poem - let me know :)

[cryurchin]

I Wish I was a Fighter

Harrowed mind like a centrifuge,
Filled to spilling with lost plot.
I just can’t stop;
I’m seeing the have and have-nots
Reliving past lives,
Like bullets for a blood clot.

And in this I sit.
Blunt knife carving carves a slit
Where I’m pouring salt.
Don’t hear me scream how it’s not my fault.

I drown devil in sulphur,
So I can’t ignore,
All those humming bird wings,
How Franklin sings,
Those lost, found and lightning bright
Beautiful things.

Like how my brain hurts safe.
Like pepper spray, or rape mace.

I don’t mind, don’t care, don’t speak
Etcetera,
It’s not like I need the medicine.
Or viruses thickened with top tens,
Or MSG then,
Celebrity and cheese thins.

Eventually we’ll pop,
Seem drowsy like an acid drop,
Soon stop listening;
Broken bones and dial tones
Tongue-tied and glistening.

’Cos chicks dig scars
And cheek bones caught on tape:
‘That’s why you’re late?’
She screams and BAM,
The fucks are hard with loose shapes.
And the moans from your phone,
Small screen movie where a guy’s told
Why not to cross you, make her mouth gape.

It still sits on carpet in the hallway,
A green numbered glow at the end of its save game,
And it seems to lose all its flow as these guys say:
‘Hey.
Is that man dead?’
But you just hear her cum with her face red,
A mess of slack limbs hang with their veins bled,
Her hair’s slicked back like blonde paint mixed with your sweat,
You’re tied up inside her and hating she’s still wet.
And you’re all alone, sun-dried up with your eyes dead.

I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t said what I said.

[Rose]

Wow.

That's a really forceful poem.

The rhythm is very strong, it pulls you in fantastically.

The images and lexical choices are very cutting, but they don't feel over-done to me.

You get pulled along with it, it makes you really feel, and it slams images and sensations into you. The narrative isn't exactly easy to follow. I don't really understand exactly what's happening, but the impressions it gives are really intense. I could probably go through and put an interpretation on a lot of it, but I couldn't be sure what was really intended.

It’s not like I need the medicine.
Or viruses thickened with top tens,
Or MSG then,
Celebrity and cheese thins.

doesn't really grab me, I don't really follow what you're talking about here - especially references to top tens? and cheese thins?

There are places where the rhythms get a little shaky, and the words could be a little smoother, it could do with tightening up in places, but it's got the making of a very strong piece.

The second half, from 'eventually we'll pop' is preferable to the first, in my opinion, especially the very last stanza and stand alone line. The build up from shorter lines and images to longer ones works quite well, though, it makes quite a climax.

[cryurchin]

cheers for the comments, i kind of know what you mean about a lot of it, but maybe this will clear some little things up, it's the critical commentary, but hopefully not what you'd expect


Extracts from Police Tapes Leaked to The Inquirer Regarding the Murder of Karl Darrow

Keller: (click) Tape starts nineteen-hundred, February 10th 2006, Detectives Keller and Locke present for the interview of (name obscured by static ).

Locke: Right, down to business mate. What’s this?

Keller: Detective Locke has presented the suspect with a document found at his residence during the arrest.

…: Thought you were detectives?

Keller: What?

Locke: Look mate, this is fucking serious. Start talking.

…: About this?

Keller: I’ll…

…: Alright, alright. Lets talk. It’s a poem I guess.

Locke: A poem? Doesn’t look like a poem to me. Doesn’t really rhyme does it?

…: Not that is has to, but it does, just not exactly where you’d expect it to I guess. It kind of plays with the rhyme to emphasise the rhythm, drive the piece on…

Keller: What the fuck is this? This isn’t a…a lesson…

…: Look you asked.

Locke: Let him talk, he hasn’t said a word since we got him back.

…: I guess it’s kind of like written lyrics, like hip-hop stuff, rap, Sage Francis or Aesop Rock , kind of a commentary, meant to be spat…

Keller: Spat? Look I’ll tell you what it looks like, a suicide note, all this stuff about (paper rustles) ‘bleeding veins’…

Locke: It’s a confession is what it is, isn’t it mate? It’s all down here, capturing fights to the death on your mobile…

…: Yeah, but…

Keller: And then he was gonna fucking do himself…look at the last bit of this…he’s a nut…wrote it all down and then...

…: It’s not a suicide note.

Keller: Too much to bear was it? Killing a man?

