[littleshambles]

here is some of it

Spoiler:

written various lengths of time ago (2 months - 2 years), thus i take only varying degrees of responsibility for their quality. "the bum's birdsong" is from a time when i was obsessed with trying to make crap subject matter and vulgar language into poems, there were loads about Birmingham city centre, overheard conversations between tramps, such like. it's over 2 years old now. i quite like it, but my friend really hated that, uh, period. thus i feel the need to explain myself.

Villanelle For A Birthday

The candle’s sickly fire drinks your years.
They will make a carcass out of you.
There’s not room in the grave for all these tears.

A hot red face blushes its blurred leers;
Plucked from a pulsing sac, all button-new,
The candle’s sickly fire drinks your years.

The bell-tolls drone but eight, the balloons jeer,
Their luminous globes will not subdue.
There’s not room in the grave for all these tears.

Sugared children's sugared eyelids peer
With their delirious ice-cream eyes at you.
The candle's sickly fire drinks your years.

They are but capricious souvenirs;
Your dread will last no longer than you do.
There's not room in the grave for all these tears.

I know how ticking clocks count mortal fears,
And how each birthday strikes more life from you.
The candle’s sickly fire drinks your years.
There’s not room in the grave for all these tears.

the bum's birdsong

ah those breeze block tinted afternoons
automobiles sighed their diesel scents
and searched the lanes with moonbeams

the gremio wore his piss-stained pantaloons
and yonder followed ale-whiffs where he went
with fleas gnashing at seams

rover cocked his leg on the pay and display
emptied his bladder on the warden's purse
and **** on someone's jag

his chocolate coloured spiral marked the way
sneering at the world, little lumped curse
sneaks from a tail that wags

for the sweeping twilight coppers sirens busk
upstaging the big-issue monotones
and the bums' birdsong besides

ah those thickly smoked four o' clock dusks
white van men breathe gruff moans
bitter grey formaldehyde

Photography

a solicitous eye, a ravenous blink
invading wildnesses, and taming them
to mere situations;

gazing on absence happening.

the rudely-thickened flesh of space is crushed
into diaphanous cartoons;
gnarled barks and acid smoke imprisoned

in an eternal shimmer-gloss.

under shutters universes splash
a moment of their flagrance
on blushing films.

latent inks flower; they are memories
of the world.

Three Poems

---
1
---
flowers churn profligate scents obscenely.
this is not a virgin garden.
summer chokes, the sun's fist closing grimly
a fractured cloak on everything.
bees. they're knee deep in sin.

screams form veins through the house.
paper-thin bricks shiver coolly against
an impenetrable skin,
yours.

breathing weightlessly,
you poise at doorways, full

but not entirely alive.
---
2
---
as luck would have it,
life sickens immensely. cause beyond cause,
dizzying,
until, engorged, a new heart beats.

angels crow on cracked wooden limbs
watching you hurtle exponentially towards death.
their smiles play arpeggios in C major.
the embellished universe -

a world for you!
unconscionable, untrimmed loveliness,
suffering compounded to a kiss. sewer breath.
the prairie sings for you.
the virus spreads.

to think how unlucky then, that
your funeral
will visage you in smallness, in humbleness
will fare you well with minor chords.
how sweet charity is. how sweet.
---
3
---
ungrateful mornings have exploded,
meted blank punishments on unseen worlds
and presented to the earth - prettiness
with shuttered windows.
it all remains hidden
in shells, sunless and foiled in ignorant depths,

coiled, sprung;
secret.

the trees stretch, ache, seeing nothing.

these are the dumb silences of beauty
these the unmoving songs, emitting infinity
with no words.

the flowers give, grow, feeling nothing.

tell me in small rhymes, each million-petalled,
tall tales. unmoved yet unsettled.
rush towards, away, with eagerness.
your skin delights and sharpens,
revealing limitlessly.
wide-eyed
- love's sentience amazes

In Rainbows (yes it is called in rainbows)

Sky troops the colours. Usually it wraps
The earth in azure, bleached, blank ignorance;
Or hangs ruefully, flowered with grey sadness,
Rushing in listless streams, drowned in itself
Kissing the waiting tips of playful tongues
With the same grieving drip it gives the gutter.
Its unnumbered troubles dot the night,
Hanging on the world, a dense black burden
It sinks, shadow on shadow, heavy as death
Til voids fill nothings, eternity fills hours.
But not today. Today’s your eye’s parade,
Today light’s watery secrets kiss the wind.
Love’s the seaside, solitude’s the souvenir
And the soul has no rainbow without tears.

