Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Synchro no.9-

Car stopped, head not.

I can see two trafficator lights flashing,
I can hear my own clicking,
while we wait at lights.
clicklick
where is it?
flash
shit, I forgot
flash
fuck him
did I do that?
flash
clicklick
oh, fuckit
if she hadn't
flash clicklick
when did they?
flash
what if I can't
I suppose I should, help!
flash flash clicklick
oh, I see. Isn't it lovely.
who said that?
flash clicklick
it's a lie
flash
I didn't do it
no-one saw me do it
flash
you can't prove a thing
oh, fuckoff
flash clicklick but I can't
flash
that won't do
it's all their fault
flash flash clicklick
mmm, beautiful, thankyou
clicklick
the smoke hangs out
flash
the corner his mouth
flash
he tough
clicklick
if he say
flash
then i say
clicklick
but if he
flash
then I'll
flash
you no good, creep, fake
clicklick
stopit, please stopit
please
flash flash clicklick
yes, I understand, now
flash
flash
clicklick

Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing stage: 

Comments

I like your flash-click language of the dysfunctional planet
in sleek cars among the lacquered moans and curses,
fuckit sounds like a good word to be found on a memorial plaque
to calm and calmness and a long needed pluck in the tub.

IRiz

dysfunctional is the right word, the aim was a sort of dysfunctional stream-of-consciousness, disrupted and disjointed by the flashes and clicking disruptions of everyday sound.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment

I thought your poem was fun to read. I have some ideas.
We don't use flash in the US as much as Europe and Australia. Here we use the fucking horn, to really grate on your nerves, and people are less considerate of public noise. (The only time we flash is a courtesy to cars in the other direction to warn them of a speed cop in their way.) It's must easier to hide behind a honk if everyone is honking than a flash. So everyone has that same "you can't prove a thing" about it."
As I took the poem to center around a car in traffic, your car. The opening line is interesting "Car stopped. Head not." I interpret this as you are in a stalled car, (we all hate this,)
but your brain is still working? As you continue to try to restart and get the click click of a dead battery. You put on your flashERS, the parking ones, which are irritating, a different click. The rest is the dialogue in your head as your mind speeds though the panic of what to do, how the cars flash you to get out of the way, everything passes in fast angry responses.

Once I was with a crazy insane cab driver in the middle east who was just going allover the place without signaling...when I asked him why, he said "why should I let anyone know which way I'm turning?" Now there's a logic I understand! I would like to see this poem resemble this driver.
Or to take another approach, connect it to road rage, which is a universal event we all understand.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

The clicking is my trafficator, turn signal, turn indicator whatever. The car is just stopped in traffic, not stalled, waiting to turn, other cars indicating are the flashes, their turn signals, not headlights. So no drama, no drama in the whole poem. It is flat, a busy head but the thoughts are too disjointed to build to any drama.

As such the poem is perhaps a snapshot of uncreative time wasted in traffic. How the trivia of tech sounds and images break down our thought processes.

No doubt it would be more interesting if I built some drama into it, but less honest.

Thanks for your reading, Mark, it's stirred some ideas. I like your crazy cab driver, perhaps I'll have another run at it. You looking at me?

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

author comment
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.