Fucking Penguins.

By celticman

Tue, 22 Feb 2011
  • 2351 reads
13 comments
 

No matter how many there will never be enough.
Plucky council house pensioners.
Reminders where we go wrong.
Bobbies on the beat.
Banks on the main street.
No matter how many there will never be enough.
Tradition, gold hearted school marms and whores.
Knee- benders, hairy beard prescriptivists
Reminders where we go wrong.
Po- face descriptivists, vinegar for voice.
Labels, fables and remarketing of choice.
No matter how many there will never be enough.
Council houses, bare faced drink, Buckfast tonic wine.
Roll-on-roll-off bellies; vulgar two finger sign.
Reminders where we go wrong.
Girls too fucking young; incapable of choice.
Penguins in jackets; blue rinse and moist.
No matter how many there will never be enough
Reminders where we go wrong.

Certificate 15
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by ScoZen on
Catching up at last with your work, celticman. I enjoyed this. Ahh, how I yearn for Bucky in a brown bag.
ScoZen

Submitted by fatboy74 on
I think you have chosen a tricky one to start off with Celticman and you have done a pretty darn good job of it. The problem with any poetic form (other than free verse) is that it's restrictive in some way and if you are starting off, it seems to me the less restrictions the better. Even free vesre has to have some form though otherwise it's just unconnected lines on a page. I use a lot of half rhyme and internal rhyme and very rarely worry about formalities (same number of lines in a stanza etc) and start of by writing a kind of poetry/story that I pare down until it looks and sounds like just a poem. If you like the rhythm thing go for Iambic Pentameters but have a read of Browning's My Last Duchess to see how to make it seem less formulaic by using enjambment etc, which also makes the simple rhyme scheme less visible - it's brilliantly done. Thanks for the read and sorry for rambling.

 

Submitted by Highhat on
I think this is quite brilliant for someone who hasn't tried it before- well done celtic. If it feels like a poem it is one. ;)Pia

Submitted by celticman on
Hi ScoZen I'm having a blind stab at poetry. Fatboy thank you so much. I'm just trying another way of writing to see how it feels see and what it can teach me. I'll have a look online to see if I can find Browning's Last Duchess. It might be in my library, but probably not. I'll try another poem next week, what form should it take? Highhat, very kind and much appreciated.

 

Submitted by celticman on
got Last Duchess online. Thanks Fatboy.

 

Submitted by ashb on
It reads quite like rap to me. Esp with this kind of rhyme: 'vinegar for voice' with 'remarketing of choice'. Straying into Amis territory with the material. I'm not suggesting he has a monopoly on being controversial (though he is near genius at it, as witness the latest 'I'd-only-write-for-children-if-I-were-brain-damaged' hoo-ha). Still, you'd have to be a brave man to stand up and read this to some audiences...

ashb

Submitted by ashb on
Maybe the Penguins scariest of all ?

ashb

Submitted by celticman on
Hey ashb a brain damaged penguin that writes rap? Thanks for reading. Just a rant really.

 

Submitted by ashb on
Oh dear. I didn't mean it like that, honest ;) Tempted to post the Amis link just to prove it, but perhaps too diversionary. Anyway your rant was fine by me. didnt even notice it was a villanelle at first, but I've read they were songs (or songlike things) once, so maybe not as far apart from rap as it might seem...

ashb

Submitted by capote 13 on
Brillantly done. Just started experimenting with poetry myself, so I can appreciate the huge effort that went into this. Neil

Submitted by celticman on
Hey Neil (capote) thanks for that. I'm trying in lots of ways.

 

Submitted by Dynamaso on
I agree with Ashb - it does read like a rap. The repetition of those two lines works well.

 

Submitted by celticman on
Thanks Dynamaso. rap on!