are waiting for me somewhere,
their sad beautiful faces
pressed to the glass.
Sprung clear as a brook
on a blue field morning
with a whistling overhead
and budding hedgerow glory…
It’s not their fault that this well-used path
is such a convenient line to the next village.
besides, this work is full of disgust,
mucilage, semen, bastardry, shattered glass at 2 am,
incessant wings and blood
in your mouth like iron
and murder of course.
Image: The Ramones, c. 1976, by Plismo from Wikimedia Commons; Written for dverse where Paul is hosting and asks us to write on Ars Poetica (the art of poetry). One of the hard things in writing is to cut a favourite phrase or image, or as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch famously said to his class of Edwardian college boys: ‘murder your darlings’. So here’s a contrary view from Stephen Wright – who suggests that you tell….’the next person who invites you to kill your darlings: No. Absolutely not. And go f*ck yourself.’ And in that spirit, here’s Joey and the boys with ‘I wanna be sedated‘ (at least it’s short).
Peter Frankis writes 
Wow.I got settled into an almost Wordsworthian groove until the murderous punk stanza punched me in the mouth. I can taste the iron. That convenient line appears well and truly disrupted.I’m off to pogo on the bed now.
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Laughing here.
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What a contrast between the two halves. Where do you live? Glastonbury?
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The difference is so absolute as to face off living and dead. Whose darlings were murdered, anyway?
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Thanks Brendan. I imagine there’s a place where all my favourite lines and images go when I delete them.
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Really well done. I love the title working into the first stanza, with the darlings waiting to be murdered. And pushing back on that. Last stanza with the iron taste of blood was fantastic.
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I like the title and the photograph of the Ramones. I also love the way the poem hinges on the tow-line second stanza and the change from the gentle lines:
‘Sprung clear as a brook
on a blue field morning’
to
‘mucilage, semen, bastardry, shattered glass at 2 am,
incessant wings and blood’.
There’s a dad who brings his toddler to my Bounce and Rhyme group at the library who is far too young to have been around in the seventies but the little boy was wearing a Ramones t-shirt last week. The funny thing is, it looked perfect on him (he’s a gorgeous little eighteen month old punk).
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Laughing here.
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It is Suggested That Sanitation
Saves More Lives than
Medicine ThaT iS
Surely
True
too Sanitation
Kills Germs ‘fore
Original Art Past
Poetry
NoW
CoMiNG
Freer iN Terms oF
ScienceD CLean Art..:)
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I’m glad you didn’t murder your darling or this page, (I take it), would be blank. I’ve deleted some of my stuff over the years, sometimes I regret it
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I like the part where it is not their fault: “It’s not their fault that this well-used path
is such a convenient line to the next village.”
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Thanks Frank.
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Excellent – of course!
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You are too kind (ordered a Larkin collection for my shelf :-))
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Its difficult of course but I keep them all in the draft form (not totally killing them away to dust) ~ A unique response Peter ~
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Thanks Grace, I might try that too 🙂
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Wow, nice tempo change, Peter. Sometimes we all need a little punk to shake us up for a bit.
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Thanks Amaya.
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