Buildings ........ Double Blind poems

[AlwaysHungry]

Is that the sound of tinkling childish laughter,
or just a forgotten wind chime
finding a passing breeze?
Are fluttering curtains drawn aside
by a ghostly wraith peering out from a sepia past?
In the moonless night peeling fascias hidden,
and loose floorboards creak under unseen feet
passing through the years.
Among encroaching undergrowth, she settles
like the old lady she is.
Slowly rocking on a forgotten porch.

I'm guessing UYS for the "peeling fascias" series, although the second once, with its lashing of globes, made me think at first of Ashesh. I like this one, particularly "sepia past." I had to look online to learn what a fascia is. I was bothered by the syntax in "In the moonless night peeling fascias hidden"-- perhaps "are hidden" or "hide" would be less confusing to the reader.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I do think that "Belmont" suffers from tl;dr and is rather prosaic. I read to the end, waiting for a punch line which never arrived.

Belmont

The house was built back in the 1800s, it was a small but gracious farmhouse.
Either side of the front door it had etched colored glass. Adjoined, an elegant verandah.
It was graced with iron lace. The old front door led into the hallway with rooms either side.
The walls were covered with gold edged, floral paper and paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites.

It was a solitary home set in thousands of acres. A large holding of Merino sheep.
Valued for their wonderful crinkly fleece, a stroking hand would leave with the scent of lanolin.
A strong wire fence with picket gate setting a boundary from the feeding sheep.
Inside, the garden flourished. A small way from the house, a metal windmill turned.

Its sound adding a metal ringing as it moved, complimenting natures calls.
Crows, Magpies, Curruwongs and sweet Bell-Birds calling out their songs.
Flocks of fluffy white merino sheep, adding their chorus of baaahr-ing baaahs.
The wind would blow wild or gently making the swaying trees whisper their secrets.

Their lives moved on and year by year, the family slowly grew larger.
The time came when a new home was needed, the old home was left in place.
A large and dignified home grew out of the first, taking its original style.
Red iron roof. A fine iron laced veranda, graced two sides of the home.

The outside was weatherboard planks neatly laid in place, painted greenish beige
Three Large Bow Windows, almost to the floor, timber painted red, flooding in the light.
The garden had grown into a place of tranquil beauty, flowers always in bloom.
Wisteria threading its lazy way up verandah poles and through the iron lace.

Springtime brought forth color and perfume, the wisteria hanging in glorious display.
A new front door had been added to the home's extension, also with etched colored glass.
Through the front door, a fine entrance and waiting area, again walls lined with floral paper.
To the right a huge billiard room with large leather chairs surrounding the big fire place

Well framed photos of family members adorned the walls, along with still life paintings.
This was such a warm and pleasant place, next to the vast tempting kitchen.
Into the kitchen a huge fuel stove burned, a big black kettle always ready for the tea
On one side the kitchen dresser, displaying Blue Willow and Cornish striped china.

Back again through the billiard room and the entrance hall, we come to the dining room.
The light flooded in from one of the bow windows, an impressive room without a doubt.
It sported a magnificent marble fireplace and enormous sideboard, carved ornately.
A dining table seating twenty, extra room for the guests, as the family had grown to fourteen.

Beyond the dining room lay a hallway, leading back toward the original home.
A multitude of bedrooms opened either side, some seemed haunted others not at all.
The very last bedroom at the front of the old house was the original parents room.
Its furnishings now antique and lovely! A full length mirror adjoining a double dressing table.

There was a bathroom and outhouses, underground cellar, a hand water pump at a deep well.
Slowly the children left their home as they grew older they went to war or were married.
Some came home, some did not. At seventy four the father died, the farm then run by just one.
He had survived the war and never married. He was on his own now, his mother left to live in a home.

When the Mother died, the children and spouses pouncing, scooped up the home's treasures.
A few things remained so the last son left there could manage to survive with the basics.
He struggled and worked mostly on his own, to keep the farm running with the help of his dog.
Finally one day after a game of bowls, a beer in his hand, he gripped his chest and died.

Year after year the house slowly disintegrated. Some of the family would just stop in at times.
They would 'salvage' pieces of the house, like some of the iron lace or other things useful.
No one cared to hammer back the boards as they slowly broke away from their timbers.
The land was sold to a rich IT nerd who got wreckers to remove the derelict old heap.

 

[Lyricalli]

Interior

It must have been impressive,
luxurious, before smoke and age
reduced it to its present state of
gloomy melancholia,

only at night by the light from
the bar, filtered through regiments
of amber bottles, does the memory revive.

Fresh smoke covers the stale
and ample bottoms cover the battered stools.
The center of attraction is solid mahogany,
burnished to a glow by a generation of
barkeepers’ cloths, eager elbows and
the occasional drink-flushed face.

The floor, seldom seen, is carpeted,
a pattern long gone and the weave
worn thin beneath the stools.
There’s a raised area, hardly a stage
but now, with live music a memory,
the only slow-dancers are tables and chairs.

The comma at the end of the first stanza turns the first and second stanzas into a long, and slightly awkward run-on sentence/thought. That comma could be a full stop, perhaps a semi-colon, because the second stanza is a full thought by itself.

In the first stanza, I wonder if "its present state of" is necessary. We already know that it will be contrasting then and now because of the beginning "it must have been."

