Global Ignition

[Jae Mc Donnell]

Jae, is this a revision?  I remember reading this I think.

Hi, Todd,
Sorry for the late reply, I've been bogged down with work.
I tried to respond to this when it was asked. I'm not sure what went wrong.
It's not an intentional revision. It's been around two years since I wroth anything, so I used the first line from a piece I did when I used to use this site, but the rest is in different context. 

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Come on Tom, I know you didn't listen to the whole thing, and certainly listen to enough times to know what it said.  Plus they stole that opening rift from Alice Cooper, I think it was the "Under My Wheels" Album. God, that guy singing was pathetic. Regardless, if I need to refer to the lyrics of a song from an obscure metal band, then the poem needs work.

I'm guessing just from the poem, this is an oblique reference to humans destroying the earth, and the dubious claim that it is theirs to destroy. The insertion of clown seems fairly ad hoc and more or less to act as a forced rhyme at that part. The whole poem seems to lack cohesion and seems at times contradictory. If the house (earth) was burnt down, then where is this other place at the end. How can one "move into" a place that no longer exists? 
Further, what can we take from this odd line "smouldering lips on still laughing clowns". We can say that there are more than one, as they are clowns (plural). They were evidently singed but not really burned from the fire, thus a very fire resistant group of clowns. As they are still laughing, it could be assumed they are mechanical as they are still laughing despite the earth being burned, just a guess there really. Still it tells us  nothing about the clowns in terms of identification or purpose, so it seems to remain an enigma and adds nothing to the poem. In this iteration this poem seems an advertizement for the extreme green, green folks: pure hyperbole. Long before humans could damage the earth to this extent, humans would have died out and the earth would eventually right itself. Certainly humans do not pose the biggest threat this world has ever faced and it is only our conceit that makes us think so. so I think the use of hyperbole here is a bit overblown and undermines the argument.   
At the end the use of blatant sarcasm could work if only these two lines were used:

"No need to rent.
It's our's to sell"  (BTW "ours" is misspelled) Although it could probably be better punctuated.

However with the third line "Right?" It is as though Joan Rivers steps in. Am I right?

It seems there is this strange mixture. In one moment the reader is left with too little information and then over guided in the next.

The bottom line for me is, I don't know if there is enough here to say it is worth trying to improve because I cannot be sure what it is trying to say.

Best of luck with this,

Dale

Erthona, hi, how are things,
I'm not sure if you are addressing me in the first line of your response. I'm guessing you're referring to a song that something like the first line may have been taking from?? If it's from anywhere near Alice Cooper's time I'm way to young to have it in my playlist 

As for the poem, it is talking about global warming. The first few lines are using the monkey as a metaphor for how global warming is wildly out of control and the the laughing clowns talk about generation leading up to mine and how they still see it as some kind of joke.
The moving into a burned down house was about our generations to come. I'm sure you've seen a burned down house before. There is often still the brickwork and some of the roof beams but not much else. Plenty of areas to get a great view.

And the end was more of a question, as in "are we going to just keep going".

Thanks for all you comments. I am very thankful for your time.