…with a Heart of Gold

[Erthona]

She was complicit as leather,
had a blue suede sashay,
she could make a man hurt,
when she walked in his way.
Gams firm as hot gold,
while her ass rode a vamp,
she could be a prim lady,
or a rough tomboy scamp.
Many men have dreamed of her,
but she doesn’t exist,
and even if she did,
it’d play out like this.
She’d fight you till death,
never would she be owned,
rather die from despair
having lived life alone.

©2011 ~Erthona

[grannyjill]

'sashay'.....I thought that meant - to walk? Edit - rethink
of course, you mean 'walk' I totally missed the point there, because I was thinking of an item of clothing, like a sash or a skirt..I'm so slow sometimes......it's a blue-suede shoes reference, of course.

being picky (as always) 'when she walked in his way' or 'when she'd walk in his way' (or even 'when she'd walk his way)

ignorance again - what are 'gams'?

I reckon you need a (or a (-) after 'it'd play out like this'

She'd fight till the death (forget the 'you')

All the bitty stuff out of the way.... I like it, especially your opening line(s) I wonder what it would read like if you doubled them up?

She was complicit as leather, had a blue suede sashay,
she could make a man hurt when she'd walk in his way.
Gams firm as hot gold, while her ass rode a vamp,
she could be a prim lady or a rough tomboy scamp.
Many men have dreamed of her, but she doesn’t exist,
and even if she did it’d play out like this -
She’d fight you till death,
never would she be owned,
rather die from despair
having lived life alone.

Not sure what this achieves, it just looks better to me!

[rbl]

When I read this, I felt like an essence was captured. Captured. The first line I loved - what an image. I also loved the tomboy scamp. The fact that she doesn't exist bothered me, only because I think she does. She could. But you covered it with the line that follows, explaining the scenario "if she did exist." The only line I had any awkwardness was "she could make a man hurt when she'd walk in his way."

Perhaps the 'in' is not necessary in that phrase? Perhaps 'she could make a man hurt when she'd walk his way" may be more powerful. It could just be me. I have read and reread this one, and everytime it impacts me, excites me. Thanks for the read.

[Erthona]

GJ,

Thanks for the critique. As both you and RBL pointed out in the "walk by line", that was a typo. It was suppose to be "when she walked in his way." But I see that creates a tense problem and,

"when she'd walk in his way." reads much better. So thanks, I think I will go with that one. The reason it had the typo in it to begin with was because I changed it so many times.

In terms of double line. It was actually about twice this long, but I felt the half I cut was not genuine, and more manufactured. So after I cut that, it looked rather short, and I didn't want to shorten it further by having a longer line, plus I am not a big fan of rhyming couplets. In addition you cannot have it all the way through without hurting the poem.

Gams---> legs. It was a term often used in "hard boiled dick novels" ( Hard boiled detective)

--from dictionary.com

Gam

noun Slang. a person's leg, especially an attractive female leg.
Origin:
1775–85; probably < Polari < Italian gamba leg

"She looked so alluringly helpless with her beautiful long stemmed gams pinioned under the coach, it made my pants look like a tent revival of backwoods Baptist zealots had moved in and set up shop with a good looking faith healer as the front man. I needed to find something cold, something beyond merely frigid to make the swelling go down fast; before I was being carted off to the slammer for holding my peace in public. I needed something that would drop the mainmast like a blackjack to the back of the head. That's when I met her, and what a beautiful dame had caused to rise, she made fall in half the time. As long as the frost maiden was around I was in no danger of being carted off to the poky. All hard angles and cutting edges, with eyes that looked like they had been machined out of transparent titanium, glinting like they had be polished for a thousand years. Those ice blue eyes never seemed to blink, giving her a reptilian look: a primitive, prehistoric predator. She was unmoving as frozen time until she acted. When she did, she moved so fast it seemed like you weren't seeing a fluid event, but rather the sputtering images of movie film missing the ratchet in the projector wheel. When she walked into the room, it was as though someone had taken your Johnson and place it on a small Guillotine, waiting only for her to decide to pull the lever. In other words, she was most effective in striking a tent in less time than it takes to draw in one of those quick breaths that signal that your heart has just started beating again. I figure I'd be making a few extra trips to the hardware store as I wouldn't have any wood of my own for quite some time. Oh well, with my ugly mug, and terrible luck, not to mention my wonderfully abrasive personality, it wasn't as though I'd be driving the fairway anytime soon!"

"I reckon you need a (or a (-) after 'it'd play out like this'" Yeah, that's a punctuation error. Thanks for catching that. Yeah either a colon or semi-colon. I'm thinking colon.

"She'd fight till the death (forget the 'you')" My thought exactly.


RBL

"Perhaps the 'in' is not necessary in that phrase? Perhaps 'she could make a man hurt when she'd walk his way" may be more powerful."

Yeah as noted above this line gave me problems. I had meant to write "walked in a man's way". Something akin to a black crossing your path. As this is written in two foot lines of accentual verse, there is not much leeway to get across what I meant. As noted above I think "when she'd walk in his way." is the best way to go, although it is not entirely satisfying.

"felt like an essence was captured. Captured. The first line I loved - what an image." Yeah, that was what this was sort of built around. I was laying in bed when that just sort of floated in. I almost laid there long enough to forget it. Unfortunately there were some other nice lines that went with with it that I did lose.

Thanks for the feedback guys,

MC (merry Christmas)

Dale

[Wildcard]

Before I try any crit, may I ask why she couldn't exist? It seems to me that I've known a few women that were a lot like the woman described here.

[Erthona]

Before I try any crit, may I ask why she couldn't exist? It seems to me that I've known a few women that were a lot like the woman described here.

