Chemical Fires - New experimental Poem

[SleepyWitch]

hey ho, folk, I've written a new poem.. trying to be a bit more experimental, less nursery-rhymish.
please comment :)

[you have to pronounce camera the brithish way (cam'ra) for the rhythm to work]

_______________________________________________
Chemical fires in the mountain night
Blaring at a sulphur moon
Electrical eels dangle in your face
Your face, brother, watch your face!
All-seeing, all knowing, camera surveillance
Drink coke for your health, drink coke

Run, brother, run
Leap, soar up to the sky
Run, brother, run,
And I’ll pull the trigger

Nuclear cocktails boil in the sun
Nuclear cocktails lengthen your life
Drink coke for your health, brother run

Now up to that mossy ledge of rock
Spider-infested, the sickening air
Run, brohter, run
Brother run

The mad doctor’s robots
Crawling and swarming
everywhere around us,
everywhere
And his wheels of fire
And his half-witted titans
hybrid creatures
We’ll outrun their bullets
Whistlening past

Run, brother, run
And I’ll pull the trigger
Pink yellow-green burst of colour and light
Blood-rushed brain cells flashing together

The turkey!
Catch it!
Catch the turkey!
Uranium-roasted and hot.
Hot like the fires,
The chemical fires
That scorch our lungs.
Drink coke for your health,
brother, run,
While I pull the trigger.

Watch out, we’re falling.
We’re falling
We’re plunging
Falling through the mountain air.

The key!
We’re almost, almost
There
Thud-Ud-ud-ud-Thud-Ud-ud-ud
We’re almost there
Almost there when the bullets hit
We’re almost there
Only one more time,
Brother, just once more
Press ‘enter’ to play again

[Adolescent09]

I'm doing some experimenting as well to improve my word usage, originality and style... Yours is a bit appealing although I don't completely understand it. But then again I'm not a real poet so my opinion might not count. I bet you'll recieve some good reviews for this new work of yours. Good luck with your efforts and improvements :D

[SleepyWitch]

I'm doing some experimenting as well to improve my word usage, originality and style... Yours is a bit appealing although I don't completely understand it. But then again I'm not a real poet so my opinion might not count. I bet you'll recieve some good reviews for this new work of yours. Good luck with your efforts and improvements :D
'course your opinion counts :)
what exactly is it you don't understand?
if more readers don't understand it, it probably means I'll have to make some changes

[Adolescent09]

Well ok then.. For one, "surveylance" in the first paragraph sounds very interesting but unfortunately its not a word. Did you mean anything in particular by spelling surveilance as "serveylance" or was it just a typo or something.. Then, drinking coke really isn't good for your health. The sugars in its contents reimburse quick energy which is soon spent.. It loads the body into a sort of hyperactive state and can also result in short terms of heavy sadness.. Did you mean anything in specific by "drink coke?". Why not "eat organic food!".. lmfao I know it sounds ridiculous but I don't think coke is the best thing to put in there.

Then the second stanza sounds interesting, but for the life of me I don't understand why trigger is there. In the next stanza I was hoping for some meaning to "trigger" but I see "nuclear cocktails.. and the sun" instead. The third stanza sounds very interesting though; I really like the way that rolls and repeats the last line of the first stanza with the "drink coke" stipulation.

The fourth stanza sounds great as well but I'm wondering if all the "brother, run"s are necessary? Maybe you could switch it up a bit? Make it sound interesting? But then that might marr the rhythm which wouldn't be good so "brother run" might be better off left the way it is. I guess it's your choice :).

Then the fifth stanza seems to be a completely different thing. We're going from imagery of some guy running in the desert with a gun and a bottle of coke to eccentric doctors with half-witted titan army, brigades. It reminds me a bit of what Wolf Larsen's poetry...heh. Don't get me wrong--it sounds great(although very comical) but perhaps it should appear more like the previous four stanzas?

The sixth stanza sounds great as is, I don't belive it should be touched. The turkey stanza is hilarious, so keep that in as well. I love the "chemical" inclusion in that stanza, burning inside of us, in a way.

Next stanza: Ok.. now we're falling. The tone has drastically changed again :D
last stanza: Then something about a key, a thud (apparently we've struck ground?) and... and..... game over?

It was a Video Game we were playing all along!!!!! Well I personally liked it but still.. I think perhaps some clarifying could do this poetry justice. Maybe some more interesting words...? But I love the humour. Your poem has got great humour... :D

[Virgil]

I loved it, sleepy. :) Brought a real smile to my face. Although I did think it was real not a video game until the end. That did let me down a little bit. But I loved your rhythm and especially your imagery. The repetitions worked very well too. Reconsider the video game thing and see if it works as a real life war experience.


The turkey!
Catch it!
Catch the turkey!
Uranium-roasted and hot.
Hot like the fires,
The chemical fires
That scorch our lungs.
Drink coke for your health.
Run, brother, run,
While I pull the trigger.

:thumbs_up :thumbs_up :thumbs_up

[SleepyWitch]

Well ok then.. For one, "surveylance" in the first paragraph sounds very interesting but unfortunately its not a word.

oops sorry i meant surveillance.
forgive me, I'm tchust a stuuupid tchörman who dasn't knoh how to spell English :)

[Adolescent09]

Hey sleepy, I hope you don't take my advice too seriously. I prefer poetry that's very profound and pertains to real life concepts like war, politics, poverty and debates. My "Intrepid Man in Command" strove for stuff like that so I'm in a whole different category from your kind of style. I hope my review could be of some help to you in a way though :)

[SleepyWitch]

I loved it, sleepy. :) .... Reconsider the video game thing and see if it works as a real life war experience.



