En Route to Portland: Departing 1:45 AM

staring flat ahead
curled in cheap terminal seats
the raw kiss of steel

ratty dreads and hems
ooze old rot and cigarettes
tarred tides ripple teeth

paint scarred in bathrooms
worn heart carved with A + M
4-EVER rubbed thin

tiny mini-mart
long rows of neon candies
soft hums and cool drinks

fluorescent displays
gold crosses next to skin mags
thick lumps of grooved gum

as for other news
J.Lo's baby has three heads
London bomb kills ten

plane groans at 2:10
one white pillow one blanket
3000 miles west.

~~~~

Something of an experiment in writing in the extended haiku style. Critiques appreciated!

J.Lo's baby has three heads
London bomb kills ten

The order that has been written in is interesting. I think it shows how truly interested the world is about things.

It's an interesting poem, and it reminds me of a piece named adelstrop, just with a more down to earth nature.

quite good.

Journeys and holidays should make for such intriguing reads, actually, since they describe environments new to the poet or narrator, meaning we all look upon them with wonder and astonishment (reader and poet alike). I was hooked in by the title, but the first lines did the images later on no justice.

Firstly, you use a lovely array of imagery - 'tarred tides ripple teeth,' 'neon candies...gold coins next to skin mags,' 'one white pillow one blanket' etc - which shows a keen sense of observation of the surroundings. These images are at times nonsensical, much like the brief flashes of memory we have after a trip, a collection of two-second snapshots that really have little in common other than the trip itself.

However, one area where I felt the images fell down on was in the fact that they read like a list. While they're kept very short on purpose - to show us the snapshot nature of memory - this actually makes them read like a shopping list, a vocabulary-list of words that are strung together with nothing in common other than the title. As a result, instead of attaining a sophisticated level of non-cohesiveness, the poem reads like a series of disjointed pictures, random beads of thought thrown with little idea of what the overall effect is going to be. Sure, you achieve an image-by-image effect, but on stepping back and looking at the poem as a whole, it's not particularly inventive as the sum of its parts. More like a meal cooked with a short dash of every spice and no meat or substance supporting it.

And the opening lines, with 'staring flat ahead,' provide a very bored feeling from the outset. The narrator comes across as listless, mouth-hanging-open, glassy-eyed...not really someone we want to read about. That spoils the tone for the rest of the poem, where you get creative and bouncy with the imagery. Rather than having a delightful feel, the images that follow after seem a tad forced, as if the narrator has had to really pause and think about writing them since they were so 'flat-eyed' and listless in the first place.

I hope that helps. PM me if you've got any questions!

I really enjoyed this. It's been a while since I've seen a poem of this caliber on YWS! It retains a level of sophistication, without being overdrawn or over-heavy with images and poeticism, as my poems sometimes are.

Although I see where Navita is coming from, I didn't even really notice that this was more of a list than a poem until Navita pointed it out, which means you successfully concealed a devise that indeed made this poem seem more like traveling. A blur of images, hazy in the early morning.

On the other hand, I liked it when you connected the preceding images with S6, when you began "as for other news". I think if you inserted one more of these connections earlier on in the poem, you'd form a few more hydrogen bonds between these molecular stanzas. You begin the poem from the point of view of a speaker, who is staring ahead and curled. I suggest you resurrect this speaker at least once more in the course of the poem. Unless you are determined in retaining the haiku-esque atmosphere, in which case you're between a rock and a hard place. Choose between form and cohesiveness, I guess.

Your closing stanzas are my favorite. Clever and resonant. I enjoyed the alliteration in S2 L3. For some reason, I didn't care for S5. It was boring. There isn't a word in there that makes me excited. And regardless of whether or not that's what you were going for, it was just bland. A little bit like a lump of gum

Portland. Portland, Oregon? In which case, I salute you, fellow Oregonian.

-Kylan

"gold crosses next to skin mags"
The contrast of the image sin this line is amazing.

"as for other news
J.Lo's baby has three heads
London bomb kills ten"
My favorite stanza. I like that it has kind of a sarcastic but still sort of bored(?) tone to it.

I like this poem. I like how each little stanza is kind of at a disconnect with the others, yet they're all part of one larger idea. As for the extended haiku type style, I can see how that could go terribly, terribly wrong, but you definitely worked well with it. It actually enhanced the overall feel of the poem instead of hindering it. incredible job

I don't have much to say about this poem because I loved it. I had to read it a second time to full grasp what was happening - and that is awesome. The best poems take more than one read to fully comprehend.

I skimmed the above reviews and noticed that some complained about the listing element of this poem. I think you're spot on - don't change a thing. Having spent a lot of time in airports (never that late in the night), when you're tired and just want to get on your plane, get out of the airport, go back home or to your destination, and pass out in a real bed, everything feels like it's passing by you instead of you passing by it. The poem is very mechanical due to the listing aspect and I feel that highlights the mechanical way a very sleep and homesick person would feel when wandering through an airport.

I actually love airports though. I love them to death, and I love flying. Even if I hate waiting in security and the people and the fact that I got sick when I flew for eight hours. I just love it. This poem brought so much feel to it, so much about the airport, just wandering through, and it also brought out a lot about the kind of people who would be waiting in the airport at such a time. This was perfect.

Perhaps the only thing I could comment on is the fact that you have no punctuation in the poem up until the last period. I kind of like that last period - a final silence, a final relief of all that waiting, but it's also like "Huh?" so, really you can leave it how you want but I thought I'd comment on it.

This is by far one of the best poems I've seen on here in a long time. One of the best to use stream of consciousness and no punctuation. You are awesome. *high five*

I really like this! Especially because it is just plain truth, rather than built up, fancy language, you know?
I also like it because I experienced the same thing on my trip to Portland.
Only suggestion is to work on grammar, although it doesn't matter much in this case.
I am a big fan of the realness of it and I think it captures how teenagers view the world, maybe it's just me, but thats what I see.
Good Work!