Plastic Brains

[qimissung]

A rabbit skitters across the lawn,
Lights go out, water comes on,
Enabling the precise green.

A scattering of pecans lie
Shattered on the sidewalk,
Brown dye from the broken
Shells leaching into the cement.
The tree stands majestic
Against the twilit sky.

Empty playgrounds stand watch,
And silent guards patrol the night;
A solitary dog barks into the quiet.

The white sun beats down
Mercilessly on houses that
March in ferocious lockstep.

A school looms, children
Within serving their
Sentences, their plastic
Brains molded by
Twelve years hard labor.

The bell rings and
The gauzy, glorious young
Spill into the streets,
The sun evaporating
Them one by one.

Qimissung
September 2008

[Dark Muse]

This was great I love the mood it captured, and the imagery was well good

[paperleaves]

Wow. this is incredible. you've done it, you've captured something purely and wholly without overdoing it, something i've not grasped yet, I admire that quality extremely :)

[Silven]

this is what I felt when I read this.

From early morn, to brink of night
the sun rose... then sank bright
captured moments portray,
on the finest paper stay
exhibit "b" to demonstrate
tough slog encapsulate

great poem, I especially like this verse:

The bell rings and
The gauzy, glorious young
Spill into the streets,
The sun evaporating
Them one by one.

It rhymes, and meters well, with a prancing rhythm.

[dibyendra]

A rabbit skitters across the lawn,
Lights go out, water comes on,
Enabling the precise green.

The white sun beats down
Mercilessly on houses that
March in uniform lockstep.

A scattering of pecans lay
Shattered on the sidewalk,
Brown dye from the broken
Shells leaching into the cement.

A solitary dog barks into the silence.

The school looms, children
within serving their
Sentences, their plastic
brains molded by
twelve years hard labor.

The bell rings and
The gauzy, glorious young
Spill into the streets,
The sun evaporating
Them one by one.

Empty playgrounds stand watch,
Silent neighborhoods attest to their success
And silent guards patrol the night,
keeping safety in, and those without, out


A tree stands majestic
Against the twilit sky,
But none are there to see.

Poem has a beautiful imagery.


The sun evaporating
Them one by one.


A solitary dog barks into the silence.

Lovely! :thumbs_up

[PrinceMyshkin]

No doubt because I felt beaten into awed submission by everything up to


A rabbit skitters across the lawn,
Lights go out, water comes on,
Enabling the precise green.

The white sun beats down
Mercilessly on houses that
March in uniform lockstep.

A scattering of pecans lay
Shattered on the sidewalk,
Brown dye from the broken
Shells leaching into the cement.

A solitary dog barks into the silence.

The school looms, children
within serving their
Sentences, their plastic
brains molded by
twelve years hard labor.

The bell rings and
The gauzy, glorious young
Spill into the streets,
The sun evaporating
Them one by one.

this point, I wish you'd consider ending with the above. What comes after it feels anti-climactic to me, a mere summing up of what I've already experienced and experienced forcefully.

[qimissung]

Thank you Dark Muse, paperleaves, silven, and dibyendra. Getting positive feedback, especially when you think maybe you have done something right is a wonderful feeling.

As for you, PrinceMyshkin, I think you were dead on. I changed the order of the stanzas, and I very much like how it turned out. How about you?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yes, indeed better this way, but I have a couple of quibbles:


their plastic
brains

I winced a bit at "plastic" in the title and here since a) it's overly familiar as the designation of something fabricated and/or cheap and b) there is a whiff of intellectual elitism in it. Of course you may have meant "plastic" in the sense of malleable but that's not how it comes across

and

bellrings

surely this ought to be two words?

[blazeofglory]

I am wordless to write comments after reading the poem. The beauty of it dazzles me.

[qimissung]

Thank you blazeofglory.

And thank you PrinceMyshkin. I corrected the typo. Now, concerning my use of the word 'plastic.' Now that you mention it, I guess it is overused in that respect. This is how it came to me. I very recently read an article on the brain. The scientist quoted said that our brains are plastic throughout our lives so that it is possible for us to change and grow all our adult lives. I guess this isn't anything we don't, at some level, already know. Anyway, the phrase stuck with me.

And when I sat down to write this and it came pouring out, that's the phrase I used. I used it to describe the quality of being molded that we most closely associate with the very young, but it is also associated with the idea of mass production and that is an association I hoped the reader would also make.

I realize it's all very "Stepford Wives" and "American Beauty' -ish, the idea of the sterile suburbs. I live in one and there is certainly some truth to the idea and that is what I was trying to convey. And I'm an educator and after having been in it for awhile I am coming to the conclusion that they don't really have a clue what to do with a kid who doesn't fit the 'mold.' They really don't.