Da_Yog

I must admit I "woke up" at this part, a very powerful ending. I was fond of the silver hands stopping in stanza one, I can't say the redundancy of the hour glass sands did the same for me. This might just be a personal preference ... Gilt Cages The play on gilt cages as opposed to gilded cages was intriguing. I very much like this poem as a whole especially stanza one. The way those active verbs hit was quite powerful: live, hindered, blinded, fueled. I did find one thing that didn't seem to hit me quite right: Consider rephrasing the last line to afraid of what/we might hear or afraid of what/we might find. Sailor Man I found quite the write. There does seem to be something about the sea that is feminine, but can it ever be the one true love of a man even if he's a sailor?

Well ... it made me smile.

I think with this being more fantasy/mythology it would help if the readers were supplied with a stronger notion of this idea. Perhaps in the opening line if 100 were a larger number. If they predated humanity then perhaps 100,000 might be a better number. Considering homo-erectus has been around for at least 200,000 years then maybe even a larger number than that. Just a thought to get the reader on the right track. There is a notion at work that, at least to the ancients, the afterlife is an emptiness. There also seems to be a connection between the ancients and humanity, as if they cannot pass beyond this life until the humans do. On a final note, the ancients seem to already have been too old at the dawn of man to prevent the inevitable from happening. "I hope this help." Did I really type this? LoL Lets try this again. I hope this helps. heehee

It's interesting, I like the imagery, I'm just not quite sure where you are going with it. Is this a fictional piece or is this meant to be reflective of something in reality? Perhaps if you told me where you were going with it I might be better equipped to help you get there.

I actually think there is a form of implied imagery at work here. I could very much see the sorrow and anger at work in the words without them being directly spoken. There is an aftermath of a fight in play, a possible separation between two people, and a contortion of emotions twisting two people to the breaking point. I'm not sure this needs the normal form of imagery to be successful. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing it with that kind of imagery but I don't know that it would improve it. Anyway Regel, I think you conveyed the pain and emotion quite well.

Yog haf mor den ate fingers ... me finks. wun, twoo, free, free and a half, free and free fourfs ... Wait, wat comes nex? Yog not know, but Yog pretty sure it not ate yet.

Many thanks. How many thanks are in a many anyway? I mean a couple is two, and a few is like three to four, and several is more than four, so when does several become many? *Walks away scratching his noggin'*

