| Poem: Submit | Random | Best | Worst | Recent | Comments |
|
War (edit) (Free verse) by zodiac Sensible in most things, Girlie buys
foil packs of yeast whenever she shops. She has
certain assumptions when it comes to â but
what would you call it? â husbandry, I guess,
an Order of Things: a dog, a made bed,
a centerpiece, more yeast than a whole year
of baking would use. And, no, it makes no difference
the yeastâs alive, for it is very small.
A thousand, a million lives, Iâve read, but then
they are so small. So neat, so desiccant,
saved for some use I can't imagine: to trip
my hands, maybe, looking among stacked bins
of flour, soda and sugar for, I forget
just what, for something edible, then. Or say
for one great final baking-day. Or say
we keep our peaces, the kitchen of our love
as fertile, as earth-pungent, as new graves,
as a bombed field. And yet we have no bread.
Up the ladder:
The Measurement
Down the ladder:
The Secret
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 8.6
Posted: December 12, 2005 1:25 PM PST; Last modified: December 12, 2005 2:05 PM PSTWeighted score: 6.8 Overall Rank: 400 Comments:
Much easier to read now. I do wonder how you came about the idea of calling Bush Girlie. Maybe Pussy would be closer to Bush, nyuk nyuk.
I checked CNN today, still no bread yet.
? "as new graves, as a bombed field? I was loving this up to and after that...but I got lost there. What does that have to do with the rest? I could relate to this as one who keeps a 'food storage', well-stocked with provisions...and am driven to stock up on things I may need. This describes my large utility room full of such things, and the times when I had no bread, but I had plenty stored away, "in case". Winter rolls around and I am driven to start stock-piling. I related to the woman in this piece...but you refer to her as girlie (Girly), as if in put down. If one has ever truly gone hungry, then one probably can relate to such things and the need for self-sufficiency, and the little quirks one gains from that experience. Based on that long winded comment, think I'll give it a high score...I like the strange flow of it. For lack of better words, it just hits me good.(Except for the bit about graves and bombs, which I am still lost on...but I'm not breaking my own rule to see the comments before I vote and post!)
I used to work at a traditional bakery - you know, we hand-rolled the bread on a big wood table and all that jazz. Maybe big modern industrial bakeries smell like yeast, too, but this one, in the unventilated basement of a hundred-year-old building smelled amazingly so. I also had this idea that you can smell yeast in an unopened packet.
Oh, and the baking supplies section of any supermarket smells like yeast, too. So on the most superficial level, it's just about yeast smelling fermented and earthy, like turned dirt. 1) I don't think Girlie is necessarily a put-down. I've used the name in 4 poems now for a character whose habits resemble my wife's, so it's hard for me to feel anything but mushy about it. 2) But the character narrating my poems is not always right - or, at least, I spend a lot of time undermining his credibility. I think calling his wife Girlie is a good way of giving an idea of who he is and who his wife is. He doesn't totally respect her, but that could be because she's a little flighty. Again, my wife is the yeast-stockpiler, but she's also a much better person than I am. Who knows? Maybe she's onto something. Of course, metaphorically she's stocking troops, weapons, etc, for an ambiguous purpose, a purpose she doesn't really understand herself but considers The Natural Order of Things. (Yeast does die in its packets if unused.) For me, the real coup of the poem is the narrator's voice fumbling and justifying up to "we keep our peaces", which is his only true assessment of his wife or his relationship. Thanks. This is the longest I've ever commented explaining one of my own poems. It must be 4am. It is. Someone's bound to be wondering: My wife thinks it's hilarious that I use her idiosyncracies for shallow poem women.
So the real driving force behind this poem is your wife and yeast.
Don't worry I won't make any connections between the two I promise.
I'd hate to be pigeonholed as The Guy Who Makes Weird Metaphors. You know, Classical allusions are kind of all the rage again in modern poetry. If you've, say, made a vow never to allude Classically in a poem, ever, what can you do to compete?
As it happens, I thought this one was too obvious. Especially with the added lines. Maybe we've gotten lazy and metaphorless on poemranker.
Hogwash. You love to being pigeonholed as The Guy Who Makes Weird Metaphors.
Your last statement could be a metaphor for the entire country. We're just reflecting the place we live in. This is usually the case in most art.
Not me...I usually choose to play inside a little box labeled 'fantasy'. Oh, well, yeah, I guess that too is a reflection of the world I live in, or choose not to, as the case may be :)
So I guess this comment means the wealth=intelligence argument is over?
very odd.
I like this, especially the last line.
It's good. I've read it and re-read it, and each time it sounds better.
zodiac, if you're there,... get on chat.
