III—The Valiant

The city is tired
and the peo­ple are watch­ing
                            tired
of watch­ing the city’s
col­li­sion
          bend sin­is­ter,

with the same sor­row
and the same song
and the same
             some­times.

We, the city,
              har­rowed,
the valiant
            hence.

Kook­abur­ras
            watch
and
    laugh
and
    won­der
why noth­ing
            hap­pens.

Why time is lacon­ic;
                     abrupt.


Per­for­mance note: Wear “who the fuck is tremont?” shirt if read­ing.

This needs to go some­where else, but right now I don’t know where to take it and main­tain its sparse­ness.

v.2

The city is tired
and the peo­ple are watch­ing
                            tired
of watch­ing the city’s
col­li­sion
          bend sin­is­ter.

The streets roll over in their sleep.

Where are the valiant
on the ten o’clock news?
Who still won­ders
why time is lacon­ic;
                     abrupt


Still not right, but bet­ter.

4 thoughts on “III—The Valiant”

  1. I’m nev­er one to not throw about an opin­ion about some­one else’s poet­ry. So here it is:

    This is a real­ly good poem. But the Kook­abur­ras (sym­bol­ic of nature (organic/mechanic?) don’t seem to fit. Maybe they’re sort of left hang­ing — no elab­o­ra­tion, that that par­tic­ualr sec­tion car­ries less imagery than the oth­ers and is there­fore not com­ing across as strong­ly.

    And keep in mind you can always tell me to shut the fuck up. I might even lis­ten.

  2. Dude­man, I’m a work­shop­ping whore. The more opin­ions I get the bet­ter. I’m stub­born enough to ignore them all if I think I should.

    I think the Kook­abur­ras are bad because they too obvi­ous­ly act as a sym­bol for some­thing and that is lame.

  3. God…I had the same thought con­cern­ing the Kook­abur­ras as PTB. How did we spend three years tear­ing apart peo­ple’s writ­ing from oppo­site cor­ners to end up all peace­ful and lovey dovey?

    Any­way, I think you’re right that this poem needs to go some­where else. Maybe sit on it for a bit or write a few sen­tences elu­ci­dat­ing what you’d like it to say before work­ing it out with­in the poem.

    Good work.

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