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rich-pa
Member

since 2000-02-07

Posts 317
New Orleans, Louisiana

0 posted 2003-05-23 06:58 PM

hello hello, long time no see to all the oldies, hello to the newbies, i'll prolly be here for a week then dissapear for like a year again....enjoy!

my life plays out like a soap opera,
but oh no, not the kinda soap
laden with lustful images of men and women
that bored housewives,
and even some househusbands
inundate upon from day to day,
i got the gritty soap,
the why-does-my-life-suck,
did-my-fam-take-cues-from-springer soap,
the ones where the grandma is a witch,
and Beverly just reunited with Antonio,
her long lost husband,
who shows up after ten years,
two of which he was buried alive,
until he was rescued by an angel,
given a lobotomy to forget his ordeal,
then spent the subsequent years
on a holy mission,
armed with blessed potato salad
to throw at the various devils
at all the major stops on the lecture circut.

why, just take the other day!
the little scuffle i had with my dad,
who has a girl younger than me,
i wrecked my truck into his,
but what's really bad is that,
he forgave me the next day,
so it's ok, (except for the dent.)
truthfully,
it turned out to be a beautiful day,
but, what good is a soap
that doesn't make you feel clean,
and let you forget
about the real troubles of life?
(whatever those may be.)

"freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose..." -janis joplin

hush
Senior Member

since 2001-05-27

Posts 1653
Ohio, USA

1 posted 2003-05-25 03:13 AM

I don't think I enjoyed this quite as much as poems you'veposted in the past. It's fairly verbose... I think the idea of a 'gritty soap opera' is kind of neat... I wrote a paper that dealt, in part, with the smooth manicured appearance of daytime dramas. I mean, the characters are all rich and have these fascinatingly intricate problems that are all so interrelated... and it's all designed (or initially was, at least) to sell cleaning products.

But, see, the style here doesn't really seem to reflect a diversion from that. While I wouldn't call it manicured, there isn't much 'grittyness' to the poem, and I think it needs that to be the effective punch you seem to have wanted. As is, it reads as a long run-on, which I found distracting. For example:

'my life plays out like a soap opera,
but oh no, not the kinda soap
laden with lustful images of men and women
that bored housewives,
and even some househusbands
inundate upon from day to day,'

Couldn't this be shortened? It leaves the reader less time to become distracted by 'oh nos' and 'evens':

'my life plays out like a soap opera,
not the kinda soap laden with lustful images
that bored housewives
and even some househusbands
are inundated with from day to day,'

I think it's safe to assume that the lustful images in soaps are of men and women... also, the use of inundated seemed really awkward, just a suggestion on how to make this read more smoothly...

'i got the gritty soap,
the why-does-my-life-suck,
did-my-fam-take-cues-from-springer soap,
the ones where the grandma is a witch,
and Beverly just reunited with Antonio,
her long lost husband,
who shows up after ten years,
two of which he was buried alive,
until he was rescued by an angel,
given a lobotomy to forget his ordeal,
then spent the subsequent years
on a holy mission,
armed with blessed potato salad
to throw at the various devils
at all the major stops on the lecture circut.'

Just to point something out before I even say anything about the wording... TOO MANY DAMN COMMAS! Okay...

'i got the gritty soap,
the why-does-my-life-suck,
did-my-fam-take-cues-from-springer soap,'

Fam? I find that kind of an odd shortening...

On the rest, these are just a few suggestions on flow. Feel free to discard them.

'the ones where the grandma is a witch,
and Beverly just reunited with her long lost husband Antonio
who shows up after ten years,
two of which he was buried alive,
until he was rescued by an angel and
given a lobotomy to forget his ordeal,
who then spent the subsequent years
on a holy mission,
armed with blessed potato salad
to throw at the various devils
at all the major stops on the lecture circut.'

I think this kind of falls apart in the last stanza.

'why, just take the other day!
the little scuffle i had with my dad,
who has a girl younger than me,
i wrecked my truck into his,
but what's really bad is that,
he forgave me the next day,
so it's ok, (except for the dent.)
truthfully,
it turned out to be a beautiful day,
but, what good is a soap
that doesn't make you feel clean,
and let you forget
about the real troubles of life?
(whatever those may be.)'

This sounds less like poetry than a rushed relay of a story. I would go through, find the points that arepertinent to your poem, and mold the rest around them instead of letting everything run together like a race to the end.

Hope I've helped.

rich-pa
Member

since 2000-02-07

Posts 317
New Orleans, Louisiana

2 posted 2003-05-25 10:18 PM

thanks hush, truthfully i made this up in like 2-3 minutes so, you get what you put into it, ohwell, haha

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