Re: a comment on Trying to get signed? by Damien	15-Apr-05/9:23 AM
Stephen, I've always tried my best to make sense, but it's difficult for me. You've never ever shown me the same level of encouragement and support you show the younger, prettier boys, and this frustrates me sometimes to tears. If I'm bitter it's only because of my underlying yearnings.
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: 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: 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: a comment on Trying to get signed? by Damien	15-Apr-05/4:01 AM
I see you're on the prowl for a new pair of jodphurs to soil.
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	14-Apr-05/5:51 PM
Ok, that white dude is definitely subjugated. Is that how you earned your wheelchair?
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: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	14-Apr-05/3:26 PM
Actually I'm even somewhat stricter than that in where I set the O.S.T. and consider whinging while being forced to eat from a dog bowl on all fours acceptable only if it is done prettily, with appropriately respectful eye contact. I hadn't thought of tophats...interesting. It might be quite cute.
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: a comment on Utensils of creation by Damien	13-Apr-05/1:46 PM
"why don't you try constructive critisism without trying to make sense" comedy gold, right there. I hope you realize you're being a grammar nazi nazi. Or is that meta-grammar-nazi? grammar nazi squared? Since you've clearly never asked yourself this question, let me ask you: what would you say distinguishes "language" from, for example, some series of grunts and hoots a group of baboons might make when another baboon flashes their bright red ass at them (as they are wont to do)? That's right...rules. Maybe you would feel more comfortable hanging out on baboonpoetryranker.com. You can express your feelings there, with any old series of grunts and hoots, (or more to the point, any old strung together series of incomplete phrases and disjointed aphorisms) and without putting any effort into making your pomes intelligible. (I apologize for my rampant primatism)
Re: a comment on Middle-Aged White Woman by Dovina	13-Apr-05/1:35 PM
I personally would like to suggest that although white people should not let themselves be subjugated in the interests of fairness, they might want to consider having the decency to not whine and whinge about some instance of "subjugation" that happens to transpire when said "subjugation" is utterly laughably trivial in comparison to the sorts of historical and ongoing subjugation for which the word subjugation ought to be reserved.
Re: a comment on Labeled Retarded by Beyond_Dreams	27-Mar-05/2:24 PM
Your premise is: these people are capable and worthy of love and friendship, therefore they are not retarded. Think about the presupposition of your premise. The presupposition of your premise is that retarded people AREN'T capable and worthy of love, affection, and friendship. This is bullshit. (in case you don't follow the logic: let R represent "retarded". let C represent "capable and worthy of love and friendship". You say "C implies ~R": C -> ~R ~C | ~R ~R | ~C R -> ~C C -> ~R |- R -> ~C Q.E.D. your poem presupposes that retarded people are not capable and worthy of love and friendship. But retarded people CAN love and ARE worthy of being loved. Therefore the premise of your pome is incorrect. Retarded people are labeled retarded because they are retarded. To treat them like average people -- ie, to hold them to the same standards of behaviour as ordinary people -- would be cruel and unjust. If you had a roommate who, intellectually & developmentally, was an average adult and had all the capabilities of an average adult, but behaved like a retarded person, you would kick them the fuck out. That would not be considered cruel. To demand that a retarded person be held to the same standards of social behaviour would be cruel, and unreasonable. That is the exact meaning of the label retarded: "person who through no fault of their own but because of genetic or developmental or trauma-caused anomalies is not capable of the full range of responsibilities and behaviours as the average person of their age, and should therefore not be held to the same standards for social behaviour". Attempting to tell society at large that we ought not to label an obvious condition is foolish and misguided, and if actually implemented would result in much more harm than good to the people you are trying to benefit. Your poem shows no evidence of your having thought this through. It contains some lovely imagery of your interactions with the people you worked with, spoiled by preaching about your emotional reaction to the stigma associated with the label. Instead of being, as it could be, an affirmation of the triumph of innate humanity over disability, it comes off as scolding the reader (or perhaps trying to buddy up to the reader in mutual scolding of "everybody else who does the labelling") But there are virtually no labels for identifying groupings of people that do not have a stigma in at least some other groupings of people. Therefore, your demand that this particular label be outlawed is inane. I believe this is what hendrimike means, although he is rather more succinct than I.
Re: a comment on Reasonably Good by Dovina	26-Mar-05/3:52 PM
You are assuming that the sets of open valves and leaky valves have the same cardinality.
Re: a comment on The Populous by durr_T_hip_E	24-Mar-05/3:26 PM
Consider me enwoodened.
Re: a comment on The Populous by durr_T_hip_E	23-Mar-05/6:41 PM
Are you a real hippy, or one of the regulars posing as one? -- a water molecule splashing up -- you mean 3 billion trillion, right? do babies really patter necessity to the ground as they're lunging for their first breath? I actually have no idea when a baby is likely to take its first piss. Perhaps you're right. --dew drops...grasshoppers drowning.. ??? Wtf does that have to do with disaffectation? Are the dewdrops sentient, are they actually actively rolling around seeking out grasshoppers to drown in some metaphorical expression of the discontentment of the masses? The next image has even less to do with the pome. Admit it: the phrase "oceans collide with sunsets" came into your head and gave you a woody, and you've never had the self-discipline to say "this has nothing to do with the pome" and elide it. How do frictionless elements get warmed? What does it mean for them to become warm? Then -- lets see if I've got this right -- connections develop between the frictionless elements, are then severed (by a severer who remains quite anonymous in the work) and the little severed floppy bits of the connections remain lying around to teach unity to the frictionless elements. What the fuck does that mean...is it, like, a metaphor? What is it a metaphor FOR? Please tell me one thing, because I confess as I reconstructed the imagery in my head I became quite curious about one detail...the remains of the severed connections that litter the space inhabited by the frictionless elements...do they sort of twitch and flop about? or do they teach us unity by lying quite deathly still? are they angry little writhing earthworms of severed empathy, or pale little gloworm ghosts of lost dreams of cameraderie? So anyway, you were walking along in Seattle, stepped in a mudpuddle, caught a glimpse of a grasshopper & a dewdrop, experieneced a sudden moment of disassociation, in the clarity of which you noticed you share your general sense of discontentment with all the other schmucks walking around in the rain, shook it off and walked on with a fleeting sense of mortality and a renewed commitment to your own affectation of alienation. well, good luck with your colliding sunsets and keeping your frictionless elements warm. peace, Goad
Re: a comment on ...on the Benefits of Being Ugly by Goad	6-Mar-05/3:58 PM
...well, it IS certainly politically incorrect enough to make even me wince as I posted it.
Re: a comment on a note to the politically inactive fundamentalist christians by i_am_the_popsicle	6-Mar-05/3:54 PM
lol, do you think the above posters are god-fearing conservatives? you should perhaps read their posting history. They are trashing your muddled thinking, not your point of view. Talk about missing the point completely.
Re: a comment on Untitled (A Dark Angel Litmus) by Geschäftsreise	5-Mar-05/8:52 PM
*snicker*
Re: a comment on Woman on the Stairs by James Rykelangeli	5-Mar-05/1:39 PM
Anapestic is tricky to get It's quite clear you've not mastered it yet. I hope you'd've redacted And were merely distracted 'cuz the newel was making you wet.
Re: a comment on Woman on the Stairs by James Rykelangeli	4-Mar-05/6:22 PM
No, Dov', this marmoreal newel (Though it brightens the night like a jewel) Wasn't written for mullin' It's just some wank pullin' On his moonlight bespatteréd tool.