:thumbs_up :thumbs_up :thumbs_up

hee, hee, thanks for your compliments Virg. :blush:
NOPE, I won't reconsider *stubborn* :) i want it to be a video game, to show how seriously they take it although it's just a game. and i want it to sound realistic so you have a contrast between kids playing a game and a real war time experience... they are just playing at war but their snug and safe at home, while real soldiers fight in RL wards out there...

[SleepyWitch]

Adolescent, have you ever played one of those old shoot-and-run games? think of those and you will understand it better.

who wud of thunk that video games can inspire poetry?:)

[kandaurov]

'Run, brother, run,
And I’ll pull the trigger'

This was a great moment, I really snapped out of my doze disposition. Because, you know, I thought the guy was telling his brother to make a run for it, even though he was going to attempt to shoot him down. Doesn't make much sense, but still, it would be pretty intense.

I think you created a good momentum; and you being german and all, have you seen 'Lola rennt'? This poem reminded me of it a lot :D

In the same sense as in 'Lola rennt', this poem has a lot of postmodernism to it: the (apparent) fragmentation; the rush of time; the rush in general, that fact that modern life is a rush; and the pop culture elements, such as the video game.

One may think it a childish theme, but I don't think that at all; speaking in a fancy way (like I did, shame on me), its theme really is according to contemporaneous society, and in the mould of postmodernism. However, I can't help thinking that the fragment I quoted in the very beginning of this commentary would fit wonderfully in a poem with a heavier, gloomier tone.

Summing up: well done, Sleepy! :)

[HannibalBarca]

Through the travail of the ages, midst the pomp and toil of war, have I fought and strove and perished countless times upon this star. So as through a glass and darkly, the age long strife I see, where I fought in many guises, many names but always me

[SleepyWitch]

have you seen 'Lola rennt'? This poem reminded me of it a lot
In the same sense as in 'Lola rennt', this poem has a lot of postmodernism to it: the (apparent) fragmentation; the rush of time; the rush in general, that fact that modern life is a rush; and the pop culture elements, such as the video game.



thanks kandaurov :)
nope i haven't seen Lola rennt... funnily enough, it's one out of the two German films (the other one is Das Boot) that every foreigner seems to have seen :)

yep, the 'pull the trigger' thing is a bit confusing, but i like ambiguity so I'll leave it that way :)

[SleepyWitch]

Through the travail of the ages, midst the pomp and toil of war, have I fought and strove and perished countless times upon this star. So as through a glass and darkly, the age long strife I see, where I fought in many guises, many names but always me

wow, this sounds great. who wrote it?

[SleepyWitch]

Hey sleepy, I hope you don't take my advice too seriously. I prefer poetry that's very profound and pertains to real life concepts like war, politics, poverty and debates. My "Intrepid Man in Command" strove for stuff like that so I'm in a whole different category from your kind of style. I hope my review could be of some help to you in a way though :)

yep, no offence. i generally prefer real life concepts myself :)
thanks for your feedback

[Pendragon]

One word, Sleepy: WOW! Like Virgil, I didn't realize it was a video game until the end, and I used to play one called "Hogan's Ally" for hours essentially on one quarter! Smoking hot poem! L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace, as our friend has in the signature! http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/TID.gif

[SleepyWitch]

wow, thanks Uncle Pen, I didn't expect ppl to like it that much :)

i don't know Hogan's Ally, but I discovered that you can download old DOS games for free and am rapidly developing an addiction to Duke Nukem I and II and Commander Keen.
it was a very bad idea to download them :)

[blp]

it was a very bad idea to download them :)

But it's not stopping you telling us about it here so we can get hooked too. A bit like Lou Reed writing a song about heroin really. ;)

Like adol, but perhaps for slightly different reasons, I'm not sure the coke thing is working. It's satire essentially, but for satire to work, it has to be accurate. If coke was ever explicitly claimed to have health-giving properties, it was a long time ago. They've moved on to more elliptical and ambiguous claims since then - the real thing, adds life or even just 'it' - which in a sense makes them more poetic than your line about them. Oh, but it's a tricky time we live in and advertising is one of the bigger tricks around and addressing it in poetry takes real cunning - a little more than you're using here, if you don't mind my saying so.

The repetitions in this remind me of the pantoum, an old poetic form that's frequently used by contemporary poets, in which various lines are reshuffled throughout and the last line is the same as the first - which would sort of suit a video game. One of the interesting things about video games is that so much of the iconography and structure in them is so ancient - epic quests, grails etc. - a sort of return of what was repressed by modernism. So, yes, a potentially very rich subject for poetry and, although you're trying to be more experimental with this, a traditional form like the pantoum or the sestina (which also involves a lot of repetition) might be very appropriate - and still provide you with a route out of nursery-rhyming.

Sehr interesant! Ich mag gerne liebsten die Zeilen über dem Truthahn. Herrliche absurd.

[SleepyWitch]

The repetitions in this remind me of the pantoum, an old poetic form that's frequently used by contemporary poets, in which various lines are reshuffled throughout and the last line is the same as the first - which would sort of suit a video game. One of the interesting things about video games is that so much of the iconography and structure in them is so ancient - epic quests, grails etc. - a sort of return of what was repressed by modernism. So, yes, a potentially very rich subject for poetry and, although you're trying to be more experimental with this, a traditional form like the pantoum or the sestina (which also involves a lot of repetition) might be very appropriate - and still provide you with a route out of nursery-rhyming.

Sehr interesant! Ich mag gerne liebsten die Zeilen über dem Truthahn. Herrliche absurd.

thanks blp, i hadn't heard about the pantoum and sestina thingy before. and i didn't know it's been taken up again by contemporary poets.

hehe, everyone seems to like the stanza about the Truthahn best :)