Alarm Call

[Hawkman]

Dawn has gilded distant air-brushed hills
and plated dewy roofs and windows to the east
with yellow metal.

The horizon, a variegated glow,
darkening cerulean overhead,
unscarred by cloud.

Below, the Day-Glo dustmen shout to drown
a wagon’s diesel and hydraulic whine,
while wheelie-bins boom and clatter,

percussively disgorging refuse in its jaws,
such sounds compel late dreamers to relinquish sleep,
and blinking, realize they’re out of time.

[Delta40]

love those garbos on a Wednesday morning! Nice imagery as usual Hawk. Not sure about the double use of glow and variegated? (will have to get my dictionary for that one...)

[Haunted]

Very vivid visual and audio images. What a rude awakening!

[Hawkman]

Thanks Delta, and I see what you mean about the glow, but I feel the second is mitigated by the Day, though I have modified the spelling to reflect the trade name :D Variegated in context is ok I think, although perhaps graduated might just have been more appropriate but it didn't read as well.

Haunted, thanks for your kind words, and yes, it was! Still it was such a nice morning I thought I might as well get up (and I had to put the bins out anyway) :D

Live and be well - H

[DieterM]

I agree with both Delta and Haunted - a compelling poem! While the block I'm living in is very very noise, what with the double-windows, I only ever hear a dim din, like some rushing and flushing. There are two noises, though, that can always be clearly heard: the "garbage crew" and urgencies (police, ambulances, etc.). And do the garbage men work early! And do they make noise! Here in Paris, they work according to a "you can go home when you're finished"-scheme so they don't bother trying to make less noise...

Had to look up variegated, too, and was rather reassured by Delta's comment (she's a native speaker, after all...). I think I would have put "mani-coloured" or "varicoloured", but that's your native speaker's advantage: he/she can use fancier words to say the same (and of course, I know a different word doesn't convey exactly the same image; it's all about nuances...)

[Hawkman]

Hi Dieter and thanks for reading. I'm glad you enjoyed the poem but it seems the waste disposal engineers are the same the world over. Tough and thankless task though they perform, I suppose their anti-social noise levels are a petty vengance :) after all, if they have to be up, why shouldn't everyone else be - lol I wonder if the authorities ever considered padded bins or issuing electric trucks and slippers to the crews :D I bet they'd still shout, though.

Live and be well - H

[tailor STATELY]

Loved this line:
Dawn has gilded distant air-brushed hills. Wonderful observation/description.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[MystyrMystyry]

Reminds me of a childhood memory.

They do it differently here though: the trucks have a robot arm that reaches out, lifts up the bin and empties it in one automated movement (which at first I thought you were referring to with hydraulics - but perhaps you were). They haven't ironed out the bug that leaves the lid open after however.

The early morning descriptors were well done.

[Hawkman]

tS, thankee sir, glad you enjooyed it :)

MM, thanks for reading. Over here they wheel the bins out and hook them onto the back of the wagon which then tips up and inverts them. They seem to have got it worked out so the lids close afterwards lol.

Live and be well - H

[symphony]

I love the flow from the dreamy horizon to the earthly awakening of the city. I woke up too with a start at that third stanza. :p

[Hawkman]

Hi symphony, and thanks for reading. glad you enjoyed it. :)

Live and be well - H

[blank|verse]

'Except on Wednesdays, when I get rudely awoken by the dustmen... Parklife!' - that's what sprang to mind reading this, Hawk! :)

I think there are some nice touches in this, but I think you're missing a trick by setting the poem up for two stanzas (half the poem) before the binmen - sorry, refuse collection operatives - arrive. Just have them barge into the poem, in medias res - 'Woken by the clatter and boom of the wheelie-bins...', something like that. Those images for me are where the strength of the poem lies; the binmen are a bit of a gift to the writer, with their sights and sounds, and you capture that well.

I quite liked how the imagery of the first stanza foreshadows their arrival, with the 'yellow metal', but I think there is a clash of this 'industrial / artificial' imagery ('plated dewy roofs', 'air-brushed hills') with the natural imagery of the second stanza ('variegated glow').

Perhaps the diction and syntax should be more bluntly monosyllabic. The binmen are in charge of this poem! Maybe more alliteration, and more simple diction would work well, rather than the slightly aloof-sounding phrases like

percussively disgorging refuse in its jaws,
such sounds compel late dreamers to relinquish sleep,
Read 'Docker' by Seamus Heaney (http://www.best-poems.net/seamus_heaney/poem27729.html) for a great example of how the strength of the character seems to order the poet how to write. Still, enjoyable piece.

[Hawkman]

Hi b/v. I'm afraid your reference to Parklife left me completely blank as I didn't recognise the verse until I heard it on the net. ;) Then I recalled the song right away, although I had no recollection of the lyrics.

Thanks very much for your analysis which, as usual, provided some valuable insights. I hear what you are saying about starting with the binmen and having them barge in at the begining. I'm going to give your other suggestions some thought. I'm sorry you thought there was a clash in the imagery though because I was describing the scene as I saw it. The hills looked air brushed to me, the horizon glowed and darkened like the view through a graduated filter to the overhead and the windows and roofs flashed gold with reflected sun. Maybe I should have filtered it through my imagination rather than reacted as I saw it. An interesting point that.

Especially thanks for the link to the Heaney poem. I have a lot of time for his work and have some in my library. Docker is brilliant. I've been feeling lately as though I've forgotten how to write, so thanks for the revitalising pointers.

Live and be well - H

[blank|verse]

Thanks for the reply, Hawk. And yes, 'Docker' is brilliant. So many outstanding lines. I love the deictic opening - There - so much, I think I'll nick it for one of my own! :)

But it's a good poem to learn from in terms of imagery. One thing I learnt from a published writer who gave me some pretty honest advice about my poems was how important it is to be in control of imagery - how it has to work not only in itself, but also in the context of the whole poem, so this requires a greater awareness of the connotations of any images you come up with.

In 'Docker', the imagery of cap 'jutting like a gantry's crossbeam' and the speech 'clamped in the jaws' vice' all come from the right semantic field, and build on each other, as well as being brilliant in their own right. Keep writing, and maybe think about compiling a list of do's and dont's (or 'try to do' and 'try to avoid' perhaps) as an aide memoire for writing poems. I've got (an incomplete) one, and it helps with some things - 'Oh yeah, I forgot that; that's a good point; that's rubbish, what are you talking about?!' - that kind of thing! :)