…: Shut up…

Keller: Bet it tore you up so much you wanted to go meet him, end it all, but first you had to spit at the world one more time…you make me so fucking si… (there’s a violent crashing sound).

Locke: Heh…let the tape show that Mr (name obscured by static) has attacked Detective Keller and is now being restrained with the appropriate technique.

Keller: (whispered) Hurts doesn’t it you bastard?

Locke: (hurridly) Tape ends nineteen-ten (click).

* * *

Liebz: Tape starts at eight o’clock on the 11th. Interviewing (name obscured by static). Oh…damn I can never remember what I’m meant to say on these things. I’m Doctor Liebz. Right let’s get started. Thank you (name obscured by static) for doing what I asked with your work. I’ve made copies for both of us so that we can look over it together . Most of what you say was quite self explanatory, but I’d like to focus on a couple of points if that’s ok?

…: I don’t want to talk on tape.

Liebz: Oh? Why’s that?

…: I think I can trust you, but I don’t want Keller listening to what I have to say about anything.

Liebz: Oh, fine fine… (click).

Keller: (click) Feed changed to interview room internal mic, twenty-oh-one.

Liebz: …we go is that better?

…: Thank you.

Liebz: Now, on lines one and two you suggest that you feel like your mind is spinning…

* * *

Liebz: Ok, I think there are some things there that we’ll have to come back to, but for now let’s return to the poem. You say that there is a commentary here on the repetitive and pointless divide of the classes, which is nothing new, but the way you approach your, and everyone else’s, position within that divide is, if not unique, then at least interestingly different to a lot of contemporary commentaries. You seem to be present yourself as self-destructive and then go on to implicate everyone as such. You suggest that everyone distances themselves from blame for the state of the nation and that society functions based on its ability to immunize itself from its surroundings. You say here that line…um…nineteen is ‘like that Nazi thing’. What did you mean by that?

…: It just made me think of what that guy Niemöller said, the priest, pastor, whatever, about ‘first they came for the communists’, but he didn’t speak out and then he lists all the people that the Nazi’s came for and he never said anything and when they came for him there was no one left to speak up.

Liebz: I can see how that fits in with what you say here, but there’s a brief moment of hope here to; you do see some good in the world, over lines eleven to sixteen, but this is very short lived and in fact descends again into polemic. You say that your brain hurts safe, like you need this pain, like you fit into it?

…: Well we all fit into it. It’s what we are now.

Liebz: Right, but you think it’ll all catch up, this desensitising pain? And then there’s this Roald Dahl reference? What’s that in relation to?

…: Well he wrote this two part autobiography. And the first part’s called Boy and in that he says how when the doctor or dentist, I can’t remember which, uses chloroform on him it tastes like pear drops, acid drops, so its another reference to anaesthetising yourself from reality. But also there’s the L.S.D. reference there, the hallucinations.

Liebz: And then you say it all boils down to violence and phones?

…: I guess I simplified. It seems that those things kind of represent our culture, or lack of it. All this communication and no one’s talking.

Liebz: O.k. one quick question before I move to the last thing I want to talk about, what does Fight Club have to do with the line you mention…um…thirty-one?

…: Brad Pitt’s cheekbones seemed to be talked about a lot in magazines after that. That’s what people always seem to go for in guys, cheekbones, and I just think that’s strange, cos that’s what people aim for too. I think Fight Club made some of the same points I did, but tried to offer an answer, kind of, which was to start again; I just think no one will, I think we’ll just descend to animals and trainers, more than we are now…and the animals will win so ‘I Wish I was a Fighter’.

Liebz: But you say at the end you wish you hadn’t said that.

…: I wish it wasn’t true. I generalised again, it’s a short piece and we all run on approximations anyway.

Liebz: You generalise again with the woman, but I assume that what comes next is based on fact.

…: The tape’s off?

Liebz: The tape’s off.

…: Cos those guys are already trying to use what I wrote as a confession which is why I’m not signing anything right now.

Liebz: The tape’s off (name obscured by static).

…: Yeah. The next stuff happened.

Liebz: You killed a man.

…: Yeah.

Liebz: Beat him to death.

…: Yeah.

Liebz: And videotaped it on your mobile phone.

…: Yeah.

Liebz: Then had sex while your partner got off on the tape.

….: Yeah.

Liebz: I…well I guess I was hoping that the death here was figurative, the ‘petit mort’ of our society maybe, the ejaculation of our culture.

…: Well, yeah, that’s there to…

Keller: Tape ends twenty-forty…oh we got him (click).