The Moping Owl Complains..

[prokopton]

Hi eGoff

Ebb and Flow — nice mix of phrase ('strangled whale's tongue'), sharpness ('stupid tourists') and best of all, revenge.

Still Rolling is a happy anthropomorphy and a touching salute.

Country Music — 'it sounds good / until you listen to the lyric': my father remembered a song from his childhood, 'She's my Lulu from Woolloomooloo' (Woolloomooloo) (which was then a Sydney dockside slum) with the line 'Every time I takes her to the shops, If she gives me any lip, I hits her over the chops'. That however was a cheerful love song. Not hard to be on your side with the women, but songs of runnin' from the law are grist for the Western mill back to Billy the Kid and Jessie James, surely?

Norseman — all those words to tell us you're nuts! (Well done, anyway - what a credential!)

Balance — great description of the moment. Keep that one.

You're having a great NaPo. I bid you Chapeau.

Regards / Dunc

Dunc, it's great to have your feedback. I am grateful that you took the time. It's been fun so far, just a third done, but the ice is broken and the sails are hoisted, so it's metaphors aweigh!

Gffoe

[prokopton]

Geffo, nice opener, and yes, I feel like I'm already well into S3, and not far off S4.

The Moping Owl is equally fun, and S2 seems particularly deftly dealt. fog has filled the hollows is a nice line.

Priscilla & Charybdis made me laugh. Poor Alphonse. I enjoyed the Odysseyic(?) imagery of the siren/ship metaphor through S3, and the end rhymes help buoy it along.

Wolves has some great imagery in it. I like the way you echo the cleared patch of forest with the moulting wolves. You've caught their uncertainty nicely in S2.

Why Do I Play? made me laugh. I remember as a kid playing on the desktop being desperate to complete it just to see all the cards do that odd bouncing across the screen that they did. That was well worth an hour or two.

Ebb and Flow is a good laugh. I've seen some of those boats, and love the description of ass over tea kettle. Having just looked at the photos that's quite a drop. I've mostly seen the occasional boat stranded in Cornish harbours, but not to that extent I don't think.

So what if your dog died, you're still a felon. Ha. Nice. You reminded of the music that used to play in a well-established high-end formalwear shop I used to work in. The songs chosen by the powers that be went through domestic abuse (Luka - Suzanne Vega), to drug use (Itchycoo Park - Small Faces) to, pretty much, rape (Wicked Soul - Kubb). All good, catchy songs, but not really suitable. They may as well have played Smack My Bitch Up by Prodigy. It would be interesting to survey taste in music vs. likelihood to vote for " The Donald".

Norseman Extreme made me feel tired. Great cold details throughout. There are some crazy mofo's out there, and I can't help but respect them.

This mound of Venus. She’s all curves against Table Mountain makes for a great combination of imagery. Nicely done.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading through these.

John

Wow, John, you did me proud with your wonderful comments. I am so encouraged that you took the time. Thanks very much.

Geoff

[prokopton]

11. Rain

You know, I love the rain but..
sometimes, enough is enough,
like when it wakes me early, with a roaring
like a dozen tornadoes, then I know it’s pouring:
when it washes away the newly laid topsoil,
when it floods basements, threatens the dam,
makes homeless people seek unwanted shelter,
(me? I hate being forced to stay inside)
causes people to run in the streets helter-skelter,
promotes fistfights over scarce taxicabs without reason,
makes me abandon a picnic or a bicycle ride,
scan the ads for vacations out-of-season,
eat too many cappuccino-dipped doughnuts,
(I know! I said I loved it, but I lied)
or bath the dogs before they’re due, sorry, mutts.

[Jee Leong]

Resonant last line in "Rain," capping a list of madcap details.

[Bench]

Nice variety of fun/serious makes this really enjoyable. I particularly liked Priscilla & Charybdis, and bits of country music were brilliant.
We get big tides down here too- I learned how to spring-tether when I was young, but to this day embarrassment hangs Damoclesian over me when boating, so I love the alluded shaudenfreude in Ebb and Flow... Soldier on!

[prokopton]

Resonant last line in "Rain," capping a list of madcap details.

Thankee Jee, most kind of you to stop by and lend an ear. Glad it resonated for you.

G.

[prokopton]

Nice variety of fun/serious makes this really enjoyable. I particularly liked Priscilla & Charybdis, and bits of country music were brilliant.
We get big tides down here too- I learned how to spring-tether when I was young, but to this day embarrassment hangs Damoclesian over me when boating, so I love the alluded shaudenfreude in Ebb and Flow... Soldier on!

Hi Bench,
thanks for reading. I am happy to hear that you liked some of my musings.
Time and tide wait not for any poet but the flow goes ever on
and usually downhill.

Gffoe

[5th column]

Hey - I really enjoyed 'Rain' - poems often do best observing the ordinary.

[prokopton]

Hey - I really enjoyed 'Rain' - poems often do best observing the ordinary.

Thanks 5th,
bloody torrential around here today. I got my run in between downpours but it is pounding the roof right now.
Inspiration comes knocking.

Gfefo

[prokopton]

12. The Wonder of S/He

In the still waters of the Coral Sea
on any summer night, is there a starfish
clinging to a sea mount who can see
through the transparent ceiling
of his watery domain, the stars above?

In her mollusc brain, still a billion neurons
or so, does she conceive the wonder
of her undersea universe and believe
that some starfish God created it?

Does that brainy mollusc, when the sea is like glass
and the stars come out, like the venerable Kant,
stand in awe of the starry skies above
and the starfish moral law within?

[5th column]

Hello! I iike the premise here. It's almost the reverse of The Dead by Billy Collins, where the spirits look down on us from above. I wonder what the starfish would make of a row boat full of us eejits just above its head?

[prokopton]

There but for the Grace of Cod go I.



I just learned before writing that that starfish, while not true hermaphrodites, can assume either gender as necessary,
which yields many more options on a Saturday Night!

Thx for reading, 5th.

G.

[prokopton]

13. Migration

The wildebeest mass at the water’s edge,
the picture of stoicism and trepidation.
It is true they are here randomly,
but they are not here by chance.
They have to cross; there’s no grazing left here.
Yet some will die. Some will have seen the crocs before,
and still they hesitate, even though they know the score.
If they know terror as they see the croc’s jaws gape
As they plunge on, can they expect to find escape?
There is milling and uncertainty, among the massive group
Kept all together by kinship, but does any one know hope?

[prokopton]

14. Valkyrie II

Venus brightly shines and hangs by rusty Mars.
Valkyrie has flown out there near on ninety months.
Its passengers signed on for death by distant stars.

The twin umbrellas of the ship are merely far-off specks.
Thrice a hundred trillion miles they've travelled now,
such a distance is better measured in parsecs.

All lives they know here on Earth are out-of-reach
At twenty-five per cent the speed of light she flies
Any hope of re-connecting has vanished in the breech.

What knowledge they have hoped to gain out in the vast
unending depths of space from orbs that fly round distant suns
will vanish as they die, and long be in their past.

Though Valkyrie will venture on to unimagined spheres,
the packet they send home is for our great-grandsons,
as it won’t make it back to planet Earth for many years.


***
The Valkyrie One poem
Source of The Valkyrie Concept: picture

[Bench]

Gefof, love the description of the coral sea as seen from the starfish's perspective, and love the alluded correlation it might conceive between star & fish. Migration brought to mind this cartoon, but other videos show how incredibly resilient and tenacious the beasts are. Does the Valkyrie II probe exist, or is it still conceptual (the laser-accelerated probe, right?). Anyway, nice to explore its isolation and loneliness. Charge on!