PANTOMIME HORSE

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Came home from the graveyard shift, still forlorn over a lovers tiff. Found her clothes torn by four Albanians in our martial bed, should of stayed home and watched in the closet instead

Hit over the head with a paint can and a frying pan, where I fall and hear only a sneer of derision and a cackled call. Such anger and force, played as a pantomime horse

Arranged to meet the boys for another one, where we stumble and roll on the floor. Told to take a detour to the mother-in law, where we take a shopping trip to cause a credit card dip and take the rubbish to the skip. Listen all afternoon to incessant noise and manipulative ploys. Par for the course, played as a pantomime horse

Saturday, day off work, relax with a beer, she storms in the living room and zooms in with a smirk. Says, “dear, no time to be lazy come here”

10hours later of physical torture, what do I get for dinner, bread and water! without even any sauce. Played as a pantomime horse

Hair in curls, night out with the girls. Back after midnight, ripped tights and a love bite. Can’t take anymore, final straw

The only recourse, to release the inner Norse and file for divorce. Tired of being played like a pantomime horse

[StealthParticipant 5358]

This one I like! +1

"Once you’ve taken care of the basics, there’s very little in this world for which your life is worth deferring." -David Hansson. "It’s not when women are mean or nasty that anything is out of the ordinary. It’s when they are NICE to you that you have to be on high alert..." -Jackinov.

[Branched offParticipant 10967]

Hi Colin,
I think this one has potential to be a genuinely good poem. You asked me to analytical not critical and this one deserves the treatment.

Overall I think it needs a rewrite, probably two or more but it has the inspiration and insight to be a really good poem.

“Pantomime horse” is a great metaphor for today’s man in a relationship with a woman. I would like to see it slightly better explored. What is it about a pantomime horse that is ridiculous? if the man the back end of it -never knowing where he is being taken by someone who should not be leading? Or is it just the whole ridiculous blundering character that is all that a man can be allowed to be today? I think you need to improve the way what happens to your character reflects possibly the back end of a pantomime horse being pulled and backed up and generally driven nuts. I would like to see the metaphor reflected in most of the lines and perhaps explained just enough to be clear without being set out in a GCSE English text book way.

I think lines are a bit more uneven in length than is ideal for it to flow off your tongue. I think this one wants to flow and a real word genius would make it all flow with a blunder in the right place. Ideally the lines would be more or less metrically equivalent leading to the rhymes so it has a flow where the listener anticipates the punch lines.

I think that some of the things that happen to your character are a bit extreme -hit with dangerous objects, sent to bed with bread and water, his wife is gang banged by 4 men in his bed. I know all these things happen but they are unlikely to happen to even one guy let alone all of them. One of your talents is for a humorous self deprecation. Make him less of a victim of grave assault and more of a pathetic mangina. The blue pill guy makes himself a pathetic mangina to act his role properly. Make him too much of the innocent victim and not the twit who signed up for the back of the horse role and you are overplaying your points I think. You just want the reader to feel your character deserves better not your woman is psychotic and need immediately locking up because then you lose sympathy for your main point -the average guy in the average modern relationship is a pathetic comic character, not your guy is a crime victim.

“Hair in curls, night out with the girls. Back after midnight, ripped tights and a love bite. Can’t take anymore, final straw” This is a good line. I thin it would flow better with “love bites” not “and a love bite” but I think it is not too extreme and has flow and is just right to take you to the punch line about divorce. “Inner Norse” is not so good I fear. Today the Norse are the pantomime horses of all Europe. “Ancient Norse” if you must go Norse?

Anyway I must go to work. Its the inner grain of the wood has real potential Colin but you need to trim, sand and polish it. Have a good day mate.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

So what you are really saying condensed in fewer paragraphs, is to stick with the “f~~” poems……ha ha ha
I appreciate the critique. Without sounding too defensive, one must remember these are written in 10minutes off the top of my head. If I took real time processing and tweaking(as I am sure John Cooper Clarke does) then they would be more polished for the bemused masses.

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Stealth wrote:

This one I like! +1

Yes baby!

