The September 2010 edition of National Geographic had a photo of a pair of lemur heads floating in a bowl of soup. After my outrage settled into sorrow, I considered a quote from the article: “But some people here don't know or care. The Malagasy who don't live near tourist areas think that lemurs are just for the vatzaha [white people]—they don't see the benefits.” James Fenimore Cooper wrote about a long extinct America—filled with enormous flocks of birds; Europe used to be a gigantic tangle of forest roots and Japan was a rainforest: it seems rather hypocritical to judge the devastation the Malagasy inflict on Madagascar's forests and wildlife given how rich countries are the end-consumers of the looting. I'm sure I've accidentally bought rainforest wood. So I'm willing to admit my hypocrisy in judging those who deforest the island; but what of their hypocrisy? Do our two positions negate each other? “Why should I do anything? You should stop first!” Hypocrisy is everywhere; in fact, it's wedded to the human condition. Given the way the world's jerks force the rest of us into collusion with them, who can really claim to be free of hypocrisy? And yet, does that prevent you from making a moral or ethical judgment? Does hypocrisy negate your own position? And if we accept there are gradients of hypocrisy, then how are we to measure them... and is that a waste of time? Hypocrisy is the point at which belief conflicts with action. You can take this in a moral/ethical direction, or you can celebrate hypocrisy as just another human trait.
Combat Expiration: August 30, 2010; 12am PST
Critique Expiration: August 31, 2010; 12am PST
Bonuses: +1/hour before August 28, 2010; 12am PST. Max Bonus +5.
The Rules: http://combatwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/official-rules-for-combatwords-updated.html
Also, there's a magazine called http://longshotmag.com which is basically doing the same thing we are. Their deadline is August 28, 12pm, PST and I urge combatants to submit their finished compositions. This is their inaugural edition and several of you should be able to easily make it in there (if they have any sense of decent literary standards). So consider this your own reward for a good combat. Now Fight!
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Tira Flecha
ReplyDeleteHe says It's not that I'm racist but
why do we keep letting these immigrants in
so they can steal our jobs
Sips his cafe con leche and eyes
the wide hips of the Peruvian waitress
He says They need to put up that fence
so people stop sneaking over the border
Ship back all the illegals already
Scans the headlines of the newspaper
before flipping to the sports page
He says These lazy bastards come over
to live off welfare that I pay for
No skills, no brains, can't teach them a thing
Answers a work email on his Blackberry
for a client in Santo Domingo
He says When I came to this country
forty years ago, it wasn't such a mess
but now they let anyone in
Tips the waitress and tells her in Spanish
that she has very beautiful eyes
He says Look at that tira flecha
Bet she just came down from the mountain
She'll be pregnant and on WIC in a year
Rapidly drinks water from a paper cup
to cleanse his palate, then throws it away
Raskolnikov's Breakfast With Caesar and the Emperor Qin [CombatWords August 27, 2010]
ReplyDeleteSmile and the office awaits you.
Grin and you'll ride to the steeple of glass.
A bow-tie suggests that you're honest,
While glasses imply that you read when you can.
So help them to cover their asses.
They'll pay you with passcodes, permissions to transfer
what's hidden in cubicles; breathing through
fax machines; hissing in copiers, blazing
through halogens. You'll conquer the windows and walls
with a taxi that's speeding the emperor home
to his chariot: wings over smog.
They call you a thief, or Raskolnikov
yet there's a house by the beach on an island,
awaiting its Bonaparte, dressed in a bow;
to breakfast with Caesar, the Emperor Qin,
and talk about the fairness of confidence.
Bad Faith
ReplyDeleteHardened hands spank a child
too ill to raise her head
to show her that stubborn children
who do not obey their father and mother
must be disciplined.
Forty years later her parents weep
over her grave, mourning her
early death, while her husband
bides his time in a eight by eight cell.
A heavy fist thrown by a man
with alcohol on his breath
to prove to him to that a man
who is without sin should be
the first to cast a stone.
Thirty years pass and he looks
at the world through blood-shot
eyes and a mind clouded by
the brown liquid shot into
his veins with dirty needles.
An old leather belt raised
welts against her virgin flesh
to reiterate that marriage should
be honored and the marriage bed
kept pure as falling snow.
Twenty years after and she walks
the streets in thigh high boots
and mini dress, looking for a John
to fill the empty spaces in her
pocket book and stomach.
A willow switch plucked
from the tree by his own hand
and wielded by his father
to make him to honor his parents.
Ten years elapse and he makes
his own son retrieve a branch
from the weeping willow
to teach him the same lesson.
The child asks why
ReplyDeleteWith tears of indignation welling up in its eyes
The parent, running low on patience
Gives the short story explanation
'Because I said so'
If there were time
They might have said
Because the world bends our will
Backwards on itself
Breaks our spirit for no reason
Other than to hear the crack echo into oblivion
It's a fucked up place I've brought you to
Like the boiler room in a building
Where heroes get hung
The world keeps unraveling
Giving us rope, and a million chances
To hang ourselves
To fail miserably
To do what we swore we never would
And that is why
It is time for you to go to sleep
Leave your questions for tomorrow
And I'll hold my answers back
You have your whole life
For the truth to hurt you
Instead settle now
Settle down
Swallow the short story
Be angry at the little thing
A pixel in the big picture
Editor in Cheat
ReplyDeleteIt would only be the one time.
It's not my fault. I have too much work,
too many papers to write, deadlines
staring at me like the cold eye
of a gun barrel, Time's finger
easing back the trigger.
I haven't slept a full night in days.
Bad dreams and hallucinations dog me:
the dean tears up my diploma, eats it
delicately, one scrap at a time. My mother
rests her head on the guillotine block,
the blade falls, slicing mid-skull,
dollar bills fall out like confetti.
