/lit/ - Literature

>>4474088
Last line is boring as fuck, great imagery though.

>>4474056
Thanks man, I really appreciate that.

>>4474061
I actually really like most of this, your rhymes are really odd and the meter is uneven, which makes the poem all the better. The imagery is delightful, your story is strong, you play with sound and rhythm nicely. I don't like the uneven number of lines per stanza, but that's just my obsession with a poem's "shape".

The overall "arch" and "theme" of the poem are a little trite and maybe sometimes a bit boring, but overall, almost everything is at least pretty good.

Probably the strongest poem in this thread.

I'm back in this thread because nobody seems to be responding.

Gameshow

Watching “The Price is Right”,
the thing near my hungry left nipple aches---
it greens and folds unto itself
like gnarled, buzzing parchment,
parchment inked with an unbearable lexicon
of sarcasm and methadone.

Who are these people? I wonder.
The camera jibes and tilts,
in particular towards one woman---
thin, her deadish roots blonde,
her mind cracked into tiny crevices
filled with Drano and madness.
Her angst is one that only the Heavens
can bring, usually in a paper bag
bought from Circle K for 67 cents.
Worry lines, glam lyrics, train tickets
crease my pickled thoughts
when I look through her budded body.

When, where, and to whom did she lose
her virginity, veiled innocence?
There is the mindless fervor
of a thousand young females
etched across her armpits
like a hieroglyph of the ocean of loss.

Now, she tries to look happy
on her game show---38, clumsy, riled,
two kids and a dog named Rover
(who she calls her “Special Boo”)
from musty smoggy rusty
Carbondale PA.

Her teeth shine like gummy clean
stamps, she answers
nearly every question
correctly, and with a chinchilla’s whimper.
A furry, caged animal presides
over the thick symphony in her eyes.

Like my mother, she is somehow old.
Matriarchal, they reign thru joyless suburban
orgasms, and a willingness to get thru
tarnished worlds, desert,
rusted over and over---
through game shows.

“Invested in my future”, I plan
to permanently latch myself,
my adolescently small penis,
and a cup of Kirkland water
to the Vistancia hot-top, begging
little boys for ten seconds of their time.

Watch the streets go to ice cream, young man.
I know I will.
Landing feet-first off the back of a METRO bus,
my Brooks Bros. suit, (finely crafted
from taco sauce, dog shit, and $200 bills)
is ruined. (I think!)

(I’ll be old, resting there
on the Phoenix tar…
old is happy I once heard.)

Brenda Huggins, 38, of Carbondale PA,
will lick at my boots.
Both products of the suburbs.
Both old. Fat. Happy.
Then, and only then, can we die together.
Nuzzled in each other’s bosom,

Loving tenderly, each other.

Genesis, Job, and the Sermon on the Mount are about all that's worth reading. I guess just read it because it's "important".

Job, especially, is excellent.

>>4471510
Honestly my favorite in this thread so far.

Actually hilarious.

>>4471429
I like your first idea. It sounds like a pretty neat way of creating a dystopia, even though I (almost as a rule) dislike dystopian fiction.

The "small town cop" story sounds like it would wear a little thin. How many novels feature a small-town cop trying to help the community from _____? A lot, I'd bet.

Maybe I'm just picky. Pretty cool concept overall, but probably not good enough to write a story about. Unless maybe it's a really really short story, which I don't see it being.

>>4471477
I'd go for 3 or 4 sentences there. Like I said, your imagery is very strong, but if you can give me just as good an image in a more original way, I'd probably love this.

"More original way" is up to you. Don't fuck with it too much and end up ruining it, because it's not bad.

>>4471436
I like most of your dialogue, although like your imagery it seems fairly dry and old, and there are, again, particularly bad snippets/phrases in this. I hate your use of "heart going frigid" in the middle of two lines of dialogue. Something seems so off with that, maybe you should go with "her heart frigid". The syntax just seems too...syntactical.

Please don't ever use "my lady" in a piece again. Don't even use it when it seems applicable. It fits the tone/mood of the piece, but it's just bad.

You're still being too descriptive in the breaks from the dialogue. It's implied to the reader that thrills are coursing through Pallas. We don't need you to tell us.

Cut the description to a minimum between the lines of dialogue and this is okay. Still a pretty mediocre piece.

>>4471440
This is needlessly descriptive. The imagery is strong but cliched, and you aren't really doing anything for the reader. Most of the sentences in this piece could be condensed into one or two; otherwise, it feels like you're rambling on and repeating yourself, repeating yourself.

"It was a joy unlike any she had experienced before" is particularly meh. I feel like I've read it a thousand times and lets the plot "bleed through" too much. You're spoonfeeding the reader by using a line like that.

