The Campaign Builder's Guild

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(By no means are you limited to one or two responses!)

well, it be not bribery that brings me hence,
Nor promises of shiny flitty badges...
The urban items invoke the best images, and images seem ehat you do best in this thread, snippets of color and calrity amidst the riotous
mixing hues, and sudden ideas flash after lists of mindless words shuttle by.
A dumping ground, with corpses of last weeks ideas sitting in piles, grinning word-skulls rictus afflicted,
yet seeing back into the idea-eyes of the writer as much as I.

A silhouette of regret...

Quote from: Icy Hipster Bitch Session #9I left my wallet in my bathrobe and my eyes upon the chair
You asked me if I had to or had ever read Voltaire
But I just laughed at you like you were Stephen Colbert
Because you're not real, you're just a puppet

I took you to the carnival where I lost all my bills
As Congressmen and carnie men tried to get me killed
And every last one had their hands in my pocket still
When all I wanted was to use the toilet

Last night I had a dream that we both had on our hats
We held another funeral for both of your cats
But I woke up and realized that's not where it's at
So I threw your picture into the garbage

I guess you could say that I'm a man of simple tastes
Because I simply enjoy the finer things that I make
I'm arrogant, impossible, and easy to fake
But it doesn't really hurt my self-image

If I were a gambler, I'd put all my stock
In the ones you deride for cruising on your block
So take all your jewelry, go to the pawn shop and hock
Your pointless dreams and ambition

I'm done with you, fed up with liars and cheats
That tattered poor self I can finally defeat
And I go back out onto the mind's Main Street
And put the key into the ignition.

Quote from: You're Original.Look at you
Your bleach-blonde hair
Your spray-on tan
Your cut off sweats
Your pretty pink phone
Your layered makeup
Yeah, you're authentic.

Like, oh my gawd
God, who are you?
I imagine that once you had goals
I'd think that once you had a self
But now
You talk
And no one listens.
They hear you'"
but they don't know what you mean.
Do you?

I can't see you
Beneath all the layers of them.

The sewer grates of this city seethe with her rage
Seas of taxis are her blood, the streets her capillaries
Sweet little songs die in the cascade of the hustle
While the somber, sinister notes haunt the skies

She pushes her derby hat over her eyes
Ignores the gangbangers trying to fuck with her
Covers her ears when the gunshots ring out
Her dignity is out of her hands

I miss the days when I would walk with her
She'd speak to me, I would speak back
Perhaps we both were younger then
Or maybe I was just in love.

What an unfortunate city... Icy Hipster Bitch Session #9 is particularly awesome. "A man today" just blows me away with the way it's written and posted.

Quote from: The Mountaineer's LamentThe summer swells with humming bells and hidden blood and toil
With twilight fright at crimson light of midnight bursts of oil
At such a time could I have deigned to make the trip ashore
Instead I loomed, the coast illumed
Behind my empty door.

Embraced at dawn, the wayward pawn of daylight's growing glow
I sailed along the lakeside lawn as thoughts and dreams did flow
Awake would I with feeling neither rich nor quite so poor
And I would gasp, and raise the mast
Among the sycamores.

My wife, the sky, the endless night, when she would go to bed
Would take with her the canvas which upon the sunlight bled
Had I the sense or loving mind found in few but more
I would have known, I could have shown
That with her I would soar.

And as I watched the steely fingers of the city's sprawl
I felt my doom, my hatred bloom, my gut began to crawl
The crimson claws of progress saw that I was but a chore
My wife is gone, and skies at dawn
Sparkle nevermore.

*whoops*

The monolithic duty of the erstwhile man-at-arms
Has been replaced of late by a sergeant's false alarms
That he would go so far to jeopardize his role
Speaks of the desperation of the people that I know.

When false peers peer into the pier of periodic past
Their fears appear to disappear, cast aside at last
But fast approaching gas, coasting along the land
Was fraught with naught but draught within its often-changing hands.

