I can't make you love me if you don't...Bonnie Raitt
sings that. Sounds true, but no. What dog, child, lover loved
you at first sight, before you helped with food, words, touch?

I'm not paired with readers by blonde showgirls pulling
balls blown from plastic bins. An audience wants stuff.
Dogs know you want a wag, and then another wag.
With cats, the appearance of doing their own thing,
the epicurean selection of your lap.

Why don't we talk turkey for a sec. I figure
you for frankness, but up to a point; a sense of
humor, up to a point; a bit of structural
suspense perhaps—Painted into a corner, to
sprout wings?
....................You're streetwise. Tough.
................................................. ........—Hey, look, a flamingo!
II
You're streetwise. Tough.
.....................................Someone once tried for five full years
to make you love them, pulled out all the stops and drove
you fucking crazy. I'm asking nine more seconds,
risking the carrot-stick of like you offered me,
a validation nut, a plum-billed Alexandrine.



new jars on spec series www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,16199

..moving from Workshop to Submit..

here's another I love.  This jar series is good.

cheryl

Thank you for reading and reporting, Cheryl! With the new title and title poem - title good, you think? - it feels pretty complete, at least for the moment. I appreciate your keeping an eye on it. Tom

I love the new title.  It speaks of simplicity yet looking through a jar can be complex so it's not so simple it's not a challenge.  So 'jar' rather than just a piece of glass is engaging.  And 'on spec', well that's where the real questions arrive, like 'what is he talking about?'.

Wasn't Sylvia Plath's book the 'bell jar' or something?  Her jar is quite different from yours, about depression.  And then there's the poem famous among poets by a poet named william or williams, can't think of his name right now, called 'the jar' or 'jar on a hill' -- I'll look it all up.  Anyway, my point, jars have a history with poets, and it's a good one.

cheryl

Yes! Here's one by Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar":

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Glad you found the Stevens poem, that was my next venture, and that is the poem I was talking about.  Here are a three good quotes from 'The Bell Jar':

I felt like a race horse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like a date on a tombstone.  ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.  ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.  I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.  ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 8


She's fascinating, and so are your poems.

cheryl

As a newbie I'm reading a lot of the poems here to get a feel for the site, but I must say that this one stood out for me.  Really enjoyed the link between parakeet, flamingo and wings.

Ros

Ros, welcome to the site - especially since you are obviously a person of great discernment!
Seriously, you are, because you're reading your way into the site.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed this poem and its birdiness.
Look forward to reading your work.
Tom

Silent, welcome back. Glad you had a chance to read. Is the airport a hotspot, or what? Tom

another thoroughly enjoyable pen, Tom
hope you haven't clipped any wings

Stella

no way, stella! thanks for the look...tom

Now I'm going to be singing that song for the next 72 hours. Great pacing.