Sanskrit poet's game

[blp]

There is so much
I would say if I could
contradict myself
sufficiently to show you
how much of
coming and going out
and not speaking
or meeting your eyes
in those days was
the product
not of some
storm that threatened
all the foundations of
your various impromptu
graves, but only
what was necessary

to make the grass grow.
'You're so defiant',
you would say,
as if I would never even allow you to get the washing in. Yes, but
of course, I know now
with a meteorologist's
perspective,
having nowhere else
to go,
but down
and
nothing else
to do,
but show itself,
the proof of rain is
defiant.


Next:
picked up a bottle of beaujolais from the Costcutter.

[firefangled]

Oh yeh, that's a good one, blp.

A difficult line I thought, but you made it almost look easy. I loved the running out to get the wash in line.

[blp]

Thanks, firefangled. Well it was a good line. Padgett did say in his description that the point was to provide a line that was really difficult to write to. In a weird sort of almost paradoxical and slightly unnerving way, that can sometimes seem to make it easier.

[TheFifthElement]

Late nite shopping

Drive-thru,
hunting down the Regent Road
shatter-lighted
night trap. Skip past Maccy-D’s,
KFC’s, and Harry Ramsden’s
fishing out the ship canal:

not my channel.
At 2am it’s something else
I’m seeking, the reeking bones
of humanity; strafing the streets
with my blacked out windows,
music base-low;
lads kicking hobos,
flashing the steel-like
caps of their boots like kicking a football
on the blister-green pitch
at Old Trafford. Ah, bliss.

But not this, not my twist,
or at least not on this night
as the moon winks a light on
the gas regulators and slum
flats of Hulme; the Asda sign lending
a weary green hue to the weed-peddling
fly-boys dealing their treats.
Just another night on the Manchester streets.

Now I’m getting off beam
these guys ain’t my scene, it’s the ladies
I’m needing; tight ones
that breed through the night in the ginnels,
and round the bus station
splitting their seams for the sake
of the nation and sharp guys like me,
cruising-out hungry and chancing
to win a fine strip of skin
with her knicker-lights on,
parole on her tongue,
and legs that go on until Christmas is gone.

I’m rounding the tip
of a shade-stricken park
when a gaggle of girls shimmer
out of the dark so I sliver the window,
pick one and we go out
for a quick ride; she fits me a treat,
we climb to the rise
of the slippery peak and taste
the gold sun-shower,
oxygen-stalling, I slip her right over the edge
and we’re falling back down
to reality, grey-glow banality,
scraping our arses through ****-hole insanity.

It’s okay, I’m dreaming
the truth is I’m leading an ordinary life,
two kids and a wife and a job
straightening walls in the kitchens
and halls of the latter-day worker: the grifters
and shirkers on council estates;
but on this night my mates were all round
for a chin-wag, a couple of beers,
the football on telly: I’ve known them
for years. Then the missus appears, glasses in hands
and would you believe it she goes
and demands that I source her a top-up,
at this time – you credit?
I wasn’t too happy and you bet
that I said it, but here I am driving in the dregs
of the night: a freeze in the air and the moon
straggly bright, and I’m shamed to admit
that in her hands I’m butter, as I picked up
a bottle of Beaujolais from the Costcutter.



next line: the cat's puked on the worktop again.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Re Late Nite Shopping, #124... I hadn't looked into this thread before but am fascinated now by some of what I read, and this, this latest, is nothing


but


raw


unmitigated


effing

genius!

[blp]

Yes, great work, 5th. A bit of an epic really. I really had no idea what kind of poem was going to come from that line, but yours is exactly right.

[firefangled]

Absolutely excellent, Fifth! What quintessence in elevating such a common urban act with story. It was a good and difficult line blp left and you nailed it with a sledge.

And then to leave yet another gem with the kitties.

[Hobbes]

Well, an epic and oddesy. But I want to try to

The basses held the air with sonorous chest howl of
An alpha
I heard most of it from a place of rain and gloom
Coming into a leave that was both tantalizing and
a denial to the life I always had.

