[Central Standard Time]
when you swallowed the sun like a starving refugee
and left us in a ménage à trois of shrapnel and atomic warfare,
yesterday's sushi,
and time-bomb guitar chords that already seem ages away.
She sips at a dirty martini,
you opt for chilled jasmine tea;
I swallow a cocktail of semen and saliva
while contemplating the orgasmic nothingness of your mind,
empty like the liquor cabinet
of Ernest Hemingway.
Once, you sat back with savoir faire
and the sentimentality of marijuana,
raw fingers and raw vocals,
stringing sustenance for me.
But you have your Cio-Cio San now,
more like Yoko Ono
than a stained-glass butterfly.
Now, your songs will be nothing but
musical masturbation,
alphabetically organized,
A collecting dust before Z.
Author notes
Second revision. Still working on line breaks & flow. All comments and suggestions quite welcome.
Elizabeth
P.S. So I love my music and get sad when things end. Let me have my moment of angsting in verse when things are over If I could channel Tori Amos, I would, but unfortunately my palms and fingertips are mortal.
By the way, should 'savoir faire' be italicized? I'm clueless.
Written July 12th, 2006
In a list
A contest entry
- Are You Ready For This? by onerios13.
15000 points, ended July 18, 2006, 27 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
What did you think
Comments
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PERFECT
Now all you need do is send in a bio. around 8 to 10 lines. You know how to do one. Make sure name and age appear and then the history bit. send it to me and I will add it like I am doing this.
HUGS -
You are very talented but there are to many weird methaphors crawded on square feet!!! The reader's brain just feels the need to go on automatic pilot.Some of them are a little bit forced( like "orgasmic nothingness" and "musical masturbation" ).It is too obvious ,the intention of shocking and impressing.Try to loose a bit the tension within the lines.
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Really nice I love it. I really like the beggining. Its very meaningful and beatiful.
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not a bad write. I guess i will have to keep checking it out as you said it is still a rough draft.
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Do you read much of the New York School of poets? Frank O' Hara, John Ashbery, etc. because the style of writing, enjambament, and theme all fit very nicely with this. I love it. I', bookmarking it. Keep writing !!!
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well written full of good imagery and life great job
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Yeah, Savoir faire should be italicized because it is a foreign word.
I loved this. It reminded me of the poetry of Dax Riggs in his bands Acid Bath, and Deadboy and the Elephantmen (you should check 'em out), and they are becoming one of my favorite bands, so of course I liked this.
I won't lie, what enticed me about this was the "I'll applaud the heck out of you" part. That's really what I came here for.
However, being the Honest John that I am (at least here... I occasionally do do what others do too and just write words so that I can post more of my poems online), I will give you honest criticism. Like I've already said, I loved this.
I loved the rhyme scheme, whether it flowed all the time or not. Sometimes, that's what I like. When they don't rhyme perfectly. Sometimes imperfections make something perfect. Read a lot of Taylor Mali or beat poems? Good stuff.
I'm pretty sure I understood almost all of this, but not quite all. Of course, I'm not sure that I understood what I thought I understood, either. Meaning that there could be many interpretations of this like a David Lynch film or something. Like my English teacher used to say about Wallace Stevens, "Art can never be understood the first time around," and paraphrasing Emerson, "Geniuses are always misunderstood in their time". Not that I'm saying this is GENIUS work, but I think it certainly could be considered Genius caliber.
One thing that I do not get is the Title. Could you please explain that to me a bit? I don't quite know what K means, even though I merely think that I have an inkling as to what the rest of the title is hinting at. Just to be sure, could you verify? Thanks.
~Dead Kennedy Rolls
PS= These were my favorite lines:
"I swallow a cocktail of semen and saliva
while contemplating the orgasmic nothingness of your mind,
empty like the liquor cabinet
of Ernest Hemingway."
HAHAHA! Flippin' brilliant!
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P.S. I've revised. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
Elizabeth
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Interesting and Original
Well you asked me to be critical so. parts of it don't flow so easily. I am sure you already know this. I do however like the abrupt bittersweet tone the writer has.
And this particular line,
'raw fingers and raw emotion and raw vocals'
in my opionon should be changed to something like this
'raw fingers, raw emotion, and raw vocal chords'
you should also capitalize A & Z to make sur the reader doesn't get confused.
a collecting dust before z
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There will be no deleting of you... you helped a great deal. Thanks so much, I truly appreciate it.
Elizabeth
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First things first...
[This is a pet peeve of mine] I hope you go through and capitalize what needs to be capitalized, especially the i's and beginning of a line after a period. I think if you are going to go with the whole e.e. cummings approach then punctuation should be ommitted, also... though I've never been fond of the whole e.e. cummings style writing. Unless, of course, it's his work. I like my importance (LOL) and commas, especially. I'm a comma whore.
I think that instead of using "greedily" perhaps just substituting it for an image? As a cheap example (and I do mean cheap)
"when you swallowed the sun like a fat kid
at a buffet and left us
in a menage a trois of shrapnel
and atomic warfare,"
also threw in a line break there that I would suggest. Those long lines (for some reason) were irritating me.
Same here:
"and i swallow a cocktail of semen
and saliva while contemplating
the orgasmic nothingness of your mind"
Now, that is merely how I would do it, and well... some don't like my line breaks. Heck, sometimes I don't like my line breaks.
I wasn't fond of the triple use of raw in the format that you used it. Or maybe it was the triple use of "and"?
raw fingers
raw emotion
raw vocals? Or something like that...
As always... these are merely suggestions. I actually really liked this piece. It's not shy (which I find engaging) and uses a really great vocabulary, while not being pretensious (sp? can't use that as an insult to me, I can't even spell it!)
I hope this was what you were looking for. If not, feel free to delete me.
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Stunning. You chose excellent workds. Awesome! Great feeling and wording. Come check out my work.
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all the best in contest be well
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Superb
Wowee, if this is just a rough draft then I can't even begin to imagine how it will be once you have refined this poem. I think it is absolutely stunning, just the way it is. It is written superbly well with excellent choice of wording, wonderful flow and it an amazing poem. Well done and thnks for sharing. Good luck also in the contest. Marilyn -
i'm just going to applaud this cuz it's awesome. nothing more to say.
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WOW
an amazing write... great feeling and i love the wording throught the whole thing... this poem show great talent... expecially since you call it "raw" i love it just the way it is.... great write and i hope to get a chance to read more of your work... thank you for sharing your wonderful work with the rest of us... Nessa -
good luck
good luck in that contest, i hopr you do well or at least get a trophy. i like this poem it is great. it flows together well, keep up the good work, i hope to read more of your poetry in the future,ttyl
-fallnangel- -
Wow, this piece mezmorized me because not only is it slightly dark...it has a scent of sweet insanity. I love things like that. I also love the sexual metaphors. I don't really have anything critical to say, it does seem to ramble a bit but that isn't anything a little tightening up won't fix.














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