Charybdis and Scylla (1st edit)

[tectak]

Tom,

Sorry your right about the spelling, I don't know how I missed that I used to read the "Legion of Super Heroes" religiously.

"This is just outside the limits. I would still have another crack at it, though, if it were shorter by a head."

I don't know why people never like this one, I'm quite Fonda it, and you can easily read it in the time it takes to take a shit, well at least after your thirty, and most people below thirty wouldn't have a clue regardless so that doesn't matter. Of course cutting out 5% of your audience isn't the best thing, but sometimes you just have to make choices. It seems most people I let read it in person start rubbing their head in about thirty seconds, and then hand it back to me. If I ask them what they thought of it, they usually say, "it's not for me". I guess that means it's not popular. Do you know how I can make this more popular?

"I would still have another crack at it, though, if it were shorter by a head."

Well If I took off a stanza that would about do it. which one do you think I should remove. I could take off this one as it really doesn't say anything anyhow:

"Extant manipulatable objectified, commonality,
A sociopathic, depersonalized, anti-person personality.
A pleasure compass, a sensual schismatized abacus,
each pathogenic inconsonance was a face of this succubus:
sharing its sickness under the façade of love.
Evil cannot exist, without accomplice:
nor subsist, if lies be bound and the truth be told,
as it is below the same on earth, the truth will hold."

dale

Yep, that's the stanza but I do like the "succubus" inclusion, and what follows on from it, in the next lines. You have the makings of a "tandem triumphans" and it would make the final furlong to the finish a mile long to omit it (a fucked up metaphor); especially as I am fairly sure that the "face" of the succubus is never seen except, fancifully, in the dream. Am I wrong on this point?
As for making it more popular take one or both if my suggestions.
1) Only read it to pretentious prats or
2) make more, literally, of the "rock and hard place" metaphor by exemplifying the exquisite choice in every stanza. Clearly.

Best,
tectak