A misty realism of noises all parallel in some
move or shape to the
Drumming of the bass,
the humming of the speaks, the strumming of the wires that were a sweet worship of the man who lived on them.

Virginia was close, seeing the world
while holding onto my arm as to not be pulled in.
The singer, the singer was a tempest that the steam or the blue cigar smoke couldn’t close on.
All this we listened to, but what I was hearing was that rain, softly pouring to keep me awake to the reality.

But I had the club, the club had its musicians, and those musicians would always be had by… that music.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I walked on the stage and heard the rain pour,
It was how I always keep my music.
My eyes were fallin to the floor, knowing that this life wasn’t mine any more.
The light was turned to high and the heat was death to me, but not the cold world outside.
I looked to the others to keep up with me, this was special and they knew it. They couldn’t see it, but it was me crying from the deepest part that nobody would ever reach.
I sat along the other dulled figures in the back as I picked up a bottle of Beaujolais from the Costcutter.

[blp]

Sorry, Hobbes. Nice poem, but the point of this thread is to write a poem with the last line the previous writer provides after their poem.

EDIT

Oh, wait, I see what you've done. OK, fair enough.

To keep things clear: Next poet, go back to TheFifthElement's post to get the next line.

EDIT2

And having read your poem properly, I can say, I really love it. Great long lines. Hope we'll see more from you.

[Hobbes]

I'll make sure to do it right this time

I sat in my car,
The ignition sounded too strained,
Like I was vicariosly feeling it
I slammed on my wheel.

This wasn't the car,
a rustic buick I treasured since forever.
This was life. Car dying out
in the middle of the rain
In the middle of a long and winding road.

I got the car started.. eventually
I turned on the tuner radio,
keeping it to a quiet mellow jazz.
I saw it was a nice night out so I turn down my windows.

I look up
A CAR> I TURN TO THE RIGHT> TO THE RIGHT > STOP> STOP>
I hold on.

I wake and Im not sure but I think, Im dead.
I don't know what to feel. Hate? No. Sad, thats all that i felt.

Then, I finally feel relief from it all.

A voice God?, whoever. It doesn't matter:
It says that I can will get all that was special to me and what I want.
But in heaven, they cast off all that is worldly.
What did I want? I didn't want anything, really.
but I can't want nothing.
I'm sure my whole life I didn't want NOTHING.
But here is the question before me. What was life on Earth, if not my wife and success.

I can't get in because I want something, probably something I don't know.
But I try to want what?

-----------------------------------
Next-
During a zoological visit to a prison inmate's wife.

[blp]

I'll make sure to do it right this time

*laughing* You didn't, but it's easy to see how the misunderstanding occurred. 'But I try to want what?' is my signature (taken from a poem of white camellia's). 5th's line was:

the cat's puked on the worktop again.

Still, I like you're suggestion for a last line. I might have a go with it myself, then just post 5th's again to restore the natural order of the game.

[Riesa]

Some modern artists place circles where once there were squares,
some put them on paper, some fly them in air,
some think it’s most clever to paint them dark red,
or throw them at walls, and see where they've bled;

but today…
this unfashionable artist pushes the cat out of it’s nap,
revisions the past from an old square of French print
brought from some tropical place in nineteen o’ six:

High mirrors, wood-grain, green bamboo slats,
monstrous ferns in glazed china pots;
mustachioed men inventing dangers to face
sip pomegranate-juice in white linen suits,
they drowse in wicker on cool terra floors, wooing the juleps
with droplets of mint, stealing the cream from the house-kitten’s dish;

one charmed in particular with emerald eyes crossed,
a bronzed little slinklet seemed held in night’s bloom,
and apart from her sepia tone she was undeniably nude.

From costly silk pockets slip gold tinted lies,
they lasso her need with damp palmed desire,
From her seat where she drowns sweet defiance in rye,
She hears hazy words, “Sing,” they insist, “Chantez, Cherie!”