[Branched offParticipant 10967]

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

So what you are really saying condensed in fewer paragraphs, is to stick with the “f~~” poems……ha ha haI appreciate the critique. Without sounding too defensive, one must remember these are written in 10minutes off the top of my head. If I took real time processing and tweaking(as I am sure John Cooper Clarke does) then they would be more polished for the bemused masses.

NO! totally the opposite mate. This one is good.

Colin I think you have poetic inspiration -a thing that I personally lack. I have read quite a bit of verse and once taught an A level English lit class at a top public school for a term to win a bet -long story that probably gives away too much personal info if I tell it but I mention it to say I do know a bit about verse. I see you have the raw talent to dash that off in 10 minutes and I am impressed. Praise is due. What I am saying is that there are very, very few successful poets who can write publishable quality poems in 10 minutes. If there are some who do it regularly they have probably been writing successful published poetry for a fair time already.

Virgil was a great poet at the peak of his career and it took him 10 years to write the Aeneid. He wasn’t satisfied it was right yet, but he died before he could revise it the umpteenth time. He left a will asking for the imperfect poem to be burned. Happily for 2 millennia of poetry lovers (and sadly for 2 millennia of school boys) they disobeyed his orders and published it.

I am being encouraging. Mickey is not wrong when he says you have a talent but talent without application and practise still amounts to nothing. Go back, take it to bits, critique it, revise and improve it. Then do that again in a few months, then put in in a folder with other good well checked and revised ones (f~~ free ones if you want me and Hermit to buy your book) and when you have enough send them to a publisher. The fact that you are not a hot black lesbian or a queer veteran with PTSD may mean you need to send it round a few publishers before you get a bite but do it anyway.

One more thing -don’t “bemuse the masses” if you want your verses to be read. You have to strike a common chord or you are just some nutter using odd words. Make your poems bullets targeted to get in the reader’s brain not a mere explosion of inner rant. Anyone can rant. A good poet gets ordinary people ranting with him.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

They may lose some of there potency if they are too scrutinised. The harshness may be lost. I don’t know……
I have loads in my head. They just come to me. I wrote this one online, no paper version, just made up as I went along each verse.
There must be some specimens out there who like my woollyback poems. Mr Joller is from down London way. He must know some fetish freaks from Soho who I could read to whilst they perform the aforementioned acts in the poems. “Live poems”, a new genre……

No, your identity hasn’t been revealed. I am more concerned finding out Mr Herm’s location. Imagine a pontificating puffter poet walking into a windswept saloon bar in Idaho…..

[Anonymous 1]

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

Mr Joller is from down London way. He must know some fetish freaks from Soho who I could read to whilst they perform the aforementioned acts in the poems. “Live poems”, a new genre……

After we sink a few of London’s finest, we can certainly see where the smoke leads us, col.

Not too many geese, mind – poems will do just fine.

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Anonymous wrote:

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

Mr Joller is from down London way. He must know some fetish freaks from Soho who I could read to whilst they perform the aforementioned acts in the poems. “Live poems”, a new genre……

After we sink a few of London’s finest, we can certainly see where the smoke leads us, col.
Not too many geese, mind – poems will do just fine.

It’s a date then. When the ship sinks, we will be sailing off sneering from a giant inflatable Goose raft.

Yeah, watch the f~~~ out London. Two sublime specimens coming to a market stall near you.

[Anonymous 1]

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

Yeah, watch the f~~~ out London. Two sublime specimens coming to a market stall near you

It’s on. Don’t you go “ducking off” after I buy the first round.

Few drinks and watch the world.

We have plenty to talk about, col.

[Puffin StuffParticipant 24979]

Excellent work. I would buy a book of poetry of that caliber.

#icethemout; Remember Thomas Ball. He died for your children.

[Branched offParticipant 10967]

I totally take your point about not wanting to lose potency and real feeling by too much revision. This risk of over polish has been recognised since Pytheas accused the speeches of Demosthenses of “smelling too much of the lamp” (the ancient greek olive oil lamp smelt and it was clear from the amount of polish in his oration that Demosthenes must have been practising at night).

On the other hand Homer comes at the end of a tradition of repetition and revision that had lasted centuries before he made the final version.