For some reason I can't on this computer. Sorry :-(
316 view(s)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Have we had this conversation before? The answer then was: George Bush.
"Anti-psychotic drugs have relieved extreme bigotry among prison inmates."
Is 'non-extreme bigotry' not, then, considered psychotic? Could you please define 'normal bigotry' as opposed to 'extreme bigotry'? Or at least inform us to what extent of bigotry one would have to exibit to be considered considered 'extreme', and therefore warrant the use of said psychotic drugs? Is the implication that only inmates are capable if 'extreme' bigotry? Or only that they should be given anti-psychotic drugs for it? (AND, did they know they were being treated? And, if so, has the placebo affect been ruled out?)
Could you please define "relieved"?
Does this mean that we should put anti-psychotic drugs in the water supply in the South? I am sure it would be covered under the 'patriot act', and no one would ever have to know...and then we could all live much happier... and more relieved.
"Or only if it is 'extreme bigotry'?" The study apparently only dealt with that.
"Is 'non-extreme bigotry' not, then, considered psychotic?" Certainly not, but the fact that extreme bigotry's slightly correlated with psychosis would make a good attack on bigotry in general. That is, if you could count on bigots to get it.
"Could you please define 'normal bigotry' as opposed to 'extreme bigotry'?" No. I'm just quoting the article. I did find this other article - here: http://tinyurl.com/abqty - that explains more about the same debate, if not the same study.
"Is the implication that only inmates are capable if 'extreme' bigotry? Or only that they should be given anti-psychotic drugs for it?" No. The implication is probably that the easiest test group was inmates. The other implication is that defining bigotry as a psychosis would make it a legally admissable defense for hate crimes, and that, as you've pointed out, the vagueness of the term "extreme bigotry" means almost anyone qualifies.
Surely the study was done in some way that accounts for the placebo effect, even if by just admitting that the correlation hasn't been tested for the placebo effect yet. Given that the inmates wouldn't have automatically expected that anti-psychosis drugs would reduce their bigotry, you can hardly expect the placebo effect to be strong in this case.
(Southerner):"I was carrying my friend to the store and as soon as we started walking across the parking lot the bottom fell out."
Me:Why did you carry your friend to the store?
"Because he don't have no way to get there."
But why did you carry him?
"'Cause he's my friend, and besides, he wanted to ride in my new truck."
But I thought you said you carried him to the store.
"I did."
I thought you just said he road in your truck.
"He did, and I carried him to the store."
Oh, so he road in your truck, then you carried him into the store?
"No, to the store."
Huh?. Never mind, Oh, and what fell out?
"What d' ya mean?"
You said something fell out when you were going to the store.
"Oh, yeah, the bottom fell out when we got to the store, and we got soaked through."
You got sucked through?
"What?!, We didn't get sucked anywhere; Yeah, the bottom fell out!"
The truck? The bottom fell out?
"No, we were goin' to go in and then the bottom fell out."
The bottom fell out of WHAT?!
"What?"
What fell out of where?...???!!!
"What?! The bottom FELL out, there!"
What do you mean?
"Man! It just fell out and we ran!"
(I gave up and later relayed this to someone else, who told me what we had been talking about!) A downpour of rain...apparently here in the South, the bottom falls out of the sky and dumps rain on you!) (Which, having lived here for some years, I have to admit it is not a far stretch to say such a thing to describe the torrential downpours!)
Disclaimer:This was an actual, f'r-real, North-westerner and Southerner exchange. No part of this is fiction, but the identities of said parties will be protected, as only in the South they can be.
You must be in NC as we speak.
I do love it here...for the weather, beach to the East, mountains to the West, things growing nearly year 'round...
PS-As of Jan 4 I'm an Alaskan. I'll send you all bear claw necklaces.
I think Me and Lil both migrated here from PA. I was drawn by all the high paying jobs only to find out there was a high cost of living and stingy state government policies waiting for us.
I took a state job so that I was at least getting a little less screwed than everyone else. Still it beats the hopelessness of living in PA.
I lived below a guy from Alaska. He was like something out of the old west. He lived in the woods and mined for gold and was missing most of his teeth. I hope the temperature and culture change doesn't kill you. You couldn't get any farther from the middle east. If while your in Charlotte you see a gold Grand Am and a guy with a yellow cap, honk your horn.
Z:"So your Alchemy."
A:"Yep, I'm Alchemy"
Z: "Cool."
A: "So your Zodiac"
Z: "Yep, I'm Zodiac"
A: "Cool."
Z: "Um, well gotta go."
A: "Good luck. See ya on Poemranker."
Z: "You too. Have a good one."