Her humming comes through like a flightless duck’s moan,
After strangling countless chansons she staggers then sighs
like the bellies of rusted ships through waves at low tide,
like the broken fins of dolphins swept in with the fish,
like bones chewed by charter rats slicked with fish grease
bothered and bloodied by angry-toothed cats;
oh, fatuous foreigners flaccid as brie,
you are as alien as the feeling of glee is to me,
for I am as mad as a river in spring,
you have taken all of my land, but you still must claim me?

Her themes, her sighs, her dreams
like this artist’s pens, are out of ink,
and through gross misaim and her own due neglect,
the artist has stopped musing and whistles in wrath;
the cat’s gone and puked on the worktop again, oh, that damn cat,
the cat has puked on the worktop again.


next line:

During a zoological visit to a prison inmate's wife.

[balehead]

Nice poem Riesa, maybe I'll have a go at that last line ... but not right now, i'm in a very unpoetical mood!

[balehead]

My life hangs on exceedingly unreliable strings,
Fluttering in the breeze and wobbling crazily.

I recall the path by which I arrived at such a perilous place.
My life was set in stone. An unchangeable and monotonous
Series of actions which held no real meaning or purpose.
I found myself behind a desk, day after day,
Staring down a microscope upon minuscule and insignificant specks.

It was an ominous day that all this changed.
I stepped outside my neat white house, to enter my pristine white car.
Skeletal leaves swept about my feet, calling to desperate thoughts
Of my entrapment in an empty life.
Something snapped inside of me, and, my mind in turmoil,
I turned from thoughts of sanctioned actions,
And let my mind run wild.
This madness did last but one second, ere I found myself again.
My life restricted once more to a pattern of
The blind following of authorization and law.

As my hands followed their predestined course,
Writing endless and meaningless figures on glaring white sheets of paper,
A subtle change to my daily routine was noted
(By I alone).
Upon my desk lay a previously unnoticed envelope of the cleanest white.
Within it lay a sheet of paper which did require such a
Different mindset to that which I treated my usual work,
That I found myself once more wallowing in the pit of madness,
And despair.

My mind still struggling with impossible thoughts,
I followed the direct instruction on the note,
Soon finding myself standing on the outside of black house of death –
As it is known to its’ inmates –
A prison.
The sergeant within told me with no hidden amount of glee,
That the man I needed to question,
For explicit reasons pertaining to my job,
Was not receiving visitors at such an early time of day,
As he was laid up in the sickroom,
After a brawl with several guards.
I was directed to visit his wife – a women of great discretion –
Who would be able to produce copies of her husbands’
Scientific papers which could, indeed, prove useful to my research.

I entered the aforesaid house,
My mind playing tricks on me and running in circles,
Fearful of being forever trapped within the mortal
Stringencies which held its genius,
The ethics of a submissive society.
Such chaos within me did not lend well to my outer self,
And I fidgeted, desperately hoping to escape
The house which I had previously sought to be within.

The woman sat me down in the living room,
Instructing me to remain thus until she returned,
With the necessary papers.
I could not bend my will to behave so feeble a lady,
And once her footsteps had faded into non-existence,
I burst from the chair in which I sat, And headed for the kitchen.

Within such a room I knew not what I expected to find,
But my eyes first alighted on flue then on stove.
On fridge, then on knife.

Her blood pooled around me on the floor,
In pulsing waves of shining red.
The last feeble kicks of her legs,
As she lay in her death throes,
Upset a chair, and knocked it over.
I watched her without malice or spite.
An overwhelming sense of satisfaction enveloped me,
And I forsook myself at last, during a time of great inner struggle -
During A Zoological Visit to a Prison Inmate’s Wife

The next line is ...
And he said, "Do you live in the Middle Ages?"
----
Hope that's ok..

[vin1391]

Wow... Its been a long time since I was here. But once I came I couldn't go without reading this topic and there sure is a lot of poems added here. I'll pop by and try my hand at this again.

Its great to see you all kept up the work..