*Language warning as usual* The driver stumbled then fell out of the van as he opened the door. It was the kind of fall that only a stoned man could execute with this amazing degree of precision. On his way down he managed to grab hold of the door through the open window. As he pulled himself up, the door began to swing a little on its hinges. This created a slight imbalance, and that was all that was needed for him to fall on his ass. The man sitting shotgun was laughing so hard he only managed to remain standing by the good graces of God and a mad effort to drape himself through the open window. Scott stood with his hands clenched in as tight a fist as he could possibly muster. Not yet could he let his furious exterior crack. Oh no, not yet. “Hey, Jonesy,” spoke the man draped through the van window, “did you see Lankster bust his ass, man? Dat was da bomb!” A single middle finger rose above the door on the driver’s side and presented itself rather magnanimously to both Scott and the passenger. Words rose with the finger, “Fluck you both. Dudes my asses hurts!” “Lankster-man, you said Fluck.” The passenger continued to laugh and each laugh bounced him up and down on the swinging car door. Scott took half a step forward with his head down as if he was pushing through a great desert wind-storm. “Where the hell have you guys been?” “Hey,dude-man,” said Lankster, “did you hear the Doc say turdmongers?” “No way man, what’s a turd-monger?” answered Dude-man. “Duuuude, I don’t know. Ask Jonesey.” “Hey Jonessey, what’s a turd-monger?” “Where the fuck have you guys been?” “Turd-mongers,” replied Lankster. “Turd-mongers,” said Dude-man. Then they both together began chanting, “turdmongers, turdmongers, turdmongers.” Every time Dude-man said turd he bounced up, and he landed with his gut on the window-frame each time he said mongers. On the third repetition he realized he didn’t feel so good and so he said, “Mans, I don’t feel sos good.” “Dude-mans,” said Lankster, “you don’t look so good.” “Man, I don’t feels sos good.” “Where … the fuck … have you guys … been!” “Turdmongers,” said Lankster. Dude-man tried to say it but his eyes widened with sudden realization. It was like he had his one moment of clarity for the day and it was wasted on what was about to happen. He had just enough time to lean a little further over the window-frame before a stew of fermented beverages, potato chips, hot dogs, bile, and Twinkies came spewing forth from his stomach. “You fucking turdmonger! I am not cleaning that shit up.” “Duuude,” said Lankster, “I think dat came out da wrong hole ta be shit.” “Fuck you. Fuck you both! It’s fucking 1100 fucking degrees out here, and I’ve been waiting on your drugged out, drunken, fucking stupid-ass fucking selves for two fucking hours. I’m fucking pissed. I’m fucking hot. I’m fucking hot and pissed. Fuck, fuck, fuck! It must be fucking flaming turdmonger day!” Lankster reached up and grabbed the window, but the door still proved to be wobbly. After a few seconds of him failing to right himself he decided to just crawl out from behind the van-door. Dude-man kept heaving but was relieved to see nothing more coming out. Scott was still just standing there with his fists clenched and his face growing redder and redder. A few beads of sweat formed on Scott’s brow and ran together and formed one large bead of sweat near the bridge of his nose. From there, the jumbo sweat-bead rolled down to the tip of his nose where it briefly contemplated its existence before jumping off and plunging to its death. Lankster looked up and said, “Duuude-man, we’re flaming turdmongers.” Dude-man only nodded. Scott turned around to sit back down, saw his comfy chair sitting upside down, kicked it out of his way and stormed out of the garage into the house. Lankster crawled to the front of the van, saw Dude-man admiring his days work, and smiled. “Dude-man, we’re the flaming turdmongers.” Dude-man smiled his approval.

*Language warning for this section* The Flaming Turdmongers The sun smiled down upon the land. It was the blisteringly sweet smile of a fed-up lover walking out the door for the last time. It was a smile that said, “I hope you burn in hell.” On a day like this you might believe that wish had come true. Scott, AKA “Dr. Jones,” sat in his parent’s garage with sweat oozing from every pore. Hardly anyone could remember how he got his nickname. It was the kind of name that spoke of swashbuckling archaeologists fighting Nazis for priceless treasures in the 1930's. Scott was not of this; he secretly wished he was, but he wasn’t. Scott’s last name wasn’t even Jones, and no one in the family had ever gone by that name. Scott wasn’t even a doctor. Hell, he didn’t even have a degree of any kind. Mind you it wasn’t for a lack of trying. He’d been “trying” for seven years; all he’d figured out was that he wasn’t a mathematician, a chemist, a historian, a biologist, a philosopher, or an archaeologist. What Scott did know was that he didn’t want to be sitting in his parent’s garage, wasting away a Saturday afternoon, waiting for his asshole friends who were supposed to have been there a freaking half hour ago! I mean Jesus freaking Christ, how freaking hard is it to be somewhere when you say you will? The anger just seemed to make him hotter and he baked a little more in the heat all the while his face grew redder and redder. Just to make matters worse he checked his watch. It was the kind of watch that said, “I can’t afford anything expensive,” or more appropriately, “my dad won’t buy me anything expensive anymore.” It was the kind of watch that could speak of “old money” if such a thing existed, but only to those who knew what they were looking for. To those educated in exorbitantly expensive extravagance it said, “Rolex knockoff, how droll.” At any rate it was a good watch. It told time when it needed to, it did so accurately, and was powered by the motions of the body, so as long as he wore it he never needed to worry about it running down. So what if the leather band was worn and frayed. It was supple and fit well and he liked it damnit. Screw those rich punks, in their rich cars, with their rich girls, he didn’t need that anyway. What he freaking needed was his friends to be here when they said they would. For a brief time he contemplated going inside and waiting for them, but almost as quick as the idea popped into his head he banished it. Why should he let them think he had enjoyed his stay by idly watching TV in the air conditioning while munching chips and sipping soda as if nothing at all was amiss? Oh no, he was pissed and wanted to hold onto it. A day like this could do with nothing less. Scott sat in the stale garage air, the oppressive heat, the sticky evaporations of his own sweat, and stewed in the afternoon heat. His eyes went blank and then narrowed to slits as he gazed at the mirage waves of heat rising up off the pavement just beyond the garage door. He wondered if the friends gremlin was playing a cruel prank on him, and his knuckles whitened against the aluminum arm of his lawn chair. It was the kind of lawn chair that said, “used and comfy” the same way your favorite pair of worn tennis shoes does. This was not a comfy day. It was not a warm and huggely, spend time with your friends kind of day. This was a bring it to a boil and let simmer kind of day. By the time his friends arrived Scott had been at full simmer for over an hour. He watched the old beat-up brown van pull into the driveway like some apparition of transportation come to give the Scott-stew another stir. His eyes narrowed further in anticipation, his knuckles grew whiter, and his face reddened. He rose slowly from his lawn chair of comfyness, and thrust his hands downward to force the chair off his ass when it tried in vain to stick to his backside. Oh no, he would have none of that! The chair made a very unseemly clattering noise as it bounced off the oil-stained concrete floor. It was the kind of noise that said, “Fuck you Scott. After all we’ve been through you’re just going to dump me on the floor? Well, I’ll just leave then. Oh fuck, I’m a chair; I can’t leave. Well fine, I’ll just lay here on the floor and pout.” For the briefest of moments Scott grimaced at the sound. It was his comfy lawn chair after all. But then he remembered why he acting so pissed and resumed his most Scottly scowl. “Where the fuck have you turdmongers been?”

