09-30-2013, 02:21 PM
This is a nice bouncy read, and was fun despite the fact it made no sense. I think it is way to ambiguous for many to think poker. Sure you say "chips", but you also put in two fishes with those chips, making it seem the chips are of the potato variety. Sure you use "shark" which can be interpreted as "card shark", but shark is used in many different ways, and there is nothing here to say this is in reference to cards. Along with that is the supposedly unintended reference to martial arts. In the TV show "Kung Fu", "Grasshopper" was the nickname given to the David Carridine character "Kwai Chang Caine" when it flashes back to the time he was a boy. The show opened ever episode with Kwai Chang's master telling him when he could snatch the pebble from his hand it would be time for him to go. Snatching the pebble, and catching the fly with chopsticks are similar devices, the latter from the movie "Karate Kid". Most anyone who has every had even a passing fascination with martial arts are probably aware of both. Plus the passage beginning with "I was born" until "translucent" has a bit of an Asian philosophical tone to it. All of this plus it seems to have nothing to do with poker leads me to believe you have no right to expect a reader to get this is about a game of cards. I can see that these elements might be purely coincidental because of how they fall in the poem. However, how does this:
"You will be able to fool me
when you can catch a fly,
with chopsticks,
on your first try."
relate to poker in any particular way. It seems very ad hoc to me, and in fact extremely extraneous, and I am the master of extraneous and tangential (I've never met a bush I did want to beat around!).
So, although I can see in retrospect how you might have made these choices, such as the above passage meaning "never" (you will never fool me), I would doubt there will be many, if any who will read this and think it is about cards. So to this degree the poem fails, and will continue to do so until you give the reader more of a clue as to your intentions.
Dale
"You will be able to fool me
when you can catch a fly,
with chopsticks,
on your first try."
relate to poker in any particular way. It seems very ad hoc to me, and in fact extremely extraneous, and I am the master of extraneous and tangential (I've never met a bush I did want to beat around!).
So, although I can see in retrospect how you might have made these choices, such as the above passage meaning "never" (you will never fool me), I would doubt there will be many, if any who will read this and think it is about cards. So to this degree the poem fails, and will continue to do so until you give the reader more of a clue as to your intentions.
Dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.