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I won't play the sap for you.
Little boy came next
and behind him, the fat man.
You dug holes in the desert
searching for such stuff
as dreams are made on --
nightmares, plaster stones
and my partner's corpse
burned into your pretty skin.
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(07-23-2017, 01:25 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: I won't play the sap for you.
The gunsel came next
and behind him, the fat man. Good lord - I had to google gunsel, and for some reason that made it all the better. I love it.
You dug holes in the desert
searching for such stuff
as dreams are made on -- I would cut "as", not a big deal, but I think it reads better without it.
nightmares, plaster stones
and my partner's corpse
burned into your pretty skin.
Wonderful stuff - it's not often I enjoy being forced to research things to understand a poem. I've never read
The Maltese Falcon, I'm going to add it to my reading list.
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yeah, this might be a little too in need of Google-fu -- i like how "the gunsel" makes "came" kinda porny, but that doesn't really add much -- so reverted, plus a possible change in title later on. as for "as", Shakespeare. ps, this plays with jm's "fat man, little boy", though i'm not sure i quite succeeded.
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Okay, the title is semi-puzzling,
but after reading it my eyes got
all big, like your avatar character!
nibbed
there's always a better reason to love
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I read up on the Maltese Falcon's shmoop page and got a lot more out of this afterwards.
I like it a lot, even without!
To me the "such stuff / as dreams are made on" sounds awkward too. Maybe because the rest of the poem doesn't really use that kind of language. Could just say "searching for the stuff / that dreams are made on"...although I wonder why not "made of"? Maybe because referring to the treasure, heh.
I would also take out the "and" and just have "nightmares, plaster stones / my partner's corpse". You already have a line break there, so the connector isn't really necessary.
Overall, nice work! Nice mood and tone to it, too.
And so it goes :-)
Link to my blog, where I post poetry and occasionally some prose
