So that’s how Funyuns is spelled.

I really like your poetry, Stovo, a lot. The smoky intestinal tract painting bile on the ceiling is a killer line. trombone; twaaaambone, ha! The wordplay is exquisite throughout. I can hear the jazz that should accompany this as I read it loud and clear.

Thanks! And yeah, I totally stole Funyuns from you—I couldn’t think of a more depressing junk food off the top of my head. The formatting isn’t exactly how I wished it, but Ficly doesn’t like excess spaces or indents.

Wow. I really liked this story—the mood it created was almost tangible. Strangely enough, I imagined it set in the 20s all the way up until the funyuns. :)

This poem attacks my mind like a one-out-of-place-slat venetian blind, turning the two end lines into an explosion of relief.

This poem attacks my mind like a one-out-of-place-slat venetian blind, turning the two end lines into an explosion of relief.

Haha, loved it! This poem is quite a trip! :) I liked the alliteration with satin, too.

Shouldn’t it be “your kid’s pictures”?

“Smoky intestinal tract painting bile on the ceiling” = Absolute genius!

This is a very strange, almost phantasmagorical? Anyway, good job. XD

Wow. That’s really nice. And Bugles are more depressing than Funyuns.

I don’t get the Funyuns reference, but that’s because I’ve lived in the UK all my life and we don’t get them here. I’m grateful to Tad for translating the trombone: it was completely lost on me.

This is all coming across negatively, which isn’t my intention, so I’ll say that I did enjoy all the anatomical metaphors and the final conclusion is exactly what I tend to do, these days, when someone nearby is smoking.

I really love the word choice in your poem, “ambergris”, “duodenum” and the alliteration with “supine/Satin/said”. Very nice sounds and flow. I dig it. I also like the “t-waaaaahm-bone” Made me smile. :)

Now I’m feeling all inferior and under-educated =). You boys and your funyuns, honestly!

Technically, linguistically, literally it’s absolutely brilliant. I missed the punctuation, I have to say, but I know the lack of it contributed to the overall piece.

It flows so well, I feel as though you wrote it all at once just to get it out. And, even if you didn’t, that’s a good thing! The longest section is my favourite, it builds up so well to the last two lines.

It’s a poem that makes you work for it. Takes a couple of reads to work out. Thanks very muchly for entering the challenge. Don’t forget to keep checking back to comment =)

Now I’m feeling all inferior and under-educated =). You boys and your funyuns, honestly!

Technically, linguistically, literally it’s absolutely brilliant. I missed the punctuation, I have to say, but I know the lack of it contributed to the overall piece.

It flows so well, I feel as though you wrote it all at once just to get it out. And, even if you didn’t, that’s a good thing! The longest section is my favourite, it builds up so well to the last two lines.

It’s a poem that makes you work for it. Takes a couple of reads to work out. Thanks very muchly for entering the challenge. Don’t forget to keep checking back to comment =)

Very Grim Trixter!

I don’t like poetry as a general rule, but this one makes me wish I had more interest in developing that particular muscle.

I feel like some of the intelligence of this piece is lost on me. That is, I can recognize that everything was written in a very deliberate way…but I suspect some of it went over my head.

Can you explain why punctuation and proper capitalization was only used in specific places, rather than consistently used or omitted? (For instance, parentheses and quotation marks were used…Xibalba was capitalized, but Funyuns was not…etc.)

The t-waaaaahm-bone bit was lost on me as well, but once someone pointed it out, I loved it. I also really love the way the last two lines felt like leaving a smoky room for fresh air. Very lovely. I enjoyed reading this. :)

Ohboy…

Strovo, I’m sorry, but Tad ruined Funyons for me. Haha, still. I liked this.

Timbertoesa, thanks for the comment and the question. I know some people don’t like it when authors analyze their own poems because it takes something away, but I’m kind of of the same opinion with Stephen King, in that poetry has just as deliberate a goal as prose. Your job isn’t to muddy things up; a poet’s job is to reveal things!

That said, a large part of this piece is devoted towards creating a mood of agitation and discomfort, and that includes the punctuation. For an example, look at e e cummings’s poem “next to of course god america i”:

http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/cummings.nextto.html

So punctuation isn’t outlawed—it’s necessary at times for clarity’s sake, hence the parenthetical with the one-night stand wordplay, and the final quote, which is an important shift in the speaker’s attitude since he’s finally freeing himself from this apathy. The whole bit about digestion is a metaphor for their shallow relationship (literally s****y) and shallow nutrients.

Thank you for taking the time to explain. I can appreciate your work even more now. There was definitely a palpable sense of discomfort related to the grammatical structure, but I don’t know if I would have associated the two if it was not pointed out to me.

Decidedly bitter love poem with some great imagery and sound to it as you read it in your mind.

Very interesting though I’m not much in to poems as much as I used to be so I’m out of practice on reading in to them

Fascinating and vivid imagery! I like how this piece flows.

I did like this. Offering junk food to the mayan underworld is very funny, though I do miss the capitals. I can live without punctuation, but lack of capitals makes a piece hard to read.

That said, the piece was well written and funny. The irregular rhythm and shape give it an odd tempo, which adds to the depressing atmosphere. Well done.

I liked the imagery with the curls of smoke. The image I get is that the narrator is there to comfort the smoking person who I have the feeling is a woman. Who rather of her own result or of an accident lost her children. But while the narrator wants to comfort her, the atmosphere she created with the drinking and smoking makes it difficult to gather the pity needed to do so and gives him the feeling that it would be pointless.

I saw in the tags that this was e.e. cummings-esque and I’d agree with that whole-heartedly. Poetry is not my strong suit but it appears to be yours. I particularly enjoyed the double lines with the night stand.