you can tell it's nighttime
because every once in a while
a face, long and cadaverous
will leap from the darkness
into the soft cone cast by a streetlight
pause for effect
then dive back into the cool anonymity beyond
where trashcans clang and cats screech
the beach is littered with shark-glass
twinkling like the tumbling breakers
the children play pinochle in wetsuits
and nibble sheets of chewy fruit snacks
a piano alternately tinkles and booms
in the trailerpark
in the desert
under clearest sky and calmest moon
we march out of pajamas
and into strange rooms
to find one another
there we squirm naked and smooth
a pile of blind piglets
writhing for something to suck
`
A contest entry
- Enter Sandman - a suzi & jan contest by jantastic.
3500 points, ended November 7, 2008, 13 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 48 of 48
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hoo hoo hoo! This is the kind of stuff i'm talking about! Bravo!
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Bravo, darlin', for snatching up the silver.
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shark glass - yes
there's something about the opening - I almost want to say scrap it bit i don't want to lose those long cadaverous faces. What if you started at "every now and again" ?
I dunno I'll try to remember to come back and look at it again with a clearer (or maybe less clear would be better) head. A pile of blind piglets.. you come up with the most intriguing imagery.
I like the marching out of pajamas.
thanks
slurp
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and this is the type of entry that makes me hold a contest...
Though, I don't think I want to have this dream, you've taken me there...and I think I've seen that long face before..though, it felt less creepy than your description of it.
Glad to see this here.
THanks for entering.
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terrifying
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I really don't think that one needs to be in a trailer park to be in a trailer park. Somedays feel as though I am trapped in a trailer park sans stars and UFO's, So long as we can keep the weight gain, sex and swearing alive everything else seems to be status quo.
the beach is littered with shark-glass twinkling like the tumbling breakers the children play pinochle in wetsuits
thats great stuff. Small typo
there we squirm naked and smooth an(d?) or a pile of blind piglets writhing for something to suck
although who cares, its a great line isn't?
good work I loved it. So few on this site write with that underpinned humour that is genuinely amusing.
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I saw Jorie Graham last night and she read like she wanted an orgy with the whole audience. She makes eye contact and swishes her hair about and she's bossy and someone asks a question about metrics or something terribly dull and she just rants on about how it betttterrr be Obama or the whole world's fucked which is much more interesting and important. Then she slagged of Palin which was jolly good fun. Anyway -just your poem has an orgy and a writhing so it made me think about how she reads out her stuff. And she did an impression of Apollo as the dolphin. That was pretty cool.
Your poem has loads of dark tentacles sprawling out in different directions - they kinds of tangle and cross over in bits then diverge again. Chewy fruit snacks. Like Gushers. I like Gushers although they're like you're eating an alien which seems wrong. Why it is and not it's in line 1? I like how the monstery shadow in the first stanza's preoccupied by his stage presence. That pause for effect thing. Makes me think of Monster's Inc. and how everything's so rehearsed. Alternately next to piano's very lovely - "alternately" has this staccato quality to it so you can kind of hear the playing.
Ummm. I was wondering if you thought Burn Before Reading was honourable or a bitter let down? I can't decide and that sort of wimpy pathetic lack of opinion makes me feel weak. There's a better word for orgy in the last bit I think - I mean you paint the orgyness so you don't need it say it really. Almost maybe like saying it spoils the picture of it. I don't know. It's a great poem. Cat's screeching is lazy as hell but its prosaism works to stir up the the familiar nightmare scene. Pajamas make me feel sick. Pajamas are so silly. My boyfriend's just brought thermal longjohns and a matching thermal vest even though he's not 80 as the hovel is freezing and we can't afford heating (and niether can the mother earth of course.) Thermal longjohns probably aren't the best plan for any male human but he's unbearably tall and skinny so they make him look like a gigantic blue condom. It's disgusting. Pajamas aren't quite that awful but they really are quite silly.
It's really nice to read some poems on here. I feel like I've been locked away in the archives for months only reading old dusty stuff because I'm doing a postgrad now and they don't let us see daylight ever ever and this is all shiny and newww poetry and rather lovely horray. I think I'll zoom through all your new ones now before I get whipped for leaving the library.
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Don't know about Burn Before Reading. What is it?
