Re: The Disease Of The Dancing Cats by Mister Cakes	8-Feb-05/3:50 PM
There's apparently cats who will dance When at dark they at last have the chance Blah blah blah yadda yadda For us to care, dude, you've gotta The conceit with some PO'TRY enhance.
Re: Reverse Pschology by Mister Cakes	8-Feb-05/4:04 PM
Here's a pome that's naught more than an anagram Of a word with a y that's gone on the lam I assume you've some meaning In there for the gleaning But if none can construe it, who gives a damne?
Re: Camera Obscura by Fear of Garbage	8-Feb-05/5:00 PM
Christ, this is a good fucking poem. I read it a year ago, and it was still in my head...so I came looking for it. And it's still gold.
Re: Church of Puerto Vallarta by James Rykelangeli	13-Apr-05/2:38 PM
I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this. It does need lots and lots of tightening up, particularly in the last half; given your posting history I'm sure you already realize that and intend to do so. In the first third you've got lots of great syncopation in the language which you kind of ease up on later, which is disappointing. The repeated images are great, but the structure of the repetition is disappointing in it's randomness. Perhaps consider structuring the repetitions to a greater degree, as a scaffolding for the stream of consciousness. The astute reader will realize they're being set up for the final repetition; make that sense of set up even stronger. jars: "if they’ve got them but a beer otherwise," -- it's an aside, so it needs to be punctuated as an aside "to that Mexican fisherman" -- somehow the specificity jars for me, coming as it does in the midst of a riot of images jumbled together in a way that is evocatively latin. Just say "a" fisherman. You're going to personify him later anyway. The next part of this sentence is difficult to parse, interrupting the flow. I dunno...perhaps "who upon seeing [or, who when he saw] the white parachute of the first parasailer he had ever seen mistook it,..." The final clause of this sentence rocks. It's just damn good, because of it's synergy with the image of urchins hanging from the church bell rope. Why don't you break after it? And then break again after "But his boat was heading south." Just a suggestion -- type it out that way and see how it looks to you. "a complementary touch of silver to the plastic treasure chest," blech. "a flash of silver complementing the plastic treasure chest" or "a touch of silver for the plastic treasure chest" or "a complementary flash of silver FOR the plastic treasure chest" "...its bed, the fishing village..." jars because the second part seems like an independent clause at first glance. "it's bed in...", or "...to it's bed, to the..." "to have its light scattered..." "to have" seems unnecessary. Then I felt the need for more repetition: "the moon on which he does not focus his eyes directly" "parasailers rather than to fisherman" -- the "rather" is unnecessary & jarring "And if you don’t focus or notice the three-dimensional contours..." hard to parse. Either a comma after focus, or repeating "don't" would fix it. "...left for a really cheap room..." really is REALLY jarring. try "dirt" or something or just no extra adjective at all, it's unnecessary. The beginning image repeated at the end is necessary & perfect, but its raison d'etre is perhaps a little weak. "...as time itself issued..." blah. Why not bring back a boy hanging from a rope here, ringing the bells -- keep it concrete...underlying meaning is abundantly present throughout the poem, no need for overt abstractions.
Re: Grasping Smoke by Luzr	14-Apr-05/3:39 PM
I have a question for you: did she 10 every single one of your pomes the instant it appeared? And did that like totally turn you off? That would turn me off so hard that by the tenth ten I doubt I would even be able to make eye contact any more. That said, this is pretty decent pome, even though I'm a rabid anti-smoker. Though I do occasionally imbibe smoke in it's more expensive liquid form.
Re: THE EPIC OF THE -- TRANSEXUAL -- FROG by Sashaclese	15-Apr-05/4:13 AM
Clearly the work of a master, a ribald genius to rival the very originator of the English Literature. I respectfully doff my head covering in your general direction, sirrah.
Re: Butterfly Plague by zodiac	15-Apr-05/4:17 AM
Muted, soft, grey and lovely; with a flash of exhilaration at the end. Wonderful.
Re: Suicide I by disturbedone182	15-Apr-05/8:35 AM
Don't worry, I personally volunteer to have a fuck when you're gone. Hey -- one excuse to have a fuck is as good as another.
Re: Thanks again by Everyone	16-Apr-05/11:14 AM
snicker
Re: Holding on for Jesus by Everyone	17-Apr-05/10:55 AM
A perfectly laid trap, neatly snaring the obvious prey. In 9 minutes, lolololol. I doff my fez & scratch my bald spot to you sir.
Re: Swans by Alizarin_Crimson	18-Apr-05/2:46 PM
I actually really like the more more more -- it makes the whole pome for me. Because with the "they too must make their honest living" you wander dangerously close to hallmark/maudlin and the more more more yanks the reader back violently from that precipice.