I deserve a break. No one
will ever find out. It's only a poem
by some faceless amateur like me,
enough to satisfy a professor
but not so good as to garner attention.
This is my dump class, anyway.
Copy. Paste. done. No lightning
strikes me down. I'll post it
on my website for extra authenticity.
Now to write my essay on ethics
and edit the school's philosophy journal.
Michael Steele
ReplyDeleteSomeone please explain to me
How Michael Steele ended up in my dreams--
Get outta my dreams Michael Steele
& into my car, trick ass bitch!
@MicheleBachmann says u be da man
I say u be @God_Damn_Batman or @KeithOlbermann.
Why is Michael Steele
applauding Ken Mehlmans Homosexuality
when he applauds #tcot gaybashing
and @MicheleBachmann?
Why is Ken Mehlmann applauding @God_Damn_Batman
when @KeithOlbermann still walks the streets?
Ken Mehlman is GOProud, trick ass bitch!
Michael Steele wants to come out as a black man.
He wants to come out as @MicheleBachmann
Get outta my dreams @God_Damn_Batman
& stick it into my Ken Mehlman
…White people be trippin
Addendum: Twitter Found poem, obviously. Those are a lot harder than they look, btw....
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to say it: 'This Guy's' #twitterfoundpoem was sheer win.
ReplyDeletePro: Effective Rhymes/slant rhymes +1
"Get outta my dreams Michael Steele
& into my car, trick ass bitch!" +1
I liked it +1
Con:
These are freakin' difficult & it still made sense. Good job.
Misc:
I'm sick of writing #twitterfoundpoem. Wanna take over?
Hells no! It's like I told you, I don't know how you don't tear your hair out doing these things.
ReplyDeleteI've always been a fan of these things, but now I have a new appreciation for what you do.
I am a little bummed out about my lack of participation in the last few weeks. Thankfully Valerie and This Guy stepped up and dropped bombs. It's really hard for me to write poetry while I am working. I try to take breaks with the intent to write, but its no easy thing to schedule creativity.
ReplyDeleteGet your muse on a fixed schedule and she'll stop working at odd hours whenever she feels like it. The key is consistency. You don't have to write every day but you should give yourself deadlines of some kind. CombatWords is a good one. There's also Poet Tuesday on Twitter, Three Word Wednesday and similar items. Pretend other people are counting on you. Pretend it's for work or for a grade. Whatever it takes to get your mind in gear.
ReplyDeleteKhak:
ReplyDelete"breathing through
fax machines; hissing in copiers, blazing
through halogens." +3
"a house by the beach on an island,
awaiting its Bonaparte, dressed in a bow" +1
"A bow-tie suggests that you're honest,
While glasses imply that you read when you can." weak, -2
Total: +2
vandamir:
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what points I can give or take away. It's a strong subject but also a tired one, and hard to make fresh. Reminds me of the Offspring song Way Down the Line: "Nothing changes cause it's all the same. The world you get's the one you give away." Since you're jumping around in time, we don't get to connect with the characters on more than a superficial level. Might work well as a song, but I think it struggles as a lyric poem.
Vandamir:
ReplyDeleteI'm glad Valerie critiqued your poem first, because I can only agree w/ her.
That said, you get dangerously close to an idea at the end of the poem. I suggest you take notes: rewrite each stanza as an outline bullet-point and see the arc of movement. You could really turn all that into the first stanza and then move on from there. I don't feel it's fair to score your poem, because it's an earnest effort that will yield something good for you if you keep trying. Individual discretion determines whether to score or not and so I reserve the right to say, 'fail forward.'
+0
@Valerie, re: Editor-in-cheat:
ReplyDeleteIt's cute +1, but nothing really stands out for me.
+1
@Valerie, re: Tira Flecha:
ReplyDeleteSwitches between distant & close 3rd person. +1
Liked it. +1
Portrait of a jerk is vivid +1, yet archetypical -1. I wonder how much more interesting it would be if the narrator was more present--maybe as a female force, so his final confession takes a weirder angle.
+2
@The Humanist,
ReplyDeleteAs Bilbo Baggins likes to say, third time pays for all. The ending was good; esp the final image. Possible poem in itself. +1
Too much Philip Larkin rehash. Not enough to neg, but you don't go farther. Since this poem has many of the same ambitions, I think you could compare & contrast to figure out what's special about what you're doing... and isolate it.
+1
@TheHumanist
ReplyDelete"tears of indignation" -1
"Like the boiler room in a building
Where heroes get hung" +1
"Be angry at the little thing
A pixel in the big picture" +1
Way too many sort of blanket statement-type lines that I think you can nuke. This is another poem whose sentiment has been explored before, so focusing on a specific situation with specific details might be a good way to approach it. Start tiny and then zoom out to show the whole world, like the first shot in a film.
Total = +1
@This Guy
ReplyDeleteI think I lack the ability to properly critique a found poem like this. It makes me head spin. I have no response to that.
So Valerie wins again. The way she leaps in early is murder. I think I'll do a max +3 bonus for the next combat, so the late posters actually have a shot at victory. I think it's enough of a bonus to make a big difference, but doesn't wipe out late posters.
ReplyDelete20 comments? Come on back Wessington, I feel guilty. I promise not to interfere with your serious literary movement.
ReplyDeleteHey Mather, your dick is missing a condom in that picture.
ReplyDeleteK, terrible attempt at humor. I said I'd leave you alone if you came back to TWAK but since you won't I won't leave you alone. And now I see some other gumbo talking sweet. What are you gonna do now? Where you gonna go? Who you gonna blame? Ha ha, god this is fun.
ReplyDelete