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No Sunday Clothes (Free verse) by wilco
A question, God, if you have time. And if you don't, well that's just fine. I'd like to know, if you don't mind, just how can you be so very unkind? I see these people from day to day, who have nothing and give it away. They turn the pages every night, and never see your shining light. Some have terrible, terrible scars, from loss and death and pain and wars. And some have voices in their head. Some, it seems, are better off dead. Still they paint your bearded visage, and that of your son, made in your image. So what do they get for their bottomless faith, but hunger and poverty...murder and rape? I do not ask for myself, you see for I have all that I'll ever need. Which confuses me that much more, I suppose. Because I need no Sunday clothes.

Up the ladder: Thanks (Dovina)

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Arithmetic Mean: 8.428572
Weighted score: 5.922085
Overall Rank: 1420
Posted: March 3, 2004 3:14 PM PST; Last modified: March 3, 2004 3:14 PM PST
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Comments:
[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. @ 131.111.212.215 | 3-Mar-04/3:29 PM | Reply
I'm afraid the idea of needing no Sunday clothes is plagiarised from my poeme 'Child of my Buttocks' (http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?id=20331). -10-
[n/a] wilco @ 24.176.102.131 > -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. | 3-Mar-04/3:40 PM | Reply
That may be so, my friend, but I can assure you that I would not read a poem called "Child of My Buttocks"
[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. @ 131.111.212.215 > wilco | 4-Mar-04/5:34 AM | Reply
When the other boys didn't let you play with them, did mummy say you were special?
[10] capachijim @ 205.188.117.6 > wilco | 28-Sep-04/3:48 PM | Reply
I think there's no way that it could be plagarised, becuase I love this poem and could barely finish yours...
[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. @ 81.154.163.133 > capachijim | 28-Sep-04/4:17 PM | Reply
"Child of my Buttocks" is an endless, rambling collage of browne. It has about three funny lines and the rest is literally a giant guff. But that doesn't mean this poeme isn't plagiarised. It definitely, definitely is.
[n/a] zodiac @ 152.31.228.13 | 5-Mar-04/1:41 PM | Reply
If any of you at all seemed even halfway open to real critical comments, this site probably wouldn't be such a pants-wetting nightmare from which there is no waking. Don't you think?
[n/a] wilco @ 24.176.102.131 > zodiac | 5-Mar-04/3:27 PM | Reply
I'm open, man...bring it....can't get better w/o criticism.
[n/a] zodiac @ 67.240.192.29 > wilco | 5-Mar-04/7:54 PM | Reply
Please prepare yourself for my criticism by first reading every comment on the last ten posts by Ms. w-crystal lane swift-w and lydia evelyn, especially the ones concerning the use of unmetered AABB rhyme scheme; overused pairings like day/away, night/light, and dead/head; and the complete corruption of rhyme AND meter AND sense for such stupid (and cliche) non-rhymes as time/find, see/need, faith/rape, visage/image. Only when you have completed this task will you be ready for my real criticism. We'll be in touch.
[n/a] zodiac @ 67.240.192.29 > zodiac | 5-Mar-04/8:15 PM | Reply
Yes, I'm aware that I probably sound like some giant elitist poezi to you, exactly the kind which that famous dream of being the embattled poet-of-the-age validated by time over the elitist poezi censure of his stuffy blind contemporaries would lead one to expect. And this may be true. If you're the next William Blake, all power to you. But I'm not really an elitist, just bitter today. Tomorrow I'm sure I'll be fine.

That said, I should point out that don't pretend to be able to write a great poem myself, I do know how to judge them. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I'm one of the very few people on this site who actually does talk and write about poetry for a living - and a pretty decent one - rather than as some kind of hobby, on his/her lunch-break from writing code or sculpting small wooden animals. And I'm heir to a dried-meat fortune which, as I have explained elsewhere (http://www.poemranker.com/poem-details.jsp?id=91826), makes me the closest thing America has to an aristocracy. Any questions so far? Good. We'll be in touch.
[n/a] wilco @ 24.176.102.131 > zodiac | 5-Mar-04/11:26 PM | Reply
I appreciate the feedback and, agree with you that there is far too little actual criticism on this site (aside from DarkAngel, who it seems, has a problem with anything that does not have the word "cock" in it's body). I welcome any feedback you may have on anything I have written or write in the future.
[n/a] zodiac @ 67.240.192.210 > wilco | 6-Mar-04/9:13 AM | Reply
So, yeah, that title is pretty clever, huh? I mean, I'm reading this thinking, like, what does all this have to do with Sunday clothes? and then, bang! right there at the end - there it is again! It's foreshadowing. A circular structure, even.

