WARNING! We're mean. We're nasty. We're merciless. We're cruel. We're vile. We're heartless.
We'll slash your soul to ribbons. We're an evil clique conspiring to annihilate your self-esteem. Ready?


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Thread: Relax, Larry is here to ease your soul.

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Mar 2021
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    71
    "I'll drop it in a dust-sealed drawer/to sting the sac of self no more" is so striking, coming through the accompanying observations of worn time. Very lovely.

  2. #17
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    Philadelphia
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    7,067
    The rhyme and meter in the first is top notch, with some nice alliteration. One that I would wish I had written.

    BrianIs AtYou
    I think I think, therefore I might be.

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
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    Israel
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    Jee, Sarah, Neil, Cameron, tweeds and Brian - I much appreciate your visit!
    And thank all you kind people for the initial welcome - Matt, Dunc, Jane, cookala, drumpf, Geoff and scraps, and Cameron and Sarah once again.

  4. #19
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    Jun 2004
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    2nd - Fighting Words

    They were double-faced masters
    our teeth tongues and arrows

    to fling at the towers
    and topple the sky

    yet we ended up traitors
    our pride turned against us

    guns at our backs
    our convictions dictated

    fake demands chopped like fingers
    from old magazines

    now we turn our blades inward
    to slice at the source

    of metastasized hate
    too damned not to die

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    8,445
    Hey Larry,

    New ID We fade faster than our IDs. I have a few old photo IDs lying around in drawers and boxes. Not on display though. Photos of younger selves can indeed sting! Nicely rhymed and metred. The close has me thinking that someone in the future might become him, reprise him, using his ID, though I also get sense of his belongings being sorted through when he dies. Nicely done, and very relatable, as Jee says.

    Fighting words: I like the movement here -- they were our masters, we became traitors, then we turned on ourselves -- and the sense of self-recrimination that seems to a theme in some of your poems.Some great lines, "our teeth [were] tongues and arrows / to fling at the towers" and its ambiguity -- are we flinging our teeth at them or are they flinging them -- and "fake demands chopped like fingers / from old magazines". Strong sounds here too: I enjoyed the metre and intermittent end-rhymes: fingers/inward, arrows/towers ...

    Great to be reading you again. Have a fab NaPo!

    Matt
    moderator

  6. #21
    Join Date
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    I love in your latest the use of metre to chart the gyring nature of our rebellions. As Furet says, the French Revolution is still alive. And your mention of magazines make this seem a reflection on capitalism, the cycles of our low-attention-span age.
    What is the work if it isn't a ticket to slip into vivid euphoria?

  7. #22
    Dunc is offline but say it is my humour
    Join Date
    May 2001
    Location
    Sydney, Australia
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    13,414
    Larry

    And here we are as on a darkling plain ...

    Delighted you're back!

    New ID ─ Et tu, Larri? A draw full of old ID cards, kept shut to sting the sac of self no more? My smile of identification is almost improper!

    Fighting Words ─ A song of politics, knitted with subtle, and set in clever, sonics for the task. And that power you have over the sour touch.

    Great start!

    Regards / Dunc

  8. #23
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    May 2001
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    LI, NY
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    Mr Larry - it's so nice to read you again. your meter is spot on, as are the sonics and images. Very nicely done times 2 = looking forward to more.

  9. #24
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
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    The Hilltowns of Western Mass
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    yet we ended up traitors
    our pride turned against us

    In a few short lines so much is captured here. The rebellion and idealism of youth, stalwart spirits broken, the internalized bitterness that remains.

    Also really enjoyed the piece about putting away the old passport picture. I had an ID for awhile that captured a certain quality of m energy that I was sad to retire.

    These first two loosely correlate and I’ll be back to connect the dots.
    Realism.

  10. #25
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
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    Israel
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    4,634
    Hi Matt, Cameron, Dunc, cookala, Jane - great support from you all, I'll ride on that for a while!

  11. #26
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    Jun 2004
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    Israel
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    3rd - Neanderthal Flute

    Forty days since we arrived,
    space-salmon battling
    an ocean of ink.

    Wide-eyed, sky-stranded, we bobbed.
    Your serrated brilliance
    bled into the void.

    We had heard you call
    in an alley, alone.
    Now the emptiness was ours.

    In this dying cave
    we hand you our flute,
    Neanderthals without a song.

    Will you smash it
    or heed the whisper of notes
    begging your breath to rise?


    Note: The first phase of what is now known as the 2029 Easter Invasion began with the abrupt appearance of enormous, vaguely fish-shaped crafts above ten major cities, evoking mass panic and triggering the political and economic setbacks which still plague the planet. Following a long and baffling silence, and demonstrating what appears to be a major misreading of human communication, the first of the invaders’ messages was projected on hundreds of night-sky locations in the form of the above poem. A series of similar projected pronouncements followed for several weeks, culminating in the catastrophe of July that year. Debate regarding the poems’ strategic goals and ultimate effects has been ongoing.

  12. #27
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    4,371
    Hey, Larry

    Fighting Words feels like a song of despair for the politics of a place that goes unnamed but could almost be anywhere that used to be recognised as a democracy. There’s a drive that carries through from start to finish in the chopped lines and harsh ‘t’ sounds that dominate the early and late going.

    The Neanderthal Flute is. neat idea. Will this be part of a series?
    Resigned

  13. #28
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Location
    England
    Posts
    3,914
    Hi,

    Fighting words struck me last night and stayed with me. I didn't want to just throw words at it, and even though I've spent a tiny bit of time with it, I'm still not sure (which I enjoy - I like how your poems wrong-foot me, make me doubt my own ability to parse - it's a good feeling, needed & necessary). I read this, at the moment, as about how people use people, use goodwill and turn it, use goodwill and goodwishes and turn them into warlike things, as we eat away at each other. About humanity, the human condition, and the personal body, as well as the wider political landscape.

    Neanderthal flute is beautiful - I read it as a past/time loop to the ideas of humanity/progress that begun by separating the idea of Neanderthal with the idea of 'modern man'. For me, the poem questions ideas of progress, and makes us think of how little we know/of other ways of understanding the world that don't rely on a human-centric position.

    Sarah

  14. #29
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    May 2020
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    UK
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    Neanderthal Flute is a poem and a prose poem that reward repeated rereadings. Both its fictional world and the "real" world connotations are haunting. Yes, it certainly does question our present situation.
    What is the work if it isn't a ticket to slip into vivid euphoria?

  15. #30
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Posts
    1,801
    Hi Larry,

    I’ll drop it in a dust-sealed drawer
    to sting the sac of self no more,

    was a stand-out line from your first. I like how you are able to capture the old ID that proves who you were and who you aren't any more.

    The close to Fighting Words is bang on.

    Neanderthal Flute is a fascinating premise and has me wondering what part of The Voyager's Golden Record these visitors misinterpreted.

    Really looking forward to see where you take this!

    Steve

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