Old Man Neptune

What immediately grasped me about the sea that day
was its tiredness;

the rain bit at waves that rippled, tensed like the skin
of a torture victim, stretched thin over ribs. I'd swung
my buckets and spades at my side

as I approached, a timid mouse quivering
at the writhes of a great fading lion.
Their plastic laughter rattled so meek under the wind,

mocking colours swallowed in the dolorous wet.
I scavenged mussel-shells, punctured by barnacles,
ugsome protrusions huddled like wrinkled eyes.

I waded in, looked the beast straight through. But my
bare cold ankles in the foam were overcome

by the pleading dribble of the slow-moving surf,
and that dead, abominable greyness.

[sylv]

I absolutely love it.

[JR]

Cool stuff bro.

Going in order then:

Villanelle for a Birthday I found got stronger towards the middle. Although I don't like the repetition of sugared in "Sugared children's sugared eyelids peer" it does do what I'm guessing you intended it to. Despite that, I still find "Sugared children's sugared eyelids peer / With their delirious ice-cream eyes at you" along with the lines "They are but capricious souvenirs; / Your dread will last no longer than you do" are the highpoints of the overall poem. Whether it was intentional or not, the enjambement of the line ending in "peer", the only time throughout the poem you do it really drives home the idea of being watched, as it gives you no time to actually take the image in; while the sheer morbidity of the line "Your dread will last no longer than you do" works exceptionally given that it's also pretty factual - chillingly so. All I'd say about this is that "not" in the rhyming B slot could be "no" and that the second line in the first stanza seems to lack a beat - this, I feel would have worked better as a variation later on in the poem; or would have worked well had you used that same length throughout. That's just my reading of the line though, other people may well see that it's full.

the bum's birdsong - I'm in a conflict with myself about this poem. First thing I want to ask is whether the lack of punctuation is intentional, I found it the sheer onslaught of lines without any punctuation, bar the solitary comma in the middle, detracts from what could be a rather pertinent poem. Secondly, I feel that by shortening the lengths of the final lines of the stanzas after the initial stanza (much like in the villanelle's second line of the opening stanza), builds us up to expect something that then falls flat. The shorter lines work fine in themselves, but regularity in length would aid the rhyme - in fact after the initial reading I thought you had abandoned rhyme altogether after the opening two stanzas (though this could also be due to the lack of punctuation meaning that the reader [i.e. me] is left to stop for breath whenever I need to, not at a punctuation mark). Simply adding "the" in the line "with fleas gnashing at seams" so it read "with fleas gnashing at the seams" would seem to fit better. (This is a much more formal reading than it was probably ever intended for, so I realise I am picking holes here.) The content of the poem, however, works really well, and there is a natural progression of images that builds up our bum's (enforced?) discontent; although the poem, for me, seems to lack any real conclusion - as if it's lost direction right at the moment it was finding it (perhaps like the bum's life itself?) Simlar to the last one though, you have some lovely lines in there, I especially like the idea of the cars sighing out their fumes.

Photography - formally a very upsetting poem, but I particularly like it. It reminds me of the sort of thing I was writing before I actually learnt what form was (that's NOT a criticism btw). I actually think here, where all semblance of regularity of form is discarded your variant line lengths take the lead, and force the reader to respect the poem for what it is, rather than what it could have been. The blinking eye and the taming of the wildness in the first two lines works wonderfully well, and here you're using punctuation beautifully - presenting us with something (the eye; the wildness) and then doing something with it. I also find the idea of "absence happening" so pecularly absurd that it makes (me) consider whether there is something there or not. Assumedly the point is that there is - and it's the memory that you conclude with (I feel) that occupies this absence. I think if "they are memories / of the world" was on the same line it would round the poem off more completely, but other than that, nothing bad to say about this poem.

Three poems - 1 - This poem starts in such a harsh manner that nothing that follows on from it is remotely shocking - though perhaps it should be. I like the line "bees. they're knee deep in sin." in particular. The way you hold up the reader with the single word sentence makes what the bees are almost more important. I think if you'd used a colon after skin here "an impenetrable skin, / yours." this effect would have been repeated - the comma leaves "yours" rather deflated.

2 - "the embellished universe - // a world for you!" This, for me epitomises the power this "you" figure seems to maintain throughout, even when you're shrouding him in "minor chords". I find the opening stanza rather powerful as well, mainly due to (what sounds to me ) like assonance between "cause" and "engorged", which instantly saw me overlook "dizzying, / until, " which seems a little clumsy. A little. Not quite sure about the repetition of "how sweet" at the end either.

