Paul Crompton's poem "Emotional Sandcastles" on Tuesday, dealt with two worrying trends in the modern world. Those of unemployment and sensationalist media.
The lines: but I kill those memories
because these streets are no place
to build emotional sandcastles.
sum up the harshness of modern life under twin attacks from those two forces.
Laura Taylor's poem "No Justice" was Wednesday's poem and an angry jagged little pill. I admire poets who can say so much in so few words. For example, from this poem,
his life resides in a box;
confined, entrapped,
determined, defined...
brings home the claustrophobic nature of inner city living in a strikingly effective manner.
Thomas Martin's poem "The Upper Crust" outlined the growing gulf in society between an elite who do not seem to suffer from their own incompetence and an underclass who will never get a chance to make a better life for themselves and their families. The problem is summed up in the last two lines as:
They know how to take money from the people
And distribute it among themselves.
Luigi Pagano's "Toujours L'Amour" performed a very surgical skewering of the "you wouldn't believe it in a movie" situation in France. The last lines:
Can you imagine Cyrano
- he with a large hooter-
going to meet Roxane
in a three-wheeler scooter?
catch the absurdity of the affair, perfectly.
I hope you all have a good week. My family and I are beside the seaside on N.Z's east coast, our favourite place. Keep up with the news and keep up the submissions.