Re: 15 Minute poem by Damien	18-Apr-05/2:51 PM
Well, even though your grammar's terrible, you do certainly know how to rhyme. Many of the lines not only rhyme on the ends but have rhymes inside them! With all the breathtaking double rhymes I was getting my hopes up for a triple rhyme before the end...but perhaps you'll pull that off in your next opus.
regarding some deleted poem...	18-Apr-05/3:42 PM
Something about this catches my attention. It has a quaintness that I like. this: "Absorb and then cannot be found" is not understandable english. Do you mean, "until they are absorbed and cannot be found"? "I could build them in pots" might better be "or I could build them up in pots", then it would make more sense. The "or" is important -- so that you're listing two alternative ways you could deal with the crushed roses, rather than mixing together two contradictory actions as though they were one. there's something missing between "one by one" and "drop by drop" one by one refers to the roses, and drop by drop presumably to honey. So you need to tell us how we get to the honey from the roses collected into pots.
Re: Gaping Hole by sonawrote	19-Apr-05/4:27 AM
I've heard there are exercises/meditations you can do that will cause the gaping hole to gradually tighten back up again. That way it's nice and snug when someone new comes along.
Re: My Dumb Choice...YOU by sonawrote	19-Apr-05/4:37 AM
Ok, please explain this c -> * for me. You're choosing to use the word fuck in something you wrote. You're posting it on a board that has absolutely no censorship, ever. WHAT. is. the. purpose. of spelling it fu*k instead of fuck? What does it accomplish? what does it do for you? I'm genuinely curious. Is there something really really wrong or politically incorrect with the letter c, that I'm just not aware of?
Re: A new leaf by Damien	21-Apr-05/6:42 AM
This poem is brilliant. Of course, you need to have read http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?id=123683, and seen the little interplay of comments twixt sonawrote & damien to fully appreciate it as an extended double entendre.
Re: the solitary tree by bamf909	22-Apr-05/3:40 PM
God, I totally misread this. I thought it was about someone bravely continuing to practice autoerotica in a wheat field even after a bad experience with a puritanical neighbour and their genital shocking taser gun. Though if you really think about it, that is more or less exactly what you've described in your expository comment.
Re: Poets are dead! by Prince of Void	23-Apr-05/6:26 AM
Listen, this is how pathos works: exaggeration kills it. Big giant concepts kill it. Feel desolate? describing the world as a vast empire of desolation will not make us relate to your sense desolation. We can look around and see for ourselves that the world is not a stygian yard of nightmares; everything is not dead; nothingness does not have claws (how can nothingness have claws? nothingness is nothingness. Re-read Sartre and try to actually understand him this time instead of inanely using some of the words he uses). So when you describe the entire universe as somehow for some reason having as it's sole purpose the mirroring of your particular bad mood or bout of depression WE DON'T BUY IT. Little details create pathos. Describe the one little mournful detail in a generally indifferent world of sunny days and rainy days that occur at random; celebrations, wars, funerals, weddings, parties & columbus high school massacres that all occur at random with absolutely no regard for the psychological state of one teenager (I truly truly hope you are still a teenager) who's obsessed with darkness and paints his fingernails black. That one little detail that's personal is what will capture our attention, make us relate to your sense of desolation. You are not goth. Fear of Garbage is goth -- good goth. The difference between you and her is neatly captured in the difference in your nicknames. Yours: there's only one Prince of Darkness, or Prince of the Void. You are not him. You're a depressed teenager. A bazillion other depressed teenagers have already used your nickname in a bazillion dungeons & dragons game. It's so utterly non-original that you'd have seemed quirkier and more alienated if you nicknamed yourself Bob. Hers: Fear of Garbage, abbreviated to F.o.G. It's clever, and unique. It refers to the character of her writing on multiple levels -- both in its full & acronym form. And it manages to be at least as instantly recognizeable as goth as "Prince of Void" but without seeming pathetically absurd. If you intended this pome as a description of the last level of Diablo III then forgive me, I suppose it works reasonably well in that role. Though there's no mention of those things that eat corpses and then spit them at you. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual world that we actually live in. Not even metaphorically.
Re: All You Need Is Gloves by -=DIABETES=-	24-Apr-05/8:30 AM
It should be "all you need ARE gloves", and "gloves ARE all you need". Apart from that, it's kind of catchy. In fact, I could even imagine it being set to some kind of pop tune and working as a lyric.
Re: California Bound by Dovina	25-Sep-07/9:08 PM
this scans like its writer's on crack or worse -- is a blundering hack if you took off your gown and got down with the clown you'd make up for your wordsmithing lack