Raa Raa.

[Jerrybaldy]

Her cigarette had a red kissed tip
That matched her raa raa skirt
And the blood lost by the sun
drenched the parking lot.

Her son was many blocks above
Within walls of Bob the builder
Nicotine brown
Mothering his sullen cot.

She hugged me like an old lost friend
But yesterday in the blocks above,
I asked if she had come
And she looked satisfied, as she lied.

She leaked a wisp of smoke,
Smiley faced and sad,
Young blood around her feet
Like an old miscarried tide.

[Haunted]

This is really moving on several levels, aided by how well you presented her, "Smiley faced and sad", like a director in a movie, and the interaction between her and N. Nothing raa raa about any of this, except for the skirt, and the irony makes it even more sad. Well done Jerry.

[Hawkman]

Hi JB:

vivid images as usual but you might want to take a look at these lines:

"imprisoned in walls of Bob the builder
Nicotine stained Bob"

The reason I highlight them is that the first of the quoted lines doesn't read very well. imprisoned in the walls kind of suggests the son is one of the bricks: getting a bit Pink Floyd on us again ;) but it would scan better as

"imprisoned by bob the builder walls"

"Nicotine stained Bob" breaks the rhythm, a dactyl followed by a spondee. I like the idea of bob being nicotine stained and the following line is really good so I can't actually think of a satisfactory alternative. Possibly, "the nicotine stained builder Bobs" which keeps the rhythm going, but the line loses impact somehow. I did wonder whether having made reference to prison and cells you could have extended the metaphor by equating the Bobs with screws (that's gaolers for the colonials ;)) but it probably isn't necessary.

Though the last image of the poem is a powerful one, other than its repetition of the idea of blood lost by the sun in S1, tacked onto the end of S3, lapping young feet doesn't really make much sense in context. I feel that it is insufficiently related to what proceeds it. We are left with an Eisensteinish verbal/visual montage which stimulates disgust and revulsion and a sense of waste and neglect. But not pity. The words themselves are pitiless.

Fascinating stuff.

Live and be well - H

[blank|verse]

Another magical misery tour into the unremittingly bleak world of Jerrybaldy…

There is something compellingly grim about your poems, like rubbernecking at a car crash. This poems works on the grating contrast of the appearance and name of the raa-raa skirt with the reality and predicament of the woman wearing it.

There’s a bit of form as well, as each quatrain is a single sentence; and there’s even some rhyming, as the last words of stanzas 1-2 and 3-4 rhyme. (Although don’t we have ‘car parks’ rather than ‘parking lots’ in Blighty, Jerry?:)) Even the imagery of the sun’s blood ‘drenching the parking lot’ finds a neat, if visceral, parallel at the end of the poem. (That and the ‘nicotine stained Bob’ are the poem’s imaginative flourishes.)

In that way, it puts me in mind of the poetry of Charles Simic, whose poems are bleak in a different way, but he still uses straightforward language and clear almost child-like forms, which creates a certain incongruity and unease with the subject matter (death and violence are never far away, lurking in the shadows of his poems).

I think this is where Simic succeeds and what makes his poems different from yours. Even though there’s a lot of graphic imagery in your poetry, it seems it’s there to shock, and perhaps just to shock. But by naming things so clearly and crudely – haermorrage, miscarriage, etc. – paradoxically it makes these safer, easier to deal with, more superficial; they’re as clear as a table or bag of chips. What Simic does, by working in the gothic tradition, is he invokes the subconscious, he creates unease by making hints, suggestions, by making the reader do a double-take, so they are never quite sure of their footing or what Simic really means.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts; I’m not sure you’ll give a fig either way but there we go. It’s of credit to your poems though that they can provoke such analysis.

[Jerrybaldy]

Excuse my tardiness, I have been away on holiday. I offloaded this slice of bleakness before setting off :)

Thank you all three for taking the time to comment.

Mr Hawk you make some very good points and I have unsuccessfully tried to act upon them.

Thank you blank|verse for such an in depth reply. Everything that you said makes sense to me and I will take your points on board and have made some changes.

Nearly everything I post is written spontaneously whilst on line. I may be able to produce better work if I took more time but that tends to kill the pleasure I take in writing it.

[Delta40]

I write onto the thread as well. You do a marvellous job of serving up slices of dismal realities which the reader can savour with great pleasure.