Re: a comment on Marriage by Dovina	21-Oct-05/11:03 AM
Of course not. We do, however, as a race tend to make commitments we couldn't possibly know if we'll be able to keep, like LOVING someone until we DIE. Over 50% of the Americans who've ever been in married thought they could, and were wrong. I'm committed to love and my own and my wife's happiness, not to commitment itself. If any of those things goes, we've already failed. We will not set ourselves up to fail at pure endurance. What's the romance of that?
Re: a comment on Marriage by Dovina	21-Oct-05/10:46 AM
1) I don't know if that's good or bad. Seriously. 2) Well, obviously neither of us is talking about leaving our partners because they're jerks for an hour. 3) It only took me a year-and-a-half. 4) I wonder what ever happened to 4? 5) I'd agree, with the following caveat: I'd only make commitments I could conceivably or comfortably keep. Most marriages don't fall into that category. That sounds weak, but going into marriage with both of our parents recently divorced, we spent a lot of time asking "If we ever did split up, would we feel that all the commitments we'd made were invalidated? If 'til death do us part' proved untrue, what would we be able to say WAS true?" You're going to call me unromantic. Go ahead. I'm more in love with my wife than ever. We didn't promise to love til death, we promised to love until we didn't love anymore, then get out before it was a travesty of love. That, for me, is romance. 6) "the kind of love must change". Granted. I'd add, the fact that it's love means it will change by itself, not by our will. Who ever manhandled love?
Re: a comment on a fat man on the dock by ay deee	21-Oct-05/10:22 AM
The "the thread the nut tightens" line which Dovina commented on in your last post. I just meant it doesn't fit in but tries desperatle, like Jesus.
Re: a comment on Incommunicado blues (fixed, except for Dovina) by zodiac	21-Oct-05/10:17 AM
I'll keep it if only to teach you to stop stopping at line-ends.
Re: a comment on Incommunicado blues (fixed, except for Dovina) by zodiac	21-Oct-05/10:17 AM
Wild with a homebody bent is surprisingly true. How'd you do that? I don't fear religion, I fear becoming religious only for a language/anchor. That's a big concern for me now; my first six months here I'd say 30-40% of my vocabulary was somehow religious. The hazards of living in a Muslim country, yes, but I thought it was applicable in America, too. I'm constantly surprised - and grateful - I'm still married. The way it works is she's more of an adventurer/homebody than me. One-and-a-half months back in America and she's already moved out to Alaska.
Re: a comment on Marriage by Dovina	21-Oct-05/10:09 AM
1) I used to think that a successful relationship required each party to think the other one was way-better than him/her in practically every category. Now I'm not so sure. If we're only talking about LASTING relationships, I'm REALLY not sure. Not even sure that that kind of relationship exists in the real world. Then you have to add that the servant self-negator gets to think he/she is better than his/her partner for sacrificing him/herself to such a schlub (cf Crystal Lane Swift.) What I can tell you for certain is I've been in an amazing relationship with my now-wife for five years and I'm better than her at not overloading everything I cook with cheese and salt, and cleaning in a quick, superficial way. 2) How often do you think the perfect man abruptly changes into a jerk? Really. That was the serious part of this point. The not serious part is absolute power corrupts absolutely; maybe if you weren't such a servant and self-negator... 3) I think I got the idea early in our correspondence that you were a lot more iconoclastic than you actually are. You can probably tell from the way I'm constantly confounded by your traditionalism. I don't mean that as an insult to traditionalism, I just mean I'd have been talking to you differently if I'd known. 5) On that note - seriously, why would your commitment hold if you didn't find your man desirable? (Please assume that by 'undesirable' we both mean 'over an extended period of time without exception'.) Would you say the same thing if there weren't kids/property in the equation? 6) FROM ZODIAC'S AND MRS ZODIAC'S WEDDING CEREMONY: "Here, today, you stand side by side, excited and exultant, looking out into the future. It’s not clear what that will be exactly. You don’t know where you’ll be taken, or what trials, adventures, and new experiences await you. But you believe that you will be together, looking back across ten, twenty, or seventy years at yourselves, standing here on this day. What you believe, no sacrament or oath can make more real or permanent than the ones you have already made, the simple commitments you have chosen to live by... You are united by a connection that is strong because it is flexible. It endures because it is made anew each day of your free choosing. Your love is not the kind that is blind and unknowing; it is open-eyed and grown out of knowledge and desire to know more... You will settle for nothing, but instead will always pursue your dreams and each other’s. You will be open to new dreams, new goals, and new ideas. You will travel."
