Poetry Forum

Sixteen-Eighty was brutal
on saints and their hissing cats.
A turgid June, thickened as it was
by a coarse sanguinary wine
failed to quench the civil mob.

Above the cupcake façade,
the pink and cerise portico’s,
the heavenly-frocked casements,
a tiered sibilance rises,
while the throng, in a merry sweat,
crows its maundering spite.

The accused stand center-stage,
as hairless as Sphinx.
Some contemplate the ornate venue,
some lash ther minds
behind unfocused eyes,
while ermin-robed judgements
screak at purged flesh.
　
Time waves its checkered flag,
the plaza is suddenly a race-track
for fervent revelers.
Real Madrid fans have surged out of the barra.
Soccer balls are dribbled over cobbles.
I am jostled as they circle me.
I am their new sport,
perhaps a candidate for further inquisition?
Out of control, the ball spins onward
seeking its own inarticulate goals.

The cats fume and glare,
pinched as they are into strips of sunset,
a pink Iberian tongue of light
that pleats the floodlit square.
An ancient pigment has bubbled through
the stucco-laden fascia,

a sputter of dogma,
a malignancy that daubs a garish spangle
on long whispering shadows.

Hi Sparky - 'turgid' is the word!

Your lines are so crammed with adjective/noun constructions- in fact there's barely a noun standing without an adjective - that reading this is a struggle for me.

You skip tenses, from past in the first stanza, to present from then on, which doesn't really work for me. Maybe set the first stanza in the present as well, as the point of your poem seems to be how the present contains the past anyway.

Lots of passive verbs - was brutal, was thickened, are dribbled, am jostled, are pinched - I'd like to see some of them become active, so something actually happens as I read

Do you know the poem 'Tension' by Billy Collins?

.He uses this epigraph

“Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension.”
—Writing Fiction

Thanks JM,

I am always grateful to be tutored in the
art of poetry by you.

The tenses were mixed deliberately of course, I do that a lot,
so you may have to continue to "struggle".

I like 'suddenly' in its context in this write.
　
Besides which, and notwithstanding - my fault.

(12-03-2016, 05:10 AM)just mercedes Wrote: [ -> ]Hi Sparky - 'turgid' is the word!

Your lines are so crammed with adjective/noun constructions- in fact there's barely a noun standing without an adjective - that reading this is a struggle for me.

You skip tenses, from past in the first stanza, to present from then on, which doesn't really work for me. Maybe set the first stanza in the present as well, as the point of your poem seems to be how the present contains the past anyway.

Lots of passive verbs - was brutal, was thickened, are dribbled, am jostled, are pinched - I'd like to see some of them become active, so something actually happens as I read

Do you know the poem 'Tension' by Billy Collins?

.He uses this epigraph

  “Never use the word suddenly just to
           create tension.”
                       —Writing Fiction