Ah, a babe in the woods aren't you laddie? The book rarely resembles the cover, and such a cover can only corrupt the book, usually make it unreadable. Think what it would take for this person to exist. Think what the excessive attention would do to them. What kind of overhead is there? Do you think this person will have a gentle and kind personality after feeling irritated most of her life? I could go on and on, but I am deathly tired. You may want to take into consideration (although it is a small sample) that both the men raised this objection, but nary a peep was heard from the lone female type person who responded to this advertisement! I think this primarily because (besides having been a counselor for over twenty years), a person that is this naturally attractive will become tired of the attention and will no longer appear like this, in an attempt to avoid such undesirable attention. It also tends to negatively warp a woman's opinion of men in general, making trust, respect, and love difficult at best to achieve to any, to any degree. I mean think how difficult it is to achieve it with an ordinary mortal? (Think how you would feel if this person was you significant other, and people were constantly hitting on her. You can bet that woman would also be right there too. At the very least you will begin to feel inadequate, unless you are just as good looking, a billionaire and have a 12 inch penis. But even so we always, in our heart of hearts, undervalue ourselves in relation to a possible challenger. We exaggerate her negligible responses to others, and seriously downplay her attention to us.) She also will feel that you only desire her for her looks, so as she ages, what do you think she thinks will happen.

The short answer is that she will draw towards herself, simply by being who she is, that which will eventually destroy her.

On the road to this destruction she will pass through a number of personality changes, none of which are attractive or fun to be around long, thus the appearance of such personality quirks quickly and significantly degrade her beauty in your eyes. So one way or other, that unreal type of beauty is very fleeting, and is either destroyed by association with her, or she purposefully destroys it to get away from the negative consequences. It is not unusual for a woman such as this to become fairly overweight, very quickly, and I haven't even introduced the idea of other addiction, or suicide.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Below should you choose to wade through it is an answer of sorts in poetical form...or not I will say it is a true representation based on my experience. You will say I am being to uncharitable, but those others who knew her would not. Yet, believe as you will, I have no power to convince, and less desire to try weven now closes my eyes!
--------------------------------------------------------------
Wasted Wight

“…thus was error made flesh,
and flesh in its corruption became evil”

You truly were an idiot wind: living life
like so many unfinished daily crosswords,
and this, despite your beauty, or maybe because of it.
Crowned better than any Queen could hope to be,
by a mass of golden-ash hair flowing
off your head, and down past your shoulder,
a bucketful of errant liquefied pirate treasure.
The best thing that could have happened to you
was an industrial accident at an early age
to take away that free pass everyone always
handed you as soon as you cranked up that
soft willow creek smile, which kept you
from ever having to exert yourself once
anything progressed passed the simply easy!
For someone who thought they made
such a large impact, your death caused nary
a ripple in the ever pervasive inertia-riddled
landscape of the great “what is” of Being,
not to mention the upper echelon social crowd
you graced on occasion with your presence:
all too often dragging me along to play
Burton to your Taylor, Petruchio to Kate,
or Mark Anthony to the Great Cleopatra!

Juxtaposed to those who were dealt only an ace
high in life and still managed to bluff
their way to a winning share: you took a
royal flush and turned it into an empty hand.
Even a Black hole, after consuming
everything in sight gives off a little
Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, to minutely
warm up the chill space surrounding it:
you were a one-way street into frozen oblivion:
an end game like Dante’s Satan trapped in absolute zero Hell.
I may have even at one time mistakenly aspired to be
your Virgil, but we all have to grow up, and
nowhere in the most convoluted maze of
literary allusions were you ever anyone’s Beatrice!
The closest you ever came to being a guide was as an
anti-lighthouse; your beauty like a flashing light beam,
enticed those who saw it to wreak their lives upon
your sirenum scopuli shores, but you, my friend, are no Pharos.
God knows though that like a mindless top,
you could endlessly sit and spin with the best of them.

I wonder how it came about, did you choke on that
silver spoon you always carried in your mouth?
Well…I'll waste no time to ponder such a thing.
I might as well use my time profitably by musing
on the quantity and quality of lint in my navel.
I would bid you goodnight sweet prince,
but you were no Hal, if anything, a Richard,
and there was nothing sweet about him,
unless insanity can be said to taste sweet,
and I have never seen it written that madness
is the chocolate bar of the psyche.

What name shall we use to put you to rest,
if indeed, you were ever anything but at rest?
What name can contain your still-birthed epicene illusion?
Scylla-Charybdis, Abaddon-Apollyon, Ishtar-Asherah?
No. Your mother, despite all of her faults, (and certainly
these were beyond the ability of a Cray computer to count),
seems to have been prescient in her choice of your name.
Thus we will backhandedly honor her otherwise barren life,
for giving birth to you goes beyond merely being childless,
it wanders into the realm of conundrums so exquisite
that mere mortals fear to enter lest they go insane.
So, we will offer up this one tribute to her,
using the name she choose to bury you.
Following ritual, we toss in a few dry sterile clods
which bounce, booming off your new faux-wood shell;
the gravid hollowness of your emptiness echoing forever.
I take a weary breath, and mouth, "adieu…Lilith!"

©2009 ~Erthona

[billy]

She was complicit as leather,
had a blue suede sashay,
she could make a man hurt,
when she walk in his way.
Gams firm as hot gold,
while her ass rode a vamp,
she could be a prim lady,
or a rough tomboy scamp.
Many men have dreamed of her,
but she doesn’t exist,
and even if she did,
it’d play out like this.
She’d fight you till death,
never would she be owned,
rather die from despair
having lived life alone.

©2011 ~Erthona

some gems as far as images go, the 1st two especially.
l4 is missing a ed or s after walk (i think)
i admit to having dreamed of her in my youth
like the whole feel of her as you laid her out here
the end rhymes are unobtrusive and work well.
sorry for getting to this late, thanks for the read