Sunflower Seeds

[D. J. R. Caron]

EDITED FOR PUNCTUATION- 4/25/10

Hey there little girl,
Let’s stroll through the sunshine
Into the meadow of the Sunflower seeds.
The meadow you know girl,
Where nobody bleeds.
Eyes like obsidian marbles
On grass as green as spring
Stare into the sky so blue baby,
A sky that you can swim.

One day they’ll grow tall
With a dais like a maroon kiss.
An eye with a mane frilled in golden wax,
Like all the pretty women
Huddled in packs.
And on that day little girl,
You’ll rise from the dirt
As fertile as a hen whorehouse,
And be a woman too.

You’ll be a girl with class
High above the dandelion whores
Who strangle the earth with vulgar olive charm.
Leaves veined with scars
Are the rouge and blush of harm.
Crying tears of milky pollen
From a porous honeycomb gash,
Tainting the calm breeze
With their unrequited cries.

There they stand, side by side,
With their cluster of inoffensive stares.
They carry the smell of saccharine malaise,
Ev’ry one of them stand
In a stuttered daze.
Look at them, yellow as the sun girl,
But the light cast on them fades away.
They wilt in a moist brown dawn
And dream of better days.

And now my little girl,
We’ll stroll through the sunshine
Into the meadow of the Sunflower seeds.
That meadow you know girl,
Where there are no weeds.
Think I’ll paint a still life, baby,
Of just you and the girls.
A streak of sunny yellow
With white to soften the brown.

[moonbird]

The word "whore" is a bit over-used... Also I don't understand why every line ends in a comma.

[Hawkman]

I agree the puntuation of this poem needs work. Just one example:

"Leaves veined with scars are,
The rouge and blush of harm,"

the comma after are is either superfluous or in the wrong place. would be better:

leaves veined with scars
are the rouge and blush of harm.

I am also troubled by the over use of Girl and Baby which make it sound like an inferior beatles song from the 60's. I kept thinking of "Things we said today."

It's not a bad poem, but I think it would benefit from a little judicious editing.

Regards, H

[D. J. R. Caron]

Thanks for the feedback guys. For some reason I thought it was customary to end each line with a comma. I'm not entirely sure why I thought that, but no one's ever said anything about it before. Then again, I seldom show off my poetry. As for the overuse of 'girl' and 'baby', yes, that's exactly the kind of reaction I was expecting, this sort of overtly saccharine, lovely-dovey, juvenile connotation. As for the over-use of 'whore', well, it was only twice and I wasn't even aware of it. Maybe it's only noticeable because the usages of the word are so close together? But thanks again. I have a lot of poetry to re-punctuate. :smile5:

[PrinceMyshkin]

I too found the end-line commas confusing or distracting, but all in all the poem was a torrent of vivid, effective images. And a (possibly) sad undertone?

[D. J. R. Caron]

I'm grateful for all the feedback, but since the punctuation seems to be the primary complaint, I've fixed it and posted a new version. I hope that's okay. It's just that I don't want to keep hearing the same thing again and again, and by doing this I hope future readers will be less, as most of you say, distracted by something so increasingly frivolous and will be more able to comment on other aspects of the poem. But seriously, I'm really glad. I sincerely think it reads much better now.

[Bar22do]

Am I the lucky first who reads the revised version (only)? As it is, I like this poem, apparently light, deeply sad and with a dose of anxiety felt here and there. The overall colourful impressions mislead... and your art is in it, as it seems. Interesting.

Best wishes - Bar

[MorpheusSandman]

Hey, Muggy! I didn't know you started coming on here after I posted that first piece of yours! Anyway, didn't I read part of this one on EGF? I'm quite sure I did. It seems you've expanded it a great deal. I still quite like it, though it rambles just a bit in places. This is one reason I like form poetry because I'm terrible at self-editing! I always preach SEX when it comes to poetry: Simplify and EXclude.

I do think the close proximity of the two uses of "whore" is distracting. Also, the "whorehouse", with it's spondee clashes with the rhythm of the rest of the piece. A minor note on punctuation in poetry: it's best to standardize usage across a piece. And it can vary from piece to piece on how you use it. If you're writing primarily in end stops - where a line is meant to stop at the end - then you really don't even need periods and you can simply use commas where naturally appropriate. If, however, you want to use enjambment (where a thought runs on after reaching the end of a line) you usually have to use periods. One thing to keep in mind is how punctuation alters the rhythm and meaning of lines. In my last sonnet I originally wrote one line as "I swear I know it's too much", but changed it to "I swear, I know, it's too much"; you can see how differently the two read, with the former saying "I swear I know" as one thought, and in the other both "I swear" and "I know" are separate. So commas are useful in splitting up thoughts (look up the use of caesuras).

[D. J. R. Caron]

Thanks Jimmy. I've only started coming here yesterday, although I signed up right after you first showed this place to me. In any case, this is the same poem, although I never thought the additions were in any way considerable. After all, I thought, it is just two lines per stanza. Although, altogether that is about ten lines, so maybe you're right. I did like to the original for it's brevity, even though by standards, this is still pretty damn short. In any case, I'm thinking cutting about five lines would be pretty good. Honestly, I expanded the last line of the first two stanzas into several lines and just added more to the later ones for a sense of symmetry. I have always been ambivalent towards 'hen whorehouse'. I thought it was a juicy and delicious phrase, but I was never entirely sure that it fit there. But, may I ask, where exactly do you think it rambles?

[MorpheusSandman]

I think my biggest problem about "hen whorehouse" is that it's three stresses syllables in a row and "hen" makes for a strange adjective. Actually, "hennish whorehouse" works much better.

I think by "rambling" I meant there is there there are occasionally some undeveloped ideas and others that seem to develop beyond recognition. In the matter of the former, take the first stanza: "the meadow you know girl || where nobody bleeds" seems really significant because the idea of blood is in stark contrast to the image painted before it. But that idea doesn't seem to go anywhere. In the latter, I think it's somewhat jarring how the piece shifts from addressing the "girl" to delving into the elaborate metaphor that begins with "High above the dandelion whores" and seems to stretch to "In a stuttered daze" which occupies 13 lines.

[D. J. R. Caron]

It's interesting that you say that, because there was some intentional ambiguity on my part, at least in regards to stanza's three and four, because they're actually talking about two different things. However, as for the reference to blood, compare it to the similar line in stanza five, then back to the 'dandelion whores' in stanza three. I'm very glad that you brought that up, you're making me notice things I haven't noticed before.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm guessing the blood is a metaphor for virginity, correct? I'll admit I just now caught that. I'm still not sure it quite gels with the rest of the poem. One final thing I forgot to mention is to watch out for strong end rhymes because they naturally create a rhythmic expectation ala "weeds" and "seeds" from the last stanza. The poem ending on a non-rhyme seems a bit abrupt by comparison.