metro series #3

[John G]

we are seeing staggering acts of cruelty
theories indicate that the witch-hunt is back on
feral children & hopeless parents TVs blaring in rooms
where the computers crash and tears flow
falling into the waste bins
absorbed slightly by waste paper,
discarded and covered in:

pen scrawls
letters
cars of the future
geo-metric shapes
a bad self portrait.

Your dreams are date stamped and float through the ether
into a rutilant cloud of cinders and smoke.

[Macavity]

Your dreams are date stamped and float through the ether

into a rutilant cloud of cinders and smoke.

Love the ending, being introduced to the word 'rutilant', and the fixidity/loss of date stamped dreams. The rest was fine, though I felt more disconnected with its observational tone. Then again, perhaps this made the directness of the concluding lines that more effective.

cheers

mac

[Arian]

There might be something quite nice here, but I'm struggling with the double line spaces. It might be deliberate, but I don't think it adds value to the piece...

[John G]

Hey Macavity - thanks for stopping by - glad you liked what you read and yep "'rutilant'" is a good word.

Arian, hello again, the spacing was just how it ended up being pasted - have changed it now - looks better now!

[Lake]

Glad to read you again, John. Enjoyed the sketch of mordern metro life.
I find "Your" is the only capital used and there is no punctuation in the most part.
Will capital and punctuation free work?

Cheeres,

Lake

[David]

I've just seen Brazil for the first time, and the poem reminded me of that a lot - especially all that waste paper. And the ending is really good - I'm a rutilant newbie too. Great word. (This site - http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoft ... 03/07.html - is also a discovery for me, and I like the way it pretty much just shows you how the word works in action.)

Nice to see you back again, John. Something about the looming 2012 beanfeast - if it affects you where you are - would be interesting.

Cheers

David

[Arian]

To puntuate or not to punctuate: that is the question. I don't think it really matters, so long as you go one way or the other. As it is, you strike an ambiguous and unsatisfying stance between the two, punctuating on a seemingly random - a sceptic might say accidental - basis. And a poem that owes too much to accident is no poem at all. (Discuss, using one side of the paper only.)

Apart from that, it's - for me - a curate's egg. There are some nice bits, such as s2 and (especially) the end, but they merely serve to (nearly) redeem the slightly ordinary language and (sorry John, but I know you prefer honesty) sloppy constructions of s1.

Verdict: promising, but needs work.

Cheers
peter

[twoleftfeet]

Great to see you back, John.

This one isn't doing a lot for me, tbh - it seems to lose focus after the first 3 lines and all I seem to be left with is an
apocalyptic vision (maybe that was your intention?).

I think you might need to rephrase "computers crash" as the context ("tears flowing" etc) implies a continuous process
whereas (as all you Windows users know ) a computer can crash in the blink of an eye.

Geoff

[John G]

Lake, thanks for stopping by. I see you and Arian have both picked up on the total lack of punctuation. A lame excuse maybe, but it was never something I truly understood so I guess out of fear of ballsing it up I have tended to say  away from it. Naturally it does impact on how the poem an be read. Then again, with no punctuation I guess the onus is on the reader to make their mind up how they want to read it. But is that a cop out?

But point taken, something to work on.

Arian, Verdict: promising, but needs work. Agreed but good to know there are some glimmers of light in there.

Hello again David, what is this beanfeast you speak of?! 

An Geoff, glad you enjoye the first few lines, will give me a solid base to build on.

Thank you all, appreciated as ever.

[David]

Hello again David, what is this beanfeast you speak of?!

I keep thinking you live in London. Is that wrong?

[k-j]

Hello again David, what is this beanfeast you speak of?!

I keep thinking you live in London. Is that wrong?

Mentally I think he still does.

John I really like this. Would work well as part of a long, sprawling piece. I agree the ending is great. Rutilant one of those words I've seen before but never bothered to look up, turns out not to mean what I'd have guessed.

[John G]

Hello K - funny bumping into you here...

Glad you liked. As for, "Would work well as part of a long, sprawling piece" - this is part of a bigger piece. I read the Metro on the way to work and cherry pick random sentences and headlines, cut them up, tinker with a bit here and a bit there and thats how I arrived at my "Metro series".

There are about 30 or 40 parts which can be read on their on or linked together.

It just makes reading the Metro worthwhile!