zodiac 217.144.7.195	21-Nov-05/9:15 AM
My one suggestion is to avoid overloading your poem with adjective phrases (ie, "dwelling in the rust", "injecting the pathway", "ascending to the fire", etc.) Change almost all of them to other formulations, give it some grammatical variety. I like that you use tons of great verbs in your poems - one of the great weaknesses of this site's users is verblessness - but by making them all -ing, you make them a lot more passive than they should be. Off the top of my head, I'd say make the first line "It dwells in rust that gilds the woodland floor" and go from there. No, that's not the best possible way to phrase that line, but it's heading in the right direction, and this isn't my poem to edit, anyway. Suggestion #2: Consider dropping about half of the "the"s.
Re: Night song of Pattaya by Caducus	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	21-Nov-05/8:24 AM
I keep getting torn between the image of veiled sculptures and young hookers and "grey as kerbs" has got me totally stumped. Am I even close?
Re: a comment on Amber's Witness by cyan9	cyan9 217.40.63.105	21-Nov-05/7:48 AM
It would definately be more provokative, thats for sure. Why not go the whole hog and go for "A pulse for autumn's sprogging."
Re: a comment on Sonata for Robin and Poet by Dovina	cyan9 217.40.63.105	21-Nov-05/7:46 AM
Alternatively, let the nasty mut go free into the wilderness where it belongs, replacing it with a spanking new poodle that follows you round and people tell you how cute it is.... Allright, maybe I should leave them (it allows people to pick up on your faults and give better feedback, rather than saying "nice write"); but once they are off the recent list then nobody really looks at them anyway, so the temptation rather than to see them go bad and lonely is to cover them up with a new poem, so that at least nobody sees them after they've gone bad.
Re: a comment on Us Sinners by BrandonW	Dovina 209.247.222.97	21-Nov-05/6:45 AM
You still don't get it. You seem to care most care about trumping, while I usually don't care. We could discuss those two topics you posed if your intent were not simply to trump. 1. "when you or I assume God, we almost always assume Christian God." 2. "'There either is God, or there isn't' is a very Christian-God-minded thing to say." There seems little point in arguing just to win, when so much can be learned through dialog of parties who want to extend their understandings, and all the more so when they hold widely differing views.
Re: Due Consideration by Dovina	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	21-Nov-05/6:37 AM
Burp -by ALChemy Belching out my songs of love and philosophy I hold my breath to kill the beast I feed upon It's meat is rough but not enough to discourage me And now I've said it all and now I've done it all and now I've had it all I ate it up all gone One wonders how many millions read the biting comments listed under many of the poems posted here and think "Nope, no frickin way I putting my stuff up there to get lambasted like that." Maybe they should read this poem first for confidence.
Re: a comment on Sonata for Robin and Poet by Dovina	Dovina 209.247.222.97	21-Nov-05/6:26 AM
If I deleted every poem that someone said sucks, you can name one that I'd delete, and I can name a lot more. I think it's better to leave a nasty dog alone. Who knows, in a few months, someone might change his mind and take the mut home. It's happened.
Re: Taste Ghazni by eliastemplar	ALChemy 24.74.101.159	21-Nov-05/6:13 AM
Who would have guessed such colorful rugs and shawls could have come from such a dull looking place.
Re: a comment on Beneath the Willow Tree by cyan9	cyan9 217.40.63.105	21-Nov-05/4:27 AM
This to me is similar to the opening scene of Saw 2: Guy has option to save his own life by cutting out a key that has been surgically emplanted behind his eye, he must do this with a scalpel before the timer ends. Guy cant do it. Guy dies. I think with enougth peer pressure I could just about be able to do it, as long as I could communicate and have some kind of interaction with the world; I would also need to believe that I would be judged on this action as well, otherwise I would buckle to my own selfish desires and would fail. I believe it to be the right and just way, and that animals may be able to have the same worth as humans, and I'd definately do it for humans, as long as they kept me entertained. Its interesting that this follows on well from the last comments. How do you answer by the way?
Re: a comment on Random Sandwich, or, The Scavenger's Chocolate Wrapper by impert&ent	impert&ent 82.46.140.179	21-Nov-05/3:54 AM
How true. But it wasn't in the list of thirteen that showed up in my RSS reader. Maybe I should make up for it by having a collage poem of zeroes.