Re: Leg by jessicazee	21-Oct-05/9:38 AM
Wow, sexy. Now I'm all like, (chugachugachugachugachugachugachugachugachugachuga) - She's got legs... (chugachugachugachugachugachugachugachugachugachuga) ...and she kno-ows how to use them...
Re: The Marble Me by PsydewaysTears	21-Oct-05/9:35 AM
I thought from the title this was going to be awful. Then the goth-pop came in and I saw the marble was actually a, you know, shooting marble. Ace. -10-
Re: How often? by little_big_nose	21-Oct-05/9:33 AM
Have you ever heard of the question mark? If you're going to be asking questions, it's the only way to go.
Re: a comment on Marriage by Dovina	21-Oct-05/9:19 AM
Have you gone momentarily epileptic? I didn't say anything about marriage depending on anything except that each party in the marriage know and agree to both parties' roles. If YOU, DOVINA, were to agree to be a servant and self-negator, YOU, DOVINA, would find plenty of guys who'd agree to be masters and self-centered. I personally would rather die than have it that way, but I think it can make a lasting marriage. As lasting as any other kind.
Re: a fat man on the dock by ay deee	20-Oct-05/2:33 AM
Again, a good poem, minus the line that tries to fit in everywhere and never quite succeeds. That line is Jesus, we're mere mortals.
Re: final act by <~>	20-Oct-05/2:30 AM
I like everything except the word "criminal". I'm foggy on the details, but isn't self-mutilation/suicide actually illegal? So it really IS criminal, not just metaphorically so. If it's not illegal, it still doesn't seem like the best word. I mean, hari-kari (or hari-kari-type mutilation) isn't the first thing that strikes me when I think of the word "criminal". I'd like to see it keep with the street performance theme with a more mutilation-specific or street-performance-specific word. Catburglar fits with "stealing self" but doesn't fit with suicide. Escape artist, maybe? What about those Indian performers? They do stuff like this. Don't let my rambling detract from the fact that I loved reading this. -10-
Re: The nymph steals the farm-son by <~>	19-Oct-05/10:32 AM
I love "turn wooden on the lathe of fact", the best image on poemranker in months and the lynchpin, I think, of this poem. In the original you turned wooden, right? I think that would be better. The rest loses me. I don't know what distinction you're making between November and December (or heart and breast), and can't feel the metaphor of ghosts (which are essentially metaphors, no?) And are you lathing things into firewood? How odd.
Re: a comment on Incommunicado blues (fixed, except for Dovina) by zodiac	19-Oct-05/9:21 AM
At that point it rhymed. Maybe. You're right, I'm only talking about actual tongues dancing around inside of mouths. Feel free to use it, but there's the possibility I'm using it from someone else, I'm not sure. If I am, it's Don Delillo in The Names. The last part is supposed to be another reason for falling into religion. It's not worded right and I don't know yet how to fix it. Suggestions?
Re: a comment on Farm animals by INTRANSIT	19-Oct-05/9:16 AM
My cents: I think there are three characters here, (1) INTRANSIT, (2) his love, and (3) children or other products of love, such as puppies or a fixer-upper bungalow.
Re: a comment on Marriage by Dovina	19-Oct-05/9:14 AM
As a married, and several-times almost-married, I honestly believe you'll eat those words. Best-case scenario, you stand to not recognize yourself in all this posturing when you do in fact find him.
Re: a comment on Marriage by Dovina	19-Oct-05/9:11 AM
If it were me, I'd lay aside the legal, the dogma, the financial hopes, and the idea of marriage as anything more than romantic notions plus nifty benefits like tax breaks. I would forgive, but I wouldn't overlook wrong. I'd realize there's a point where my marriage couldn't survive if I didn't occasionally raise my desires over hers. I wouldn't call anyone else's marriage fleeting and doomed, for fear of being immediately stricken with a bright bolt of ironic comeuppance. Oh, right. It IS me. And all that aside, I'll stick with my original proposal: The only necessity for a nonfleeting nondoomed marriage is that both parties understand and agree to their respective roles. Agree to be servant and self-negator, I'm sure you'll find plenty of guys who'll agree to be masters and self-centered.
Re: Farm animals by INTRANSIT	19-Oct-05/3:18 AM
I don't totally get this yet, but the language and images are amazing. Happy loving.
Re: a comment on Farm animals by INTRANSIT	19-Oct-05/3:17 AM
Here and in a lot of places cheap, softwood butcher blocks chip. I think higher quality ones get thousands of extremely shallow cuts across the top and need to be sanded or planed to a new smooth surface.
Re: Marriage by Dovina	19-Oct-05/3:14 AM
Spoken like someone not married.