With every tick that brought the second-hand closer to the twelve the kid’s mind moved a little closer to the door, and his body prepared to do the same. First, his left foot appeared from under the desk where it had been successfully hiding all class. It was the kind of desk common to so many classrooms: the kind of desk that had absolutely nothing to say about the child sitting in it despite multiple attempts. On the bottom were many colored blobs of varying degrees of sugary-hardness. They had been deposited there over the years and now formed a strangely obscene mass that could only have been formed by the collective output of hundreds of little mouths. Upon the desktops, carved in the wood-grained plastic, were various phrases to obscene to be repeated in this fucking story. When his left foot was out from under the desk it slid backwards and locked in a young sprinter’s position. Next, he began to slide his posterior inch by painfully discrete inch to the left, to the open side of the desk, to freedom. After that his torso began twisting towards the opening in the desk, his hands slid into his jacket sleeves, and his right foot found the other sprint position. His wild little eyes—full of a longing for freedom—flitted about the room until they were captured and held by his teacher’s gaze. She smiled at him. It was the smile of someone who remembered what it was like to be a child in school on the first full day of snow. It was the smile of someone born after the invention of children. At this mutual exchange of pleading, knowledge, and empathy, the kid’s shoulder’s relaxed and then flipped his jacket up over them. It was a move he had performed dozens of times but never practiced once. It was a move that only a child could properly develop. If it was not learned in childhood it was sure to appear awkward, forced, and completely strange. The kid’s eyes flitted back to the clock. His eyes went wide, the corners of his mouth dropped followed quickly by the corners of his eyes. The clock-gremlins were obviously at work, because the cursed second-hand was well past the celebrated twelve and was now rapidly making its way towards the three. He couldn’t believe it. Outside the snow was now an abhorrent shade of gray. Inside the room was deathly quiet. He felt a hand upon his right shoulder. It was a calming hand, full of confidence, resolution, and the ability to affect the very fabric of time. The hand came with a voice attached, it was the voice of a generation past, a voice of experience, a voice of understanding; it was his teacher’s voice. “Write down your homework assignment. It’s on the board, there.” She pointed with her free hand and he felt his eyes compelled to follow the invisible line from her index finger to the assignment on the board. “I’m sure by the time you are done the bell will ring.” Again she smiled at him with that confident, calming smile and he knew he had to do what was asked. It was as if he didn’t have a choice in the matter at all. He scribbled as fast as he could with his pencil, and when he got the last word done he heard the sound of freedom.