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After after after I mean after not before that's obvious. I don't think I like it. I think you know perfectly well I meant after and you're just trying to highlight what I dolt I am. I don't think that's especially civil.
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I don't know what it means in either instance.
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Pathetic. I was under the impression you liked the cohen brothers. Shomer fucking shabbos. Don't be fatuous Jeffrey.
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Hey, i saw burn after reading, and was pretty disappointed. Not that I wanted to turn it off or anything, but I don't want to watch it again, except that part where clooney unveils his invention/contraption with the swivelling chair dildo. I laughed for at least the next 20 minutes when i saw that.
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I was talking about my rug.
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Hey, is your boyfriend the Kabluey?
Yeah, you may be right in that the orgy bit is overkill. -
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Sadly not but if I was going to form a relationship with any corporate mascot it'd definitely be Kabluey. I like his constant look of shame.
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When I was a little kid I had gerbils and i still have nightmares of those squirming pink babies which were eaten by the father because I didn't know I was to separate them.
That image kept me from commenting on this.
I think the title does exactly what it supposed to do. I keep thinking of the Walrus from Alice and again - all those pink oysters...
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the original title was: I awoke smelling of worm blubber
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oh. well i like your new title much better. is it cold there? it is very cold here. i feel winter poems chilling my veins. -
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You got something against worm blubber? How appalled would Howard be?
Yes. it is cold. I don't know, it looked pretty cold in New England on TV last night. I, of course, had Denver to win. I might be better off if I just flung darts at the sheet. -
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I miss Worm.
I think winter poems are my near favorite though - despite I don't like the cold there is something magnificent about frost and such.
of course I like hot poems too.
i have enough points -- should we attempt another contest? lossa people never enter contests that we host though. it is depressing. and bad for my ego.
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i have a kajillion points, but little time right now. we should though, soon.
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Tough being a CEO ? -
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At times, though, I think, technically, the business would have to be a corporation.
Have you seen the movie "Kabluey"? See it, if you haven't. -
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oh.
i just watched the trailer.
i will immediately find it. wow.
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it should be good for your ego
You guys are intimidating judges 
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LOL we're marshmallows.
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big blue somnambulant marshmallows
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This is the kind of writing I would expect to see published, its concise, shows rather than tells and just pours the metaphor like a well bodied red.
MM
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hard sobs about a rock soft clock
whenever the liquid swallows sound
whatever is human
which end way it breaks
is cement with beach taste
on amoral tide ground
the command that condemns as perverted
the whales
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fuuuuuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkk
apparently I've already awarded the multi-claps, thought I swear I never clicked any button
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did I forget the multi-claps?
must not forget the muti-claps -
oh, I just have to tell someone - a 6'9" Asian man just walked through my kitchen. My son is 6' and he looked puny, so I had to ask.
6'9"
akkkkk
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was it Yao?
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I think it was Yao's little brother
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Did I ever tell you that my partner, a songwriter and critic extradorindaire, said your poem sounds like me, in 2007 Revelry? I was very proud, but also very wary. But when I catch bits like screech and beach, though, I do see myself, and I presume to Know what the author was thinking, as I know what I would have been thinking. Which is to say - uh huh. I know this mind.
I can't help it, I read the previous comments. Someone complained about the title, but the title drew me in. I actually haven't read your previous post, not because I wouldn't expect it to be a good poem but because the title - don't ask me to recall what it was, I'm old and it's Friday night - sounded like an EdP poem and, fuck, I hate - make that HATE - predictability. But the Walrus draws me in, because after all, I was playing billiards in my friend's basement while Walrus was repeating on the stereo, more decades ago than I'll admit to.
All that ancient history aside, there are some nits to chew on, yum . . . and some delicious moments . . .
pale and cadaverous
I dunno, is not cadaverous always pale? or is pale necessary . . . could be I'm missing the necessity
the soft cone cast by a streetlight
oh christ, I do love that image
cats screech
the beach
already mentioned that lovely saute (ya gotta look up the French, since in this case it's nothing to do with cooking)
is littered with shark-glass
twinkling like the tumbling breakers
I wrote a poem once, and I swear you've internalized it and think you've made it your own, about shark remains and sand-sounds. Either that or you have also dived at Tenacatica
Which is to say, "I hear you, man."
the children play pinochle in wetsuits
My grandmother was on her way to a pinochle game when a car struck her car, and four days later she died. True story, 1969. I don't know pinochle, but could children play it? Or is this a metaphor I'm missing, not knowing pinochle?
