Creeping Unconsciousness

[Jee Leong]

"A Walk in the Park" and ""Brief Thoughts on Abbreviation" made me smile. The latter's title is terrific. "Losing My Grip" has that woebegone last line.

[bop]

Ben and Jee, thank you both. I've already run out of ideas. My brain is tired, but I saw Hamlet in Totnes tonight - 3 actors gave their all in a library performance. Brilliant.

[bop]

Laertes loves Hamlet.
A Dutchman interrupts me,
he thinks chips would be better
without haddock.
Ophelia is a dummy
hinged hands, young bones
bend underwater.
Bookcases hide the knife
in sun-bleached poison pages.
Claudius, please don’t taste
the mayonnaise
Yet.

[kristalynn]

Meaningless was meaningful to me in that I get it. The poem petering out thing at the end I can relate to. I really like Losing My Grip. the spilt juice is a great image and the carton weeping.

[beeswax]

Hello Bop

Yes. Old boilers and I tend to anthropomorphise my appliances and technology. I like the dialogue. I also referenced my gas boiler in a poem and I read another one on NaPo referencing gas boilers. (the last few winters have been tough on boilers I guess).

Cat Flappery – this is a very well observed piece of cat lore. Is it posted in the kitty ditty thread yet?

A Dam Breaks was sad and very lovely.

Queue was excellent! Fine narrative arc and I loved the detail about poor old Ron. It’s a long poem and held my attention from beginning to end. Images are spot on.

pedantic spectacle -- nice sonics and very punny.

-- Last two lines of No Polonius are brilliant. I like anachronisms in poems, also the intrusion of the haddock and chips and the link of that to the last two lines was great.

[Dunc]

bop

A Walk in the Park — It's getting quite hypnotic by the end.

Queue — Ah yes, a study in the psychology of us, the masses. Screw Ron!

Brief Thoughts — Better than making a pedantic monocle of yourself — that'd be too affected for words. A cool reflection.

Meaningless sends itself up with dry fun.

Losing My Grip — Life is full of omens, innit. Another neat reflection.

No Polonius? is certainly a fresh take on Hamlet. Poor Ophelia, hinged hands, young bones / bent underwater is a singular expression of pathos.

Regards / Dunc

[bop]

Kristalynn - glad you got meaningless!
Bees - thanks for reading so many and for the kitty ditty tip.
Dunc - Park is a bit repetitive, but works well when read very quickly! Thanks for coming back again.

[bop]

I am succulence
beneath peel and pith:
I am seed, sun, rain and soil,
held in pods that split
in sectors of a sphere.
My membranes seep tart juice
or sweet nectar, supped
up by your tongue.
My tendrils, my star of skin
discarded, leave their scent
on lips and fingers.

[JFN]

bop, much fun had in ...Hyphenation. Great little fun rhyme.

Very droll ending to Muscavoy Duck. Made me laugh.

Canteen Culture is a good example of those old school views that still, sadly, exist in little pockets of the UK. I like that they are more shocked by N's leaving than N is by the (other) N word. That idea pulls its weight.

Creeping Unconsciousness is a strong look take on aging, and the reduction in effort as the years go on. The specifics of the teeth brushing appealed to me.

Poor old kitty in ...Whiskers? Loving the resilience of life in those bright green eyes.

iPhonyism, ha, nice stuff.

Cloud Watching is a lovely set of images, and a nice reminder of childhood innocence. I enjoyed this one a lot.

Metamorphosis has legs, or well have at its next stage (sorry). It's a fascinating progression and one well worth capturing if you can find the energy.

I saw a peregrine bring down a neighbour's racing pigeon about six foot outside our garden fence last summer. Pigeon somehow got back up and got away. Amazing stuff though. The focus of the falcon is well described with the star wars references, and the face at the end us special. Much to like in this one.

Strings Linger is a nice relationship story. I like the idea of that reverberation lingering, parallel to a memory resonating.

A Rejection of the Anthropomorphism of a Gas Boiler - favourite title of the month so far. The red/blue hot/cold made me grin too, and the on and on reference.

