Giving Heartache a ride to work

Nice....

......nod to Ryan Adams on this commute back to sanity. Music soothes the savage beast as long as you "avoid their wild eyes".

A keeper I think.

Tess

Good.....

......title too.

T again.

i'm wondering

if you could afford to lose those lines about the music entirely:

Wednesday
black ice dawndrive
standing still
I overtake
the battered tractor trailer.

For 30 seconds we keep pace
The empty chicken truck and I
Hollow steel cages stacked ten high
A single white feather
blasts into the whistling wake.

All day I am occupied
stacking pebbles
meetings about meetings

When I finally climb to my cutting car
sealed and inert at last
When I finally pound my weighted BB brain
into submission
When I accelerate into January
I realize
I am avoiding their wild eyes.


maybe the whole notion of the music being a distraction, a misdirection even, is important to you... i just feel it's less important to the poem. and i do really like this, particularly the images you bring with

black ice dawndrive
standing still
I overtake

All day I am occupied
stacking pebbles

sealed and inert at last

"When I accelerate into January" is so original!


not too keen on the title. my brain's being a twit and keeps throwing 'Fowl Play' up at me and smirking. no, that is not a recommended title.

Thanks, Chipbutty, for the feedback. The poem is a little flabby, and losing those lines makes it flow better.

I'm not a ruthless enough editor; I get lines that are like a piece of artwork in your house you know is ugly, but still want around.

Agree with the others

Love the way the detail of the mundane and in ways ridiculous day ("meetings about meetings"--I've been there!) is bookended by a feather (great foreshadow) at the start and that excellent last strophe, which puts the whole poem in perspective. But I do agree with others that the part about the music are detractors (to me). "exquisitely-selected" and the two lines in parentheses are the only offnotes (imo) in an otherwise terrific poem.

*

Got nothing much more to say than that I liked it. To make jaded interresting takes a good storyteller.

*****

Five.