Yeah the line breaks are fucked up, each stanza is supposed to be five lines, not that clusterfuck in the middle.

The last stanza is correct.

Finna drop another poem on you'll cowards. I don't know if the line breaks will be formatted differently from how I want them, but whatever.

Parkridge

I apologized already,
in the back of your truck,
which was smelly and female
all at once. I crammed sweets
and tea into my ears, to buzz
languidly with the cockroaches there.

We were unique all in your room, all at the sides.
The walls were chalked, guilty in disposition,
a struggle of texture against thebaine,
tomboy against tinfoil---Mosquitos glanced
into our bare feet, drank plasma and Modelo…like us.
Alcoholics of the world, unite.
There, we united, fondling whisky
whisky whisky, and baying Natives
tonguing the dirt near Tuba City
and we were mostly burglars,
rummaging in a sigmoid of booze.
And heroin too, ever-present,
a recurring dream, lucid
in the back of a Toyota
sucking soft drinks from a spit cup,
digging ‘neath seat covers searching for change,
touching thin straws, each other’s shame…

Dealing with the taste
because we know what’s coming
after.

bamping.

>>4467927
>yfw you realize DFW was a talentless hack.

Bamping this thread from last night. Looking for some critiques.

Born Under Light

You’re an IBM computer.
You chuckle and whirl,
you twist and you shout,
lick your knotted fingers
into the corner of a daydream,
devour flesh and books…
but your knuckles are still dirty,
brain’s still dirty,
psyche and reproductive organs
still rotting.
---My eyes are still buzzing.

Perhaps all pleasure is relief.
And the snow crumbles at our feet,
driven by a mindless passion of movement,
buried in a thin film of homeostasis.
And the birds caw in our ears,
twelve feet above,
superimposed against virgin darkness,
crying their acidic polyrhythms,
aiming for the nose, aiming
for the nape of our necks.

But we’re almost there,
or maybe closer.
It got better all the time (for a time)
and then we were caressed
with all his stupid passions,
pornography, veiled hate,
angular softness of technology, rising
like a crescent dawn
over broken lands,
and there was Bobby.

I think he’s new here, but he’s so old.

Latter is better, but you should probably change it up a bit, OP.

>>4471287
So when's your high school graduation, bro?

>>4471280
Yes, that was the point, faggot.

I'm happy you understood.

What's up /lit/, this poem is part of my yet-to-be published second chapbook/collection, I'm just looking for some critiques and feedback. If you want moar, I have about ~20 more I can share.

Also, this could be a general feedback thread for anyone else wanting to post some of their work.

Same As It Ever Was

Take a look at these hands,
they feed on each other my hands.
Eat me, bathe me, feed me,
and drink me.
Preacher is basically a good guy
with a dogtooth smile, a bouquet of sermons
and demolished rectums
hung up on a clothesline in his dirty nose.

---And I’m still waiting…

For Christ to come, I want to let him
lie in the sitting room and watch television
with me, and eat Cheetos, and talk crops and chickens
over a game of croquet.
---Arizona…

Is not a nice place, I don’t think.
Methamphetamine is rotting in the gutters,
in God’s ovaries…the lights shine dense neon…
we live in a desert.
I rest among the citrus, spread
my fickle limbs out as a cross.
There is a woman there,
Her name is Mary.

I adore her and I wait.
And nobody shows.

>Not Bloom

The pleb brain is not fit to read the sublime Pynchon.

Same As It Ever Was

Take a look at these hands,
they feed on each other my hands.
Eat me, bathe me, feed me,
and drink me.
Preacher is basically a good guy
with a dogtooth smile, a bouquet of sermons
and demolished rectums
hung up on a clothesline in his dirty nose.

---And I’m still waiting…

For Christ to come, I want to let him
lie in the sitting room and watch television
with me, and eat Cheetos, and talk crops and chickens
over a game of croquet.
---Arizona…

Is not a nice place, I don’t think.
Methamphetamine is rotting in the gutters,
in God’s ovaries…the lights shine dense neon…
we live in a desert.
I rest among the citrus, spread
my fickle limbs out as a cross.
There is a woman there,
Her name is Mary.

I adore her and I wait.
And nobody shows.

Last post of the night guys. Enjoy.

>>4468438
Nah that's cool man, really not trying to be a dick. I get what you're trying to do, and I'm sure some people would dig it. Just..."find your own, unique voice", you know?

>>4468414
You're on a mixture of Pineapple Express, William S. Burroughs, and Denis Johnson, aren't you?

Not that those are objectively bad, in fact I really enjoy all three, but try to hide your influences a bit better next time.

Oh and Hunter S. Thompson too.

As a standalone work, it's alright...
Couldn't read 4 chapters of this blathering, though. Sorry man. :(