How you solve the problem is personal. Making oral revision before writing can be one route? Leaving it alone and then coming back to it? I dunno but I was just making a point that if you want to be a craftsman, you must practise your trade and seek to improve. There are so many “artists” out there who don’t realise that art is a skill -a trade as much as an inspiration.

I like the idea of your giving out a live MGTOW poetry recital to a bunch of vegan liberals and some feminist friendly coffee shop run by some queers in Islington. I suspect you could carry it off.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Puffin Stuff wrote:

Excellent work. I would buy a book of poetry of that caliber.

Cheers.

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Anonymous wrote:

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

Yeah, watch the f~~~ out London. Two sublime specimens coming to a market stall near you

It’s on. Don’t you go “ducking off” after I buy the first round.
Few drinks and watch the world.
We have plenty to talk about, col.

As long as you don’t mutter about me, then we will be jolly.

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Branched off wrote:

I totally take your point about not wanting to lose potency and real feeling by too much revision. This risk of over polish has been recognised since Pytheas accused the speeches of Demosthenses of “smelling too much of the lamp” (the ancient greek olive oil lamp smelt and it was clear from the amount of polish in his oration that Demosthenes must have been practising at night).
On the other hand Homer comes at the end of a tradition of repetition and revision that had lasted centuries before he made the final version.
How you solve the problem is personal. Making oral revision before writing can be one route? Leaving it alone and then coming back to it? I dunno but I was just making a point that if you want to be a craftsman, you must practise your trade and seek to improve. There are so many “artists” out there who don’t realise that art is a skill -a trade as much as an inspiration.
I like the idea of your giving out a live MGTOW poetry recital to a bunch of vegan liberals and some feminist friendly coffee shop run by some queers in Islington. I suspect you could carry it off.[/quote

As always, I welcome your input. Have another one come to me today. I will write in the next hour or so.
One of my personal favourites, “Cotton Picker” that not even a brazen such as I dare to relay on this site would go down particular well during the interlude of beetroot tea and celery soup.

[Branched offParticipant 10967]

Hi Colin,
You keep dangling “Cotton Picker” in front of our noses. The forbidden verse. Soon I will end up asking for it out of curiosity! Its good marketing.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[HermitParticipant]

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

No, your identity hasn’t been revealed. I am more concerned finding out Mr Herm’s location. Imagine a pontificating puffter poet walking into a windswept saloon bar in Idaho…..

Actually, I’m not even real, not “alive” anyway. My posts and responses are computer generated. I am an online version of A.I.

The evil in women’s hearts leaves them no moral bounds as to inhibit them from descending to the lowest levels of darkness to acquire their self entitled desires.

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Hermit wrote:

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

No, your identity hasn’t been revealed. I am more concerned finding out Mr Herm’s location. Imagine a pontificating puffter poet walking into a windswept saloon bar in Idaho…..

Actually, I’m not even real, not “alive” anyway. My posts and responses are computer generated. I am an online version of A.I.

Thee only exists in thine own mind. What state do you reside in? Come on, the size of some of your states are bigger than Western Europe!

[Colin Combover in a ComaParticipant 5068]

Branched off wrote:

Hi Colin,You keep dangling “Cotton Picker” in front of our noses. The forbidden verse. Soon I will end up asking for it out of curiosity! Its good marketing.

How is it diddling.
Yes, this verse may be too mordant for the sensitive wall flowers on here.

[HermitParticipant]

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

Hermit wrote:

Colin Combover in a Coma wrote:

No, your identity hasn’t been revealed. I am more concerned finding out Mr Herm’s location. Imagine a pontificating puffter poet walking into a windswept saloon bar in Idaho…..

Actually, I’m not even real, not “alive” anyway. My posts and responses are computer generated. I am an online version of A.I.

Thee only exists in thine own mind. What state do you reside in? Come on, the size of some of your states are bigger than Western Europe!

What if it was Hawaii? Would you still fly over to try to bother me?

The evil in women’s hearts leaves them no moral bounds as to inhibit them from descending to the lowest levels of darkness to acquire their self entitled desires.

[Author]

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