Idleness

[Larry]

Along this river
We drift, alone.
Between lips
Of jungle leaves
On a liquid tongue
Of bumbling foam.
We hang our hands
In water, and grab
An alligator,
Asking
“Where, why?”

The grinning gator
Slyly responds-
“Oh my
Please-
Ask again later”

Yes,
We have no guess
As to where we could be going
When adrift
In idleness
And without knowing.

[billy]

Along this river
We drift, alone.
Between lips
Of jungle leaves
On a liquid tongue
Of bumbling foam.
We hang our hands
In water, and grab
An alligator,
Asking
“Where, why?”

The grinning gator
Slyly responds-
“Oh my
Please-
Ask again later”

Yes,
We have no guess
As to where we could be going
When adrift
In idleness
And without knowing.

along this river?
the river of idleness?
i'm going to be really honest and say that when i first looked at the poem addy was here and said it's a bit surreal like alice through the looking glass.

if thats the intent of content. a sort of moment of imagination in the mind of the idle, it needs something more robustly anthropomorphic. (like the creatures in Carrol wrote about.

if not then for me it feels a bit forced.

along this river
we drift alone.

i thought it was the river of life. all in all it feels like you're trying a bit too hard to be poetic larry. you're making the reader work to hard to understand what's being shown.

i get a feeling of whats being said (the seeking of direction, questioning the meaning of it all) but i'm not sure it's for the right reasons. that could be my fault i know. so take what i say with a pinch of the proverbial.

[addy]

I like this poem. There's just something about it. There's a sense of... not exactly 'menace', but of everything not being as it seems (jungle leaves, tongue, sly alligator). It reminds me of a feeling I have as a kid, where the world is an unknown place and there's adventure to be had, and you don't really know what's waiting in the next turn but you don't care 'cause you're just enjoying the freedom of the moment. So my take, or how I read it, is probably very different from what you intended . To me if it's about idleness, it's more like the idleness of my childhood. Sorry if I'm way off, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Structurally, there's little to be said; the form of the poem is spot-on, and the tone is perfect, as far as I can see. I'll come back to this after a few re-readings... maybe then I can come up with more helpful comments.

Thanks so much for this poem

[altezon]

Thanks Larry. What is "bumbling foam"? I'm getting a cunniligual message from the first six lines that seems too sensual to be idle.

[Loveblind]

In my opinion, nothing is better than a poem that's cropped. Beautiful. Anyway, a bit confused I was. At first, I thought it was to be about two couple. Which it probably still is about. I just didn't fathom the alligator part.

[ehabuncensored]

I agree with billy on this one there js a forced feeling, but not because its nit there but ur letting the ink flow , not ur mind. Just think river and us crituqe as gators, take that emotion to this poem as we (the outside looking in) "don't understand" don't tell us show us! Good conceptually but basic, go deep what's underneath the gators what do the gators see u as what is ur boat made of speex of the stream? N if u notice those questions u can also ask ur self in refrence in life which will develop this idea to length s where u think someone else wrote it