Your Migrant Mother

[tectak]

I wear the veil of past Bedouin women. If I dwell on your meaning in this line its sense changes. After a while I am left wondering if the veils of contemporary Bedouin are different to past Bedouin women. So I checked....an they're not. What does this line really mean, then? I don't know but I suspect it is simply that "past" is more romantic. Using "past" is possibly overkill. "I wear the veil of the Bedouin women" is cleaner.

Tuesday pitched in Shenzhen spring. Yes to this as a stand alone line...but why is it standing alone? I am not yet feeling the spirit in the poetry because of disconnects. Could you not pull the purse strings together to set a scene? All the gems are scattered about. Look what you have in just a few lines: Veils (mystique), Bedouin ( intrigue), pitched (adventure), Shenzhen( travel) and spring ( rebirth). Fantastic collection but they need poetic linkage to really sing in harmony. The richness, after another crevice, continues. This is poetic suicide by leaping off high places. Why the gap? I am bewildered

The trees decked out
with birds and lanterns -
sing song glow. Bird sing and lanterns glow...so should this read " The trees decked out with bird's and lantern's sing-song glow" ? Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana
Sunday had been
grey skies
filled with snow,
my head in a silver fox
against Moscow’s howling winter. Very,very nice sentence. Commendable

My child, sobbing
in South African Summer,
brings me a Highveld hail storm.
Ice bounces high into the ether
lands in skype Not like skype. Not like lands in skype. Out of time with the spirit of the piece. Aether?
to become my own hot tears......but the rest I visualise with refreshing ease


I walk with the swollen feet of a nomad. I have seen Saharan nomadic tribes. They had thin, flat feet and wore interesting sandals. Swollen must be telling me something that I need to know because I believe you. Why swollen feet?

The seeds of alien ideas
dropped from my bag
flourish.

I peel mango with the teeth of an african,

and see the juice
coat your chin, William.

I observe with the eyes of a childless mother.
You wipe with the hand of a motherless child. The last 8 lines are rather like the result of a lucky dip. They are of some value intrinsically, and worth having. I cannot connect them together, though.

There is a lot good here but also there.....it is just too here and there. Unlike a lot of poetry criticised for lack of imagery, this excels in imagery but needs less space in the collage. There is too much empty background. It only needs pulling together. I wish that I had half your imagination.....oh,I have
Best,
tectak

I almost feel inclined to reply to inanities of the kind spilled out right above my lines here.
Need more alcohol to get in the mood to reply to a brilliant mind like "tec''s. ;-)

OY! Are you critting the crit you critter? You can be confined to mild for that......nothing worse except Vogon poetry.
tectak