A jar of glowworms and stale memories

(A collection of short poems)

AN: Some of these are from my NaPo, and I'd love to dig out some potential. Even a crit on one of the poems would be appreciated.


Sidewalks

An anthrogram of good luck charms
you searched for carried
in a Bible matchbox. In your
threaded pockets, with
the penny that you found.
But good luck hasn't ever brought
a knock to your doorstep.

Talk to sidewalks, they'll
know broken better than I.


The Life of London Chimney Sweeps

the gleeful faces, hidden behind
pillars of smoke. contrasted by teeth,
pearly sweet moons, with the stars
and the chimneys as lampposts in time.
floating with their crooked umbrella
bristles. ash becomes a company and
friend and the chimney sweeps disappear
in curled shadows. with those bright-eyed
London folk.


4th Story Window Nights

Do you remember those days,
when you sat on the fourth floor window?
With your head in your hands and
a night sky at your feet, dancing
with a soft palette of colours.
Behind closed eyelids, a dizzy array
of car sounds and rainbows.

Sometimes, evening birds perched
on that rotten wood ledge, with
cocked heads before they beat
wings and swoop. And you'd swing
your feet looking at the plane
of black and grey, deciding
whether to fly.


Ma’s Summer Sweets

peaches and cream drenched in shy flashes of light,
scattered into ma's caramel treats flecked with daydreams
and summer afternoons where she would smile and bite
down on garden strawberries. sometimes she would
draw in her coffee cream, until the day among the
purple geraniums and marigolds you'll find her
on broken knees with huckleberry injuries.


Spend a night under cobblestones

a night in London,
under the sullied cobblestone tunnels
and burnt out lamplights.
you can hear the ragged woman sing

"the day has fallen into hate we must.

We must pray"

(but the church was blown up yesterday)

Hi - Creative!

I like the first poem a lot; listing all those good luck charms that don't work and then the metaphor about sidewalks and whatnot. Very clever.

2:
It's OK, but I didn't like it the best. You could do so much better. And the grammar needs work.

3:
The best in my opinion! I really love the imagery in this and the story you're telling. I think it's cute and original. The senses that you have interact with the words put the whole piece together and it just seems so professional.

4:
This one might need the most work. I like the idea and the story you are trying to tell, but it's mostly your grammar.
"Ma" should be capitalized since you don't have a possessive word in front of it.
But the ending is good and sad.

I liked all of these. Great job Kam, and keep writing

My dear Kamas, you have done it again!!!

I was incredibly entertained by your series of poems, and thought it was very creatives to make the many poems into one.

Again and again you intrigue me with your poetry. You really should try to get it published you know; big bucks, and tons o' publicity!!!



KEEP ON WRITING!!!

-Elfy

Oooooooh, Kamas!

My God, the first words that pop into my mind when I read your poetry are: snuggly, sweet and delectable. The above poems, alongside your marvellous NaPo are a testament to this . There is something unattainably intimate about this style of poetry; I feel like I've burrowed right into the tiniest, softest corners of the narrator's or characters' hearts. And I value every word, every delicious image, since the poems are each small enough to give the separate pieces of imagery greater value.

So...Sidewalks

An anthrogram of good luck charms
you searched for carried
in a Bible matchbox. In your
threaded pockets, with
the penny that you found.
But good luck hasn't ever brought
a knock to your doorstep.

'Anthrogram' - the obscurity of that nudged me a little, but the 'good luck charms' made me feel better immediately. Mixing up the seriously-known with the seriously-unknown, eh? The strangest thing is: the first sentence (ending on 'matchbox') makes very little sense read literally (An anthrogram of good luck charms you searched for carried in a Bible matchbox.) - something to do with the 'you searched for carried in' part sounding bizarre. HOWEVER, for the purposes of flow and the poem, it works wonderfully.

Be careful though, with the number of 'I-don't-make-perfect-sense' sentences you put straight one after another. The next line doesn't make the neatest sense either - although of course I know what you mean - maybe try substituting the full stop with a semicolon or dash? I dunno about repeating 'good luck' twice in the same short stanza - whose knock is the character in this poem waiting for? And why would good luck lead to a knock - unless it is that of a lover? I like the mystery here. I only wish I understood .

Talk to sidewalks, they'll
know broken better than I.

