Paprika Sunset

[ray miller]

I’d like to take that throat
scarf-wrapped and sonorous
scrawling paprika sunset canvas
spitting in the wind
like gravity’s for idiots
shopping at Prada
for wellington boots
hey honey should I go
this road or the other
as if I give a damn about
here come the soccer moms
shining with saccharin
and biblical parables
waving up and down
the tree-lined boulevards
where blossom falls flat
as last Sunday’s sermons
practising abstinence
in ermine underwear
exhort your captain to capture
the moment and howl
salvation in some place other
than my bins ravenously
chewed and swallowed
leaving bags of shit
piled up like flowers
at a roadside fatality
and squeeze the living
daylights out of it

[jisbell00]

Ouf! The parataxis reminds me a bit of John AShbery - all disjointed ideas jumbled together in a heap. People generally like AShbery more than I do, but here, i think it has more organic necessity than Ashbery tends to come up with - it's all about the throat, from beginning to end. I liked the soccer moms and the shit, but the whole spew of local detail hangs together, to my mind. A bit brutal, mind you.

Cheers,
John

[Macavity]

A peppered perspective Ray, but I did enjoy the form. I thought you might have those dog bags tied to tree branches. Now that really annoys me! I did 'like' the flower image.

[CalebPerry]

There's something very compelling about this stream-of-consciousness poem. In years past I might have labelled it "gibberish", one of my favorite words, but it isn't. It is, in a way, a list poem, throwing one image after another at the reader, all of them somehow emotionally related.

I think I have said this before, but all humans are of two minds: The daytime's logical mind, and the nighttime's emotional mind. While falling asleep and in dreams, the mind will throw up image after image which are related at some emotional level that we don't notice during the day. A poem which can capture that progression may not make a great deal of logical sense, but will make sense to the reader's intuition. I think you have done that here.

[nash]

Hello Ray,

Nothing to offer but praise for this one. You had me completely hooked with those first four lines. And that ending, reeling us right back in again. (no idea why I've ended up with fishing metaphors here, but there you go).

This bit's just inspired!

leaving bags of shit
piled up like flowers
at a roadside fatality

Bloody brilliant.

nash

[nash]

Just re-reading it. Is the use of 'howl' a cheeky nod to Ginsberg?

[ray miller]

Thanks all. It is, as John says, all about the throat. I think I read a poem some time about a paprika sunset which aroused my contempt - it doesn't take much. Anyway, hello John Nash, some years ennit? Yeah, I'm no great admirer of Ginsberg, either.

[jisbell00]

Hi Ray,

I'm not a big fan of Ginsberg's either but i do like this tribute to Walt Whitman. It's fairly short: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/ ... california

Cheers,
John

[ray miller]

Yeah, I quite enjoyed that Ginsberg poem. As you say, fairly short.

[jisbell00]

Which is quite unsual for him in my experience!

Cheers,
John