(actually, I think the game was whist, which has GOT to be related to pinochle)
and absentmindedly nibble sheets of chewy fruit snacks
a piano alternately tinkles and booms
Has a kid ever mindedly nibbled anything? Why the adverb?
in the trailerpark
in the desert
My parents had a fifth wheel rig-thingy which they parked in Palm Desert every winter. Seems to me you used to know the region. Some disreputable job you held there, yeah?
naked and smooth
I have to think about this. Smooth naked, naked smooth. Hmmmm. I love/hate this.
an orgy of blind piglets
writhing for something to suck
It is rather difficult, in the month of lipsticked pigs, to remove oneself from this bit. I have not known you to be political in your work, so I think this would play better some time from now. Pigs, just now, have too much significance. That said, I have some personal experience with piglets, the sow, and the writhing; your image rings true. I would not want you to change it.
It is the way, at this site, to declare brilliance - which is somewhat less than useless, but nevertheless nicely rounds off a critique. I won't demean you like that, but I would like to add, in case there was ever any doubt, that I thoroughly respect your writing, and that this poem falls well within the expectations I have for the poems that you write.
Those are high expectations.
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Yeah, I lived in Palm Desert for a year. One of those years that can form an entire sensibility, and from which one can harvest nearly infinite material for writing.
Fifth wheel. Thick slab of black grease facilitates the connection of rig and trailer. I used to pick rocks out of the many tires with my stepfather. My childhood is clouded with the smell of diesel and the sound of hissing air-brakes. -
You should read the other poem, which, if you are talking about the one chronologically just prior to this one, is titled "the thin incense of gone".
I don't think you'll find it predictable. At least not based on the title. Also, it is very short, so, even if it sucks, it will be over quickly. -
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Thought I just replied to this, but I'll try again. I'm sure it's not predictable, and didn't mean to imply that. And if that's the title, then that's not predictable either, so I don't know what the fuck I was talking about.
I'll head over for a little suck, then, shall I?
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Didn't i write that poem that was published in revelry for a contest of yours?
Yes. It was a postcard thing. Or were you talking about your poems in the next Revelry? Either way, I kind of know what is meant. -
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I haven't put any poems in Revelry since that once. I love that poem of yours. I shall take full credit, if it was for a contest of mine. I don't remember, of course.
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as you know, i often tell people, in my comments on their poems, that I am going to purloin this or that line. I never remember to do so, but, as you say, I probably assimilate those lines into my extended vocabulary, make them my own and then use them later as though I had thought of them myself, with a completely clear conscience.
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I don't know if children still play pinochle, but i played it fanatically when I was young. It is an easy game when compared to whist, which is, I think, bridge. Bridge is not entirely dissimilar to pinochle in that they both require bidding, and play, determination and use of trump, but pinochle is much less skill intensive.
I just like the sound of the word "pinochle". Also, the song my mother used to sing, which goes...
don't ever laugh as a hearst goes by
'cause you may be the next to die
they wrap you in a thin white sheet
and then they bury you 6 feet deep
the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
the worms play pinochle on your snout
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ohhh. yes, Pinochle is a great word. I never learned the game. My parents were bridge fiends and I steered clear of anything resembling stuff they loved. Rebel, I am, yep. I hear the words "two, no trump" and I'm out the door looking for trouble.
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BRILLIANT!
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I sent a link to this to someone after reading it. It's very affective. I have always enjoyed your sense for novelty. This poem, for me, holds it. And allows me to surrender and not have to bend into a knot to make it work. It falls with its own weight, where images are sharp.
I do agree with the title comment. It jars a little with the tonality of the writing. It is poignant like each posed setting: nighttime, beach, trailerpark in the desert with the rooms for a good squeeze - but also akin to Carroll or Lear in a way that those places are not.
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to be honest, i think this poem deserves a more fitting title...
the poem itself is clean, detailed and wonderfully crafted.. this poem has in spades what i look for in really good poetry, humanity...
worm blubber, this is not...
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I know. I'm thinking of one.
Something that highlights the fact that ,in dreamland, nothing makes sense.
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