The locust swarm, with focus gone, quickly fluttered there
Devouring the fields along without concern or slightest care
Groveled graveled groves in which temples have been built
Have turned to dust and since have flushed away as though they're silt.

To watch as all my life and friends wither and erode
Hurts my soul, but of more import, causes me to bode
Should I be gone before you are, I ask you just one thing:
Please remember how it was when we were all laughing.

Polish Hare Krishnas standing on the sidewalk
Holding all their wishes in a bag with their chalk
I know that if you saw them, you'd stand on your knees
And tell the Lord Vishnu that you do what you please

A Muslim and a Christian walk up the avenue
Along with their friend, an Orthodox Jew
One Abraham, Ibrihim, a farmer named Earl
All three together plan to conquer the world

Folk faiths replaced by an atheist regime
Chinese Democracy is more than it seems
I hold you close to my chest so you can feel my heart
As Sunnis and Shias try to tear it apart

Just call me Zarathustra, a preacher in need
Of access to Ahura Mazda's divine steed
Gilgamesh and Hercules engage in a brawl
As me and old Ulysses share a beer in the hall.

There's a lot of meat here, so I'm going to break this response up into a series of posts, I think.

Your poetry reads like prose. By this, I mean that your focus is clearly turned toward the evocation of imagery rather than the description of action and narrative. You're no raconteur, but rather a conjurer.

In the case of the writings that have action and plot (such as the first one in the thread), I often have trouble following the thread of events through the obscuring language. But that very language is so vivid and compelling, it almost seems not to matter.

There are a few places where you let the florid language lapse, and the effect is jarring. For example, from the "master and student" dialogue:

Quote"To the yew and birch and maple and oak perhaps. The willow is on average an emotional creature, so its sorrow would have been disregarded. But to take the lives of those who cannot speak and to create a home for those who can is better than to take the joys of all and put them to sleep as though a mangy mutt."

"On average" sounds contrastingly colloquial. (I'm not sure what to replace it with, but I'm pretty certain "on" is the wrong preposition to use here. Maybe rephrase to something like "by nature," possibly set off by commas?)

Similarly, "as though a mangy mutt" is jarring, partially because "mangy mutts" seems colloquial, but mostly because it's a fragment. Consider "put them to sleep like mangy mutts," "put them to sleep as though they were mangy mutts," or some other phrasing. (Using "as though" cries out for a verb.)

Have to go now to check on a minor local emergency. Longer letter later.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonThere are a few places where you let the florid language lapse, and the effect is jarring. For example, from the "master and student" dialogue:

Quote"To the yew and birch and maple and oak perhaps. The willow is on average an emotional creature, so its sorrow would have been disregarded. But to take the lives of those who cannot speak and to create a home for those who can is better than to take the joys of all and put them to sleep as though a mangy mutt."

That particular entry was less a well-thought out piece of prose and more a dramatization of a chat log from IRC, but I agree that it in particular is sloppy and incoherent. I'll probably give it another look sometime soon.

This train-wreck was written when I was drunk last night, I'll be honest.

Quote from: The Kings and Martyrs on the HillI think and drink Communion wine until my heart is full
And from the masses are the ranks of the faithful culled
And as the streets of Israel are filled with chariots
The hanging noose is yet reserved for Iscariot

Dark clouds gather on the summit peak of seasons passed
Simon born as Peter denies his king thrice when he's asked
So we stand together under Pontius Pilate's rule
Worried naught in autumn's frost with temper and with cool

And as the princely follies breathe of hate and of decay
The solar gleam of winter sparks within his heart of clay
The thief and the arson on the cross next to the thorny king
Is martyred not of reason but of violence fomenting

The holy hall of Jerusalem was burning to the ground
And nothing we can do will save it from the crown
Should that the heralds of the Herodic kings of past
Remember now their crimson brow was such a hateful task.