You capture the South coast storm so well in Land Lost that you took me there. I know the Cornish coast better than the Devon (I'm presuming, from your location), but I did holiday in Devon a bit as a child. Really enjoyed this a lot. It captures the bleakness, the beauty and the power of the South West coast wonderfully (again, I'm presuming South West, but that's what it felt like to me).

A Dam Starts to Break is a wonderful telling of unresolved grief, and something I relate to. S5 says it all.

A Walk in the Park is a fun use of homophones. You do well to get then all working repeatedly in there.

Queue, with the repeating phrase, makes the reader feel as irritated as N. I'm still feeling a little irritable about it, so nicely done there. I think all descriptiveness really works with this too.

More fun in ...Abbreviation. I enjoyed this because I'm fully aware I'm a hypocritical pedant about certain things.

Losing my Grip is an interesting turn on a well known phrase. The weeping carton makes a strong image.

Orange is delicious, and I love that lingering scent at the end.

So much good stuff in this thread. Sorry it took me so long to get back here.

John

[bop]

John,
I don't know what to say! Thank you for reading so much of my thread and for taking the time to make so many thoughtful and helpful comments and observations. Like the tadpoles my thread is still lacking legs! Thank you so much.
bop

[bop]

Barney. Such a stupid name for a dog,
but it suited you more than Keith
suits as a name for a goldfish.

Keith was my goldfish,
he survived for three days
after I rescued him in a coffee jar
from a pond in the back garden
of an empty council house.
He would have died earlier -
his home was filled in - apparently
children can drown in six inches of water,
but the pond was Keithless as workers
moved in with shovels and turf.

Maybe he overdosed on the residual
caffeine left in the jar, perhaps the shock
of moving jarred his fragile mind.
Keith swam around for a couple of days
in his new tank then went belly-up.
I buried him in a tobacco tin
with all due ceremony.

My friends at work,
sensing the depth of my grief for Keith,
bought me two replacement fish.
I hadn’t the heart to give them names.

Barney has gone now too.
Such a stupid name for a dog.

[prokopton]

The cats flap around the door
but won't go through the cat flap.
'The cat flap's for you!' I implore.
'It's cool, it what all the cats are doing
on the street, the cool cats, the cats
that don't flap at the sight of a cat flap.'

Do you dig? 'Yes, I know you dig, and paw
and paw, then bury the evidence
with your claws, but hey! Look at the cat flap.'

Please.

The cats nose around the edge of the door
and ignore the cat flap.

'You're not cool cats, to get into such flappery
around the cat flap. There's a whole world
waiting for you on the other side of the cat flap
- go on, break on through to the other side
of the cat flap! - they look at me, silently,
eyes wide, as if I've lost my mind.

'Do you know this cat flap cost me fifteen quid?'
They seem to narrow their eyes and grin,
but continue to sit by the edge of the door,
unflappable.

I open the door, let the buggers out,
then lock the cat flap and leave
with a self-satisfied feline smile.

Boppity, loved the cat-flap poem. Consider yourself enshrined!
I especially liked the Doors refrain - what an exquisite pun for this poem!
I bet there's a youtube video on training cats to use flaps.
nice job.
ffoeG

[anita.a]

Loved all your poems Bop... School tomorrow, Euphonium, No Polonius?, A walk in the park, Losing my grip... especially the lines...
I’m on my knees
wiping up spilt juice in the kitchen,
the carton still weeping on the floor.

But the best of all is the Creeping Unconsciousness, it is so touching. Good going!

[Arlene]

So sorry it took so long to revisit -- such wondeful work here...love IPhonyism/Euphonism, Abbreviation, Losing My Grip, Hyphenation (!!!!), the one sinking under the weight of the...http -- all the cat ones -- String Lingers and Orange are maybe my favorites, though. And the poem about writing poems, Meaningless? Not. Best...

[bop]

ffoGe, I'm honoured that my cats are enshrined! Thank you!
Anita, thank you for reading and commenting - I really am losing my grip now! Still only 2 to go!.
Arlene, thank you for coming back, I'm glad you like my Iphony Euphonium, I could no more play a euphonium than add an app to an IPhone.
bop