The mystery here is alluring. I'm an insanely curious person, so really, I should be climbing the walls to figure out what you mean here; I should be gnashing my teeth, and dissecting every line...but really, I do not care. The poem is sweet and cute, and the mystery simply means that I will reread it, get the general feeling and read it again to catch it out, if I can. And if I can't, then no matter, since the poem did well enough anyway.

The Life of London Chimney Sweeps

Before I read this I had the Mary Poppins 'Chim-chimney' song stuck in my head - so there goes the flow of the poem (I mean, it's been taken over by the obvious rhythm of the chim-chimney song!).

This poem was like a rotten sweet-tooth. It depicted something rather ghastly and morbid - the words 'gleeful faces,' 'pillars of smoke, 'contrasted by teeth, ' crooked umbrella bristles,' 'curled shadows' were all sinister and black images - while still retaining the classic element of Kamas-cuteness and innocence; 'pearly sweet moons,' 'chimneys as lampposts,' 'bright-eyed.'

In short, I liked the contrast, and I think it gave it a tangible edge over the previous poem, that seems much softer in retrospect.

4th Story Window Nights

I actually didn't enjoy this one much. It seemed lacking in any real depth, a kind of random passing thought, glassy and white. The 'head in hands,' 'night sky,' parts seemed too cliche, and the colour palette, car sounds, rainbow, evening birds...seemed chosen for their prettiness more than anything else, which made the richness of your voice less apparent. They felt like they were just there for attention, like a girl mildly twirling a red ribbon in her hair.

[quote]Ma's summer sweets[/b]

And you know what I think of this. I'm pretty sure I commented on your NaPo. This one is YUMMY.

Thanks for the reads, Kamas!

I appreciate all the reviews. Thank you!

Stopping by on a spring day.

I'd say that the poems get better and better as they go along. The first one didn't really do anything for me; it had charm, but some of the phrases sounded vague and funny because the grammar/clarity wasn't as precise as it could have been. The last four lines (last two of the first stanza, and final mini–stanza) were really nice. Keep those.

The second also had issues with clarity (the images were a bit difficult to see: did the smoke contrast with the teeth? curious), but I love cityscapes, so this one won me over anyway; the last line I really liked.

Third poem was also good; the memories are so sweet and simple (I beg to differ with the title, by the way), and you, for the most part, describe them to us exquisitely. All the descriptions are vivid, so good job for that.

My only real biff with "Ma's Summer Sweets" is towards the end: "until" signals past tense, while "you'll" (you will) signals future tense, so it's not grammatically/chronologically logical. I do like your use of "huckleberry", however.

I enjoyed the last one, but the rhythm was a little odd due to the "hate" sentence; still, you ended it with a clever rhyme.

Overall, I think an A–. I think your images are spectacular, and the concepts are fascinating, but they all need some syntactical focus.

Thanks for sharing these with us.

–antimelrose

KAMAS. WHAT'S. UP.

So...Kamas writes poetry, huh? Wait, you did the Leather Shoes thing right? Oh! I guess you're not such a n00b after all.

Sidewalks

Definitely like this one. It tells a story, even if I have no idea what that story is. 0.o My favorite line was this:

Talk to sidewalks, they'll
know broken better than I.

The Life of London Chimney Sweeps

Not so sure about this one. I have no idea what you're trying to say, and the descriptions like "floating with their crooked umbrella bristles" just served to add to the confusion. I do like the fact that you talk about London, though.


4th Story Window Nights

Awesome. I love it! Your imagery is so great, and the last lines just tie it all together. I would change "whether to fall" to "whether or not to fall," however, just because it adds some needed syllables while also making it more final and concrete.

Ma’s Summer Sweets

You jerk. Why did you have to make a sad one? It's freakin' depressing! Still, this was my favorite one. You've really captured a certain aspect of Summertime perfectly, and the way you phrased things remind me of my grandmother. That is a good thing. *nods*


Spend a night under cobblestones

This one was good too! I love the last line. It has a very Shel Silverstein-type air about it. Great work.

As a whole, these were great! Definitely have potential, if that's what you're looking for. I would say, though, that I wish you'd change your format. Right now, you end lines in seemingly random spots, and it makes the flow choppy. Try switching it up so that it's more easily defined and understandable.

-Timmay

P.S. You are my one-thousandth post, just like I promised. Yayayayayayayaaaaaay.

Hi Kamas,

Kamas wrote:An anthrogram of good luck charms
you searched for carried
in a Bible matchbox. In your
threaded pockets, with
the penny that you found.
But good luck hasn't ever brought
a knock to your doorstep.

