All Comments on 'A Poem Billy Wrote in High School'

,?!?! I Fived for Lil' Bill !!

About the babysitter. Love how you tied it all up in the end. Good stuff.

I want to try to put my finger on (as opposed to in) why I like this poem so much. I think it is the simple, natural development and progression of Billy’s/the narrator’s persona and the tying together of that childhood fascination with some dangers with a young lad’s obsession with a form of heavy petting.

Strong narration, things that are real and matter and subtle high quality thinking and writing. What’s not to like.

I remember a mangle we had at home and one in my grandparents’ basement. I also remember staring at and being fascinated by the thought of sticking my small child’s fingers in the electricity sockets and the sight of the live rail at the station. I remember feeling as though I was being dragged against my will down and to touch that rail. Happy days.

I am unsure of the ‘hands down’ at the end. Witty but does it add to or detract from the poem? Like I said, I am unsure.

For some reason my last comment was put in as anonymous - actually my first ever anonymous comment on the site

Cleardaynow

with the old type washer machine as the fetish, TK U MLJ LV NV

Thanks, Cleardaynow. Your comment got me thinking as they often do. Actually, I think the whole last couplet is superfluous, particulrly "put me through the ringer," that dreaded cliché I'm pretty sure 1201 will slap my poettic wrists about, pen in hand, if he visits. Absent that, I think it takes the edge off what might be considered another, "hands down," although not as obvious in my opinion. I like this better:

"OK, let's forget about Susan,

but there was Babette, that cute foreign student,

who had a certain je ne sais quoi,

hands down.

Ah yes, there is a little bit of Billy in all of us and I am not referring to his exploratory digits ...but to my curious youthful days of experimentation, discovery and new sensations, it certainly made me reflect on my younger days.

Naughty but innocent.

Quite lovely!

suggest the 10 year span (inclusion)

also you are basing the metaphor on something most will not comprehend,

ringer? i.e. it took years for me to find out what " I got my tits caught in the ringer" meant, and no one told me. Thank god for old ads.You probably could have used one as an illustrated.

5ed