I decided on a few parts to this story today. All of this is temporary of course. For now the parts will contain the following parts: The Phone Call, The Kid, The Flaming Turdmongers, The Record Store, The Effing End. What follows is the beginning of: The Kid It was a snowy day, the kind of snowy day that was just plain miserable. The world about was encased in a pristine whiteness rapidly degenerating into a pleasantly wonderful gray morass. Children, sitting impatiently in their school-desks, glanced in a dreadfully anxious manner at the clock—ticking ever so slowly—above the window. It was the kind of clock specifically manufactured to torment children. It came with an evil second-hand that counted off the briefest moments in separate, distinct, differentiated, and discrete units of agonizing pain. To make matters worse, sometime in the distant past before the advent of children, the clock had fallen from the wall. Ordinarily this wouldn't be so bad, but on this occassion, the second-hand—only the second hand—became bent in the collision. It was the kind of bend that prevented many of the poor heartless little hellions—who could barely tell time anyway—from knowing when to properly unleash all manner of wickedness. Every tick, every cursed tick of the children-hating clock, caused the land to grow a little darker. With each new shade of gray imparted to the landscape the children grew a little more depressed. WIth every new slight increase in depression the children grew a little more hopeful, a little more excited that the dreaded moment would arrive. The moment Mr. Normal would be assaulted by a screaming horde of unleashed barbarity. Mr. Normal was never a child. He was born in that time long ago before the invention of children. In this class, on this particularly dreadful day of snowbound cheer, there sat a child. He was a child—a kid really—who was like all the other children. He was staring intently at the clock of hatefulness with an intensity that only a truly determined child can muster. It was as if he believed he could change the course of history by merely staring at the dread-clock and wishing for the second hand to move. No, he was convinced of it, because merely by staring at that clock he seemed to be able to muster the magical power to move the second-hand each and every second. Slowly, oh so slowly, it was moving towards the twelve at the top. This would be the minute; he was sure of it.

Usual language warning. A continuation of part 1. I'm leaning towards deleting the previously posted section. I don't really know if I'll keep it at this point or not though. ................................................................................ "Dude, chill out!" The caller was greeted only by heavy, labored breathing. "Dude ... is that you? Tell me it's you." At long last an answer came. It was the kind of answer one might expect knowing the situation but seem utterly strange if one did not. It was an answer in a cracking voice. It was a pained voice full of controlled calm that seemed to conceal a seething rage. It was Norman's normal voice. "Yeah man, I'm here. What the hell do you want!" "Hey dude, are you allright? You sound like you just fucked up your whole room." "Chad, what the hell do you want?" "We're doing a record signing for a local band—The Flaming Turdmongers—and I need someone to mind the store while I run the promo. You've got an hour so hurry up and get your butt down here." "Hold up, it's fucking Saturday. Where's Nikki? I thought she was scheduled for today." "Yeah, but she called in sick so get your ass in gear." "I feel like shit." "It's effing time-and-a-half and you're always griping about needing more hours so get moving. This is your effing chance." All Norman could do was mumble "fuck" to himself and drop the receiver to the ground. From the other end of the line he could barely make out, "One hour Norm, I'll see you in one hour." Then the phone went dead and a minute later he heard that aweful beeping noise. He made a mad scramble for the receiver and the phone before the dreaded next stage: "... If you would like to make a call please hang up and try again." He couldn't let that happen. No if he heard that damn woman's voice at this point he'd likely put the damn phone through the fucking wall. No, he'd hold onto the phone a little while longer.

I think if you view Critic-man as the arch-nemesis of Pentegram in a comic book setting then it will make more sense. Wheras critics may not "lie" in their criticisms Critic-man clearly would. He's an evil villain and capable of all sorts of nefarious schemes in his attempts to bring down the noble Pentegram, our hero. A serious piece of social commentary it is not.

