All Comments on 'Giving Heartache a ride to work'

......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

......title too.

T again.

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.

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.