Talk to sidewalks, they'll
know broken better than I.

This is really pretentious. And by that, I mean I haven't seen a poem as artificially stuffed-up and torn from its own sinews to make an unmoving shadow like this one in quite a while. First of all, you really want us to play along with the "broken" idea when you "break" your sentences in the first stanza? Anyone can see through that in a second; what makes it unique, what makes it significant? Right now it just seems like a gimmick, and I advise you to scrap that format for now and concentrate on getting your message to be clearer than your method. Otherwise, obscurity reigns.

Speaking of messages, the last two lines were really the only ones that had any weight in my eyes. They're actually very good lines, but unfortunately they are placed in a farce of a poem that doesn't even know where it wants to go, let alone what it is in the first place. The tone of the ending stanza is like exhaling after a run - it's reflective, rather short, an release of pent up emotions (in this case, a mellow emptiness). But nothing leads up to it. I'd expect a poem like this to go on a winding road, a tide followed by an ebb. Instead, we have some muttering in the first few lines and then... some more muttering in the last two lines. It only works if you can bring the poem to a kind of anti-climax by such a straight-forward ending. If your whole poem follows the same mundane tone without any deviance whatsoever, the potency is lost.

The Life of London Chimney Sweeps

the gleeful faces, hidden behind
pillars of smoke. contrasted by teeth,
pearly sweet moons, with the stars
and the chimneys as lampposts in time.
floating with their crooked umbrella
bristles. ash becomes a company and
friend and the chimney sweeps disappear
in curled shadows. with those bright-eyed
London folk.

Again, the entire "I am going to be artsy by refusing to capitalize properly and by using broken sentences for no reason" isn't working for me, precisely because it seems to be something done simply for the sake of itself. Granted, you may be trying to create some kind of a background here with your words, but this is overloading. If you look at a visual background, it should be dimmer than your main character / place / event / etc in the front of the landscape, both physically and metaphorically. The same holds true in poetry, and right now you are concentrating too much on how your poem is saying something rather than what it is saying.

I also cringed when I read the "lampposts in time". I used to do this myself, and the sooner you get out of this habit, the better. Saying that something is "in time" only works very very rarely, and certainly not this time. There's just no imagery to support it in this poem.

4th Story Window Nights

Do you remember those days,
when you sat on the fourth floor window?
With your head in your hands and
a night sky at your feet, dancing
with a soft palette of colours.
Behind closed eyelids, a dizzy array
of car sounds and rainbows.

Sometimes, evening birds perched
on that rotten wood ledge, with
cocked heads before they beat
wings and swoop. And you'd swing
your feet looking at the plane
of black and grey, deciding
whether to fly.

Idyllic and contemplative at the same time, a good mix. Understandably other posters on this thread have expressed dissatisfaction at this poem, but it is clear that it does have a carefully crafted setting and this setting works to do what it's supposed to do. The first stanza could be shorter. What also caught my eye (in a bad way) was the "dizzy array of car sounds and rainbows". Would it really hurt that much to replace "car sounds" with an actual sound? Honking, I don't know. And any reader will have trouble imagining car sounds and rainbows going together in the same picture. Just a heads up.

Ma’s Summer Sweets

peaches and cream drenched in shy flashes of light,
scattered into ma's caramel treats flecked with daydreams
and summer afternoons where she would smile and bite
down on garden strawberries. sometimes she would
draw in her coffee cream, until the day among the
purple geraniums and marigolds you'll find her
on broken knees with huckleberry injuries.

Here, you personify objects without much of reason behind it, and that throws the reader off. Shy flashes of light and huckleberry injuries are the two main examples that come to mind. What's the significance? If you want to relate the humanoid behavior to an action, then do so. Don't just tell us that there are "shy flashes of light", tell us how they're shy. Making note of scattering like daydreams isn't answering that question, by the way.

Spend a night under cobblestones

a night in London,
under the sullied cobblestone tunnels
and burnt out lamplights.
you can hear the ragged woman sing

"the day has fallen into hate we must.

We must pray"

(but the church was blown up yesterday)

This is the poem I liked best. The ending was done rather well to fit in with the rest of the lines, and you had a good mixture of form and message; you didn't crowd out one with the other like you've done in poems past. Use this as a template for the future.

Hope that helped,
Galerius