Waterloo and City

[5th column]

January:


1. Modern Miracles: Internet Dating
2. Waterloo and City
3. Father's Garden
4. Not a Love Poem
5. The Sky
6. Rain Down
7. In Tandem

February:

1. Dust Motes


October:

You Are Here: Terminal One
Nur um es zu
You as Rodeo
Right of Passage

December:

Interference in Conditions
Thirteens
Poem
Movement

February

Hive
Could We
Like a Wolf

March

Seventy Eight, Seventy Eight Jetlag
Type Cast
This
Incarnate
The Letter


August

What If
When You Can't Find
longley For Lunch

[5th column]

Modern Miracles: Internet Dating



So far it’s done nothing but rain drinking water
quality engineers and call centre managers from Slough

who hit the ground, not running, but with the dull thud of a goose
feather pillow tossed from the 2nd floor of the Sally Army

on the corner of Wood and Shernhall where there used to be
a bookie with a three-legged neon greyhound

whose flying paw bled into the dark. Before that
it was an Italian grocer. The display reminded me

of a library of veg. My favourite was beef tomatoes
the size of a Wimpy ketchup dispenser and as red.

But the analogy fails because you can't lend a beef tomato
or a cherry for that matter, and if you did it wouldn't be for long

or it would be as wrinkled as your fingers
after a hot bath. I read that the skin pinks

to improve your grip in water like the tread
of a tyre shedding rain. Maybe I should look

for you in the bath once my toes have pruned
and water is something to be walked on.

[Dunc]

Neil

Oh the bleak song to the absent hope! "library of veg" is a great image. I take it "beef tomato" and "cherry" are references to the private parts? If not, I've missed something. And surely not a hint of bitterness at the end?

A clever ramble of a poem. I wish you good hunting in 2017!

Regards / Dunc

[5th column]

Hey there Dunc, thanks for popping in. Beef tomatoes are the really large and deep red variety you find a lot of in France or as part of 'Chop salad' in the states and cherry tomatoes are the tiny and very tasty type we buy from Italy, although now they grow them all over. I was hoping for irony at the close but if it tastes a little bitter? Well, what to expect if you insist on drinking bath water ��

[5th column]

Not new but something I've been revising. (Is it only me seeing the type in different sizes on my iPhone?)

Waterloo and City

There's something of the hive

in the clicking

sound. Rails

shed the husk of night.

Repetition in the queue

and queue behind the black and yellow line

along the platform

where we spill out pour

down The Drain, the throat

is marginalia

in straight

lines, never looking

up. And having lost

the words for journey: pilgrimage, sojourn

we

sleep

walk to our cubicles

for one - day's brief flame flickering

in the bone cup

of December

while we wait for April's dance

to waltz its way to nectar

shoes, snare rasping

down the glide path.

Everything else

[Donner]

Hi, Neil, good to see you here in a fresh new year.

"Modern Miracles" - Personally, some of my friends who make use of on-line dating sites would call them by a different name than "miracle". Oh, the horrors (and misrepresentations) they've run into. Heh. I do love a poem that makes proper use of long, rambling sentences that still make sense. and water is something to be walked on nicely sums up the expectations that some run into when looking for that perfect match.

"Waterloo and City" - If you're going for a visual sense of trains passing by commuters standing on the platform, you've got it down. There's something of the hive / in the clicking / sound is as good an opening line(s) as the last one in the previous one. I'm seeing only one-sized type, probably because of the board's default font.

Donner

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Neil,

Modern Miracles: Internet Dating took me a couple of reads to get into, and now I like it. I read the opening lines as something like, "I'd get addicted to you if you gave me the chance". The ending seems to say that such a chance is as likely as walking on water. And in between are some lovely surreal moments. I love the entrance of "drinking water / quality engineers and call centre managers from Slough" raining down like a Magritte painting; and it's a clever line break. Also love that they sound like geese, and again the clever line-break, although here I'd prefer that ""feather pillow" was lost, just because it diminishes the goose sound. The three-legged greyhound was a pleasing image. I wondered if in "as wrinkled as your fingers" was meant to be her fingers, of you as in "one"; I suspect the latter, and if so, it through me off a bit. There are other things I liked, but too little time, so I'll leave it there. Fun poem.

Waterloo and City, is all one font size on my PC. Lots to like here. I'm reading it as about commuting, working; the drudgery and the alienation of the rat race. I like Christmas as bone cup, and that we have lost the words for "journey: pilgrimage, sojourn" . A lot of the layout is working very well for me. Love the visual joke of "marginalia" and that "we/sleep" is looks like a small nugget of rest (can't explain it better) and that it's small fits the poem -- and then it becomes "sleep walk" is also nice; also like the gliding "glide path" section of the last three lines, and the fact that "straight lines" is broken. Good stuff.

Matt

[Janet]

Neil,

You’re off to a good start. 78,78 could be related to the flight number, clock ticking, time or? In any case the tepition is well placed and very much falls in line with the lulling effect.

Type Cast is light-hearted/fun on the surface yet by the time we get to white there’s awkwardness, then there’s tension between orange and black. Really like the subtle play here.

Enjoyed as always.

[5th column]

Many, many thanks to Janet, John, Matt, Slerellelorella, Kristalynn and Jee for popping in. A pleasure to Sevens with you as always.



This

So, here we are, sharing
observations in a curious place.
Beggar throwing small coins
in the bowl of passing strangers,
lets watch the sky pull hail Mary's
from the ocean's purse
where the moon reflects its silver
ware. Wherever that might be
or what it means to you.
We could be anywhere you see
the words, but ever this.

[Donner]

Hi, Neil,

I happened to catch this earlier before you edited it. (Something I do often after I've posted, poems can be such nags.) The line breaks work much better for me in this version, making the piece much tighter and more readable.

Donna

[5th column]

They don't nag, D, they chivvy and pester, bother and bewilder. They play knock-down-ginger with me.....

[Jee Leong]

Fun pun of a title, which is justified by the ending of the poem.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Question for the Dawn -- The sounds of the day fade in, and dawn's not all it's cracked up to be. Love the "voice of winter / in a thermos" (the addition of 'tatic' took me a couple of reads to catch, maybe precede it with a hyphen?). Also a fan of the "familiar recriminations", which are, sadly, familiar, and so struck a chord.

Air Loom -- The opening of this kind of reminded me of "Red Wheelbarrow" somehow (could just be me) --- like the N wanted everything to depend upon this blueberry jam on the table, but didn't get his wish. I googled the title after I read the poem and came across James Tilly Matthews -- who I'm going to go back and read up on. So, a machine that influences thoughts and implants hallucinations and delusions - Tilly's explanation for the source of his madness. So I'm thinking in the context of the poem, mind control. He doesn't want to think about it -- about what's going on with them -- but doesn't have any control of this.

Good to read you this week. Enjoy the festive season and see you next year.

Matt

[Mittens]

The Air Loom: a mind control machine that works by “weaving “airs”, or gases, into a “warp of magnetic fluid” which was then directed at its victim.” (Thanks Google). So N wishes he could enjoy breakfast/the present, but can’t get his mind off of the unpleasant issue looming between them. Very effective. Good to share the week with you!