Ventriloquist Poetry

[Delta40]

The ventriloquism of poetry
has a dizzy, floating effect.

haw haw, guffaw.

Silence mouthpiece while a hand recites
palpable posey.
This automaton pretense
giddies my sense of stability.
Grinning like a stooge's patsy,
I perform only as a sideshow dummy.
So be my backbone and let the sketch continue.
Go on. Applaud, laugh, boo.
My character mumbles balladry
while you puppeteer the next verse with strings.
Alter my rotating habit of circular themes
Up and down
Side to side

(A slapstick pie in the face will fit right here.)
Kasplatch!

Haven't you noticed my lip-synched doggerel
swooning through labyrinths of bone and soft tissue,
pounding your ears each sunrise?
Part of me writes in sleepy fluid-filled loops
but when I'm tipped to one side,
your hand releases its grip and I lose my spine..
At the closing part of the act,
harmony crumples like a heavy curtain
as I tumble to the last line
like some vague, senseless point.

[L€lä RËmØ MÅðçÂ]

Awesome!

[L€lä RËmØ MÅðçÂ]

No, not awesome. That's too informally described. How about...

Written Splendidly and beautifully, a very depending poem.

[YesNo]

I liked the idea of the puppet needing someone to be its backbone.

[MystyrMystyry]

This is quite excellent Delta - ventriloquists and dummies creepy spooky ooh aah!

You've captured the weirdness well with a good twisting of language used

One thing: you should put a post-it on your monitor for line-breaks whenever you use italics (to keep it from feeling cramped) (I'm no formalist, but going over past criticisms on this site it's often pointed out how effective they are, and I now get it

Another winner!

[Jerrybaldy]

Who's hand is up you Delta? I like the break out italics and the desparate end :)

[L€lä RËmØ MÅðçÂ]

This is really my style

[Delta40]

Thanks.

[AuntShecky]

A tour de force, Delta. I didn't even see your lips moving. Way to "throw your voice" around!

I searched all over the web for an anecdote I'd read years ago in the Little, Brown Dictionary of Anecdotes.
Way before your time (and a little before mine) one of the most popular radio show personalities was a ventriloquist named Edgar Bergen.
(How a ventriloquist worked on radio is beyond me, but then today's Howard Stern has his listeners believing exotic dancers are stripping in his studio.)

Anyway, Edgar played straightman to his wisecracking "dummy" Charlie McCarthy, who naturally got all the laughs. During one radio broadcast, however, the director noticed to his horror that all of Edgar's lines were going out on the air, but not those of Charlie. Finally the gaffe was discovered. Whenever Edgar spoke, the technician operating the microphone moved the mike above his head -- and whenever Charlie "talked," he moved the mike over the dummy's head! Now that's what I call "willful suspension of disbelief!

[Delta40]

Thanks aunty. I listened to some fellow discuss poetry as an all knowing being and I wondered how he would rate me. Before I knew it, I saw myself as his dummy...and the next inspiration for a poem!

[L€lä RËmØ MÅðçÂ]

:skep: What is your description of this person about?

The emoticon I need to make for right now:
My eyes are rolled,I am making a retarded faceand pointing at the computer, like:
"Omigosh that was posted JUST yesterday. Seriously?I-i-i-i-I...?"