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A Good Man Ruined (Free verse) by Dovina Working alone,
the ace engineer gets it down.
Like an artist
of few mistakes,
he conceives,
births practical designs,
buildable, awesome.
Promoted and monied,
he runs a team
and thinks he can run the world.
Off for himself now,
fumbling, failing, fanatical,
driving nails in what he could have designed,
still unaware.
It's the fault of a woman draftsman,
he's told,
but he knows it's his own damn fault.
Up the ladder:
Calenders, Painters and the Boy who imagined Everything
Down the ladder:
Fall of all
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 4.4
Posted: July 17, 2005 3:08 PM PDT; Last modified: July 17, 2005 3:08 PM PDTWeighted score: 4.9284782 Overall Rank: 9358 Comments:
Jimmy Buffet said it better.
"Wasting away again in Margaritaville..."
somehow i feel this one might have been more effective written from the engineer's point of view.
Could be, but then it would end up a drinking man's crying song. Somehow, we have enough of those.
tell me why buildable is awesome in the beginning and I will begin to care. I think you have a grand character sketch here if you give it another go.
Awesome in the way the World Trade Center was, or the Golden Gate Bridge is. How do you mean - another go? More detail?
Maybe change engineer to architech. Also you say he works alone and he runs a team. You might want to say "then promoted and monied he runs a team" or maybe change the first line to something like "Alone at the top". Change "damn" in the last line and the Jimmy Buffet fans will leave you alone. Fix this poem but don't ever throw it out because if one imagines the "ace egineer" as possibly being god or the bible or even Adam then the poem takes on a whole new profound meaning.
"then promoted and monied he runs a team" is clearer, might do that.
The 'damn' is shakey, I know. I never thought of it as being about God, but in a way it works if you think of it as man created in God's image as creator. Thanks for the comment. 319 view(s)
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woot.
Was he Jimmy Buffet? Consider:
"Some people claim that there's a WO - MAN TO BLAME,
But I know it's my own damn fault."
No points for originality.
From the POV of Jimmy Buffet's song, the only people who don't know by the end of the song are the "some people" who claim it's the fault of a woman. From the POV of your poem, the only people who don't know are the people who "told" him it's woman's fault. Still not seeing the difference.
None of the rest of your comment comes across in the poem. So whether it rings with me is kind of immaterial. I think most of your commenters would agree.
He knew it was his fault after realizing his ability to do good engineering depended on the framework of his company, and not solely on his own genius. If you think that's an unhealthy realization, then I pity you.
I don't think it's a necessarily unhealthy realisation, but the way I think it would be healthy is not the way it's set up in the poem.