Nietzsche was probably the first to proclaim, "God is dead" but not the last. Sartre would echo the sentiment in the 20th century. Sartre was the one who famously stepped off a plane and proclaimed to reporters, "God is dead and we have slain him." Nietzsche said similar in his parable of the madman nearly a century earlier. For Neitzsche the path to being "human" was a clear one but an exceedingly difficult and personal journey. The first step is to defeat the lion: learn all that is learnable, know all that is knowable. The second is to traverse the desert: forget all that you have learned. The last step was to defeat the dragon: master sin. Since each person is ultimately responsible for all their own actions being a true individual necessitated these three steps. Nietzsche believed that there were very few people who were truly "human". He would say Jesus was one such person. This perhaps seems strange in light of his attack on the existence of God, but if you look at the actions of Jesus as one man this view makes sense. You can probably clearly see the images of the lion, the desert, and the dragon reflected in this piece—at least I would hope you can. At any rate I twisted nietzsche's parable into a journey of self discovery using conflicting imagery of emotion and logic.

I believe you could also say the same about cross-rhyme, maybe even to a greater degree than internal rhyme. Anyway, thanks for commenting.

Interesting, it would seem to be a disassociation from the standards of normalcy present in society. I liked the little bits of imagery, glass houses—towers, fish in cloudless skies, fragmented illusions. It all seems to point at a desire for a better world than the one you are anchored to.

Critic-Man, Critic-Man, Does whatever a critic can. Spins a web, of black lies You're future, he'll prophesize. Look out! Here comes Critic-Man. Has he skill? Listen bud. He's got defective blood. Can he string-ya from a thread? Take a look at his head. Hey there, there goes the Critic-Man. In the chill of the night, At the scene of the crime, You'll feel his dark blight, As he writes for the Times. Critic-Man, Critic-Man, Asshole neighbors and Critic-Man, Wealth and fame, his desire Your career, he'll set on fire. To him, Poems are poorly made-up, He only wants to rip up, He's the mean Critic-Man! Stay tuned for the further adventures of Pentagram vs. Critic-Man. If anyone should feel froggy enough to add a crazy hero or villan to the mix then by all means post away.

Interesting concept. The constant undercurrent of spirits and ancient seeming gods gives the piece a reflective quality as if you are viewing an event in the distant past. It could be said that they have a purpose of creating distance from the event. The spirits also speak of future events in the form of a storm. The storm being a thing of the real world seems to bring the treachery of the future closer. I'm not sure if this was intentional or if this sentiment is shared by all but it definitely works that way for me. At any rate it was a very inspired first write.

Yep, I did. Stay tuned for the adventures of Ciritic-man! Coming to a poetry forum near you!

LoL I've heard you never really know someone until you've completely missed their birthday. :-) Happy Birthin' Day!

*grin* Glad it gave you both a giggle. Sometimes I think poetry needs to stop being so serious and just make a person smile.

I've read this a couple of times and it keeps reminding me of something I just can't seem to place it. The rhyme is quite catchy and the internal slant rhyme of line three works well. Was there a work that you drew inspiration off of while writing this?

I'm not sure it's quite an epic, but it is quite long. At any rate I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I blame Silverwind for this one. It's sung to ... well you should be able to guess. Pentegram, Pentegram, Does whatever a penta can. Can it stop black magic? You bet, all that's tragic! Look out! Here comes the Pentegram! Is it strong? Listen bud— It's got ethereal blood! Can it swing from a chain? Take a look at this thang. Hey there! There goes the Pentegram! In the chill of the night, Three times three fires light, By the pale moonlight, It shines its saving rite! Pentagram, Pentagram, Friendly savior the Pentagram. Wealth and fame, it's ignored— Magic is, it's reward. To it, Life is mystic made-up— Wherever you find a blood cup, You'll find a Pentagram!

You are also well on target with the meaning. I had posited it this way: if something was never real, never happened, does that make it any less pleasant? This was the first time I had been playful with a poem in quite some time. It felt good, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.