3 - I like the rhyme of "foiled / coiled", but I find those three words on their own "coiled, sprung; / secret" trying to take on too much importance - at least I seem to be trying to attribute to them more importance than perhaps they require. After what seems like few weak lines in the middle, from "the trees..." to "...feeling nothing", you reign this poem back in at the end, the dash here used expertly to conclude the speaker's opinion of the love that is or is not actually there. This line "tell me in small rhymes, each million-petalled, / tall tales" is exquisite.

Assuming these three poems are supposed to flow into one another and make one long poem (I think I can be excused using the dreaded term flow in this instance) the return to the image of the petal (that I just picked out) having started with the "obscenely" smelling flower works expertly well. Actually, now I think of it, the collision of the obscenity of the fragrance of the flower, that should by nature smell nice, works very well too.

In Rainbows - this poem defnitely picks up as it moves on, and there are some lovely touches in here. I hate to pick out massive chunks, but this for me

...Today’s your eye’s parade,
Today light’s watery secrets kiss the wind.
Love’s the seaside, solitude’s the souvenir
And the soul has no rainbow without tears.

makes the rest of the poem irrelevant. Whatever bad I could say about the rest is moot. I won't argue with it.

Old Man Neptune - again here, something that you seem very good at, is putting together a few words to make a line that really jump out at you - entire stanzas that would otherwise seem pretty lifeless acquire a sense of urgency or profundity. For example, here the line "ugsome protrusions huddled like wrinkled eyes." adds, I guess a poetic punch to what in the previous line seemed prosaic; whilst the final line really speaks to me. It strikes me as very Larkinesque, and is something I really adore in poetry. Whilst much of this poem, for me, lacks any real substance (maybe not the right word to choose - but, for example, the simile of the torture victim seems to just sort of, appear and fade) suddenly we're left "abominable" sense of pointlessness.


---

Overall, great stuff. I'd say my favourite is... I dunno. Photography I think, just because you've managed to do something that I could never really achieve.

Sorry for writing so much

[MSB]

There's little point in me writing anything specific as JR has gone over lots of the little things, and has said enough to lead into my point in places. This means that I'm not actually backing up the Overall Judgement that I am giving, but hopefully it's clear enough for me to get away with it.

Even though you're good, you write, in places, with such lexical profligacy that it gives the impression that, since you intermittently bring out striking images between lines of slightly thin verbosity, your successes are partly down to probability and persistence. JR seems to be saying something similar to this, although I am probably making it sound much more negative (which isn't the case!). In places, you hurl great handfuls of syllables and ideas so wildly that when you do hit the mark, it takes the reader by surprise. This is, I suppose, a poetic effect in itself, and you'd probably argue that it was an intentional part of your style (although you'd say you intended, like all poets must, all of your words to 'hit the mark'). It is certainly successful in places, and JR has pointed out most of the really good bits. I think the fact that your best lines are never your most excessive (such as "bees. they're knee deep in sin.", "their delirious ice-cream eyes", "There’s not room in the grave for all these tears.") should show (as the scant amount of evidence that I can give in this small post) that a greater care would work better. That said, it's hard to know how well these lines would work without the others to offset them, so I suppose it is questionable. Either way, to improve in your current style, you would need to write with a pen that is slightly more concerned with the complete result of the poem, rather than the immediate pleasure of unrestrained language and imagery.

[littleshambles]

Thank you very much JR and MSB. Edit: And Sylv. I didn't even see your post lol.

It's very true that I tend to write poems concentrating on "the immediate pleasure of unrestrained language and imagery"... In fact so gloriously, insanely true that I don't know whether to find the fact that you picked up on that (not that it was not obvious, but it's nice to know how obvious these things are) extremely pleasing or embarrassing.

I think the lack of punctuation in the bum's birdsong was intentional. I didn't want it to have any punctuation because I just wanted it to be flat and unrestrained in a way - blank and empty, because I felt the relationship between myself and my subject matter (and the way I was writing about it) was peculiarly detached from both me and them. I don't think I can explain that one very well. Someone else a while back picked up on that torture victim simile not being continued with as well. I guess it does seem like a wasted opportunity. I think when I get images in writing a poem I'm so interested in the image itself and getting it down that I don't think about using it. I have an imagination like a kaleidoscope, and the attention span to match. Oh and there are lots of problems with the stresses and line lengths in the villanelle, I know, it's terrible to read out loud.

I will try and take what you said on board for the poetry competition (and obviously in general)