Or like saying, "Have you heard the one about the nun who says 'Well I'm really the bus driver!'" Somehow, despite that the bulk of this poem has almost nothing to do with the punch-line, I still saw it coming like a freight train, which is not good for poetry. Not to mention that ignoring an irrational traditional conception of Jehovah on His holy day is already handled much better in poems like this one here(http://www.bartleby.com/265/355.html) and here (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem784.html - extra points to Eliot for using 'brown' as a verb!)

Do you want more?
[n/a] wilco @ 24.176.102.131 > zodiac | 6-Mar-04/9:25 AM | Reply
Wow, those are good. Sure....give more if you like. You don't have to be so damn sarcastic, though ;)
[n/a] zodiac @ 67.240.192.210 > wilco | 6-Mar-04/9:27 AM | Reply
Yes I do.
[n/a] zodiac @ 67.240.192.210 > zodiac | 6-Mar-04/9:33 AM | Reply
Make this poem talk to almost anybody but God. For one thing, do you think God is going to answer you? For another, do you think He's going to answer you when you speak to Him in that tone of voice? You don't even capitalise His Holy Pronouns!

If you changed this poem so that the first line was:
"I questioned God blah blah blah blah blah," and so on, it would be a 100% improvement. Oh, and make it really rhyme if you're going to use rhyme! Oh, and find some original words to rhyme! That's a difficult thing to ask, because it means reading a bunch of poems and seeing what words they rhyme. You could start by reading all the so-called rhyming poems on this site and avoiding anything they do like the proverbial plague.

More?
[n/a] wilco @ 24.176.102.131 > zodiac | 6-Mar-04/9:44 AM | Reply
Sure, you're not going to hurt my feelings or anything. As I said before, I can't improve without knowing what I'm doing wrong. Oh, and I wasn't planning on an answer...that's the whole point of it...
[n/a] zodiac @ 67.240.192.27 > wilco | 6-Mar-04/11:10 AM | Reply
re: "I wasn't planning on an answer...that's the whole point of it..." Of course it is. And the whole point of seatbelt-extenders is to allow hideously fat people to ride safely in cars and planes, but that doesn't mean they're not stupid (the seatbelt-extenders, not the... never mind.)

Second, um, like, YEAH whatever God there is must allow terrible things to happen to good people, even on Sundays. There's not going to be a single person reading your poem for whom this isn't a pretty mundane already-thought line-of-thought. You might pride yourself then on the universality of your oh-so-cleverly-expressed sentiments, but you probably shouldn't.

Third, do you notice how practically every line in your poem ends with a comma or period (and the one that doesn't, should)? Well, don't do that anymore. In my experience, that comes from not being able to write poetry more than one line at a time (same with the AABB,) which is a complete crock of shit. Amateur hack internet poets write

'Let's go down to the Gentleman's Club.'

And that's it. They don't really have a plan to finish out the rhyme, so they start thinking of words: scrub, cub, nub, shrub, stub... Stub works, maybe. They get another line

'You pay and the ticket-man gives you a stub.'

This is like pulling teeth to read. Each line is its own clause, which means no clause can be longer than, say, ten syllables unless you're CLS or a fucking idiot. The rhythm's shot, there's practically no connection between lines, couplets, verses or anything. You've got to have a plan, and something that holds it together, like:

Let's go down to the Gentleman's Club
Where the toiletbowl always flushes,
And the girls all smell like a drain and scrub
Their cunnies with toilet brushes.

See? Unity. Interesting rhymes. A sense of each line building on the previous. Sex. Okay, despite the fact that it's about toilet brushes, can you see how that's a more structurally interesting quatrain than anything in your poem? Yes? No? More?
[10] ga_writer @ 162.40.239.14 | 7-Mar-04/9:32 PM | Reply
HOW WONDERFUL!!! Thats amazing. You have great talent my friend. Great Great work!!!!
[n/a] wilco @ 24.176.102.131 > ga_writer | 8-Mar-04/5:57 PM | Reply
Thank you. (I hope that's not sarcasm);)
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