A comma is definitely needed after "stale". Adding the 'bar' to 'stools', "ample bottoms cover battered barstools," adds another bit of alliteration, and I like it without 'the'.


GM brings up a good point about 'memory' being vague. The poem gives some good imagery that allows you to imagine this place, but it's impersonal. Whose memory is revived? Who remembers the live music? The building itself? I 'see' the gloomy melancholia, but I don't feel it.

 

[Lyricalli]

Among The Living

I have to admit, I'm still puzzling through this one a little. This bit, particularly, has me scratching my head:

Here, every cast member is a celebrity
while those living in infamy
are celebrated as well
​

Are 'those living in infamy' not part of 'every cast member'? Are they a separate group of characters, and if so, what part, aside from this bit, are they playing in the poem? Something about this stanza just has me tripped up, and I feel like maybe I'm missing something I should be seeing.

True, Mags, there's not much about the building, but I do get an image of a place, something like a fun house Ripley's Believe It or Not, where the casts of Jersey Shore, Celebrity Apprentice, and multiple Housewives versions are all corralled together.

 

[Magnetron]

True, Mags, there's not much about the building, but I do get an image of a place, something like a fun house Ripley's Believe It or Not, where the casts of Jersey Shore, Celebrity Apprentice, and multiple Housewives versions are all corralled together.

Christ, that sounds like a real house of horrors : a building full of attention whores.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Regarding "Wrap Around Porches" I agree that the poem has too many "Bobby's" in it, as noted in Mag's critique. A 12 year would say that but not the diction in the rest of the poem, so it reads a little like mixing oil and water.

I do like the inference of racial divide. It's unlikely that Bobby will ever be invited to Sunday dinner at the narrator's home.

This poem would have been better as a retrospective many years later with a few more "he's" and "hims" replacing some "Bobby's."

Always Hungry and Magnetron have me pegged as the author; maybe; maybe not.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Regarding the untitled poem that begins with "Is that the sound...?" the "ghostly" as an adjective with "wraith" is redundant because the latter refers to ghosts.

I too had a problem with the syntax.

"In the moonless night peeling fascias hidden,
and loose floorboards creak under unseen feet
passing through the years."

I think it would be better expressed as

"The moonless night hides peeling fascias/..."

I have a bias towards titles. I also think something like "Victoria" as the title makes the ghost more real to me.

I thought the poem imaginative, not overdone, but in need of some editing.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The untitled poem that begins "My fascias are peeling" made me laugh. I think it's a parody by UYS about our Lit friend, Ash who likes to write playful verse about BDSM.

 

[Lyricalli]

Christ, that sounds like a real house of horrors : a building full of attention whores.

Can't you just imagine the carnage if they were all trapped together, each vying to be more famous than the other?

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Belmont (rawsilk?) – too prose-like, in need of severe pruning. I, too, couldn’t engage. Length? Subject? Distil, distil, until you have the essence.

Among the Living (Mags?) isn’t clear that a building is the subject. It is a clever idea, Hell as a reality show, just no mention of a building.

Mobile Home. (AH or gm?) Even though it is not strictly about a building you could argue it is about a home. I love this poem but found the final verse lacking, almost unnecessary. Perhaps the Prius owner needs expanding. more lines?

Wrap Around Porches. (gm or AH?) It has the voice of a child so the “ Bobbys” don’t jar me. The lack of punctuation adds a breathless, run-on way of talking kids often have.

Untitled#1 (UYS?) sensitively observant. Loved it. One niggle….does the inanimate wind chime find the breeze or the breeze find the chime?

Untitled #2 (UyS?) Joke-y and clever. To who ever wrote it - you owe us another poem about that “nefarious night and outrageous affair.” Can I feel a challenge coming on???

A Hall To Call Home (no clue) I enjoyed this until it became list-y and dropped any detail. One day, when it’s grown up, this atmospheric poem might become great.

 

[legerdemer]

Some tidbits here and there. (Unfortunately for me, I've been too scarce.)

I agree with GP on most of her comments, so I'll try to keep it brief and different.

#1 - Belmont reminds me of a travel brochure for a stately house, but does too little and much too late to shed light on the people living there.


#2 - Interior - This one generally flows like a glass of good scotch or nicely-warmed cognac. I really like those first two stanzas which introduce what I imagine is a rich (not in dollars or pounds) interior of bygone days.
Some of the rest do, though it could use a little pruning here and there (e.g., delete 'the' before 'memory revive,' and possibly also the one before 'battered stools'). Also, a generation is not that long - 20 years in the past, closer to 30 now - and certainly doesn't stretch over the lifetime of the pub I envision when reading the poem; so, perhaps:
'burnished to a glow by generations of / barkeepers' cloths, eager ...'

Example (IMO, of course): A small suggestion for a rewrite for the last three lines of the poem (I don't like lines opening with "There's a..." - they sound too passive to me).

Live music now a memory,
the only slow dancers on the
raised stage are tables and chairs.


#3 Among the Living - This definitely seems like a psychological interior, possibly one of Mags' Stephen King scenarios. It is most vivid and fun, with some light hearted (why am I getting the red underline on hearted?) menace for the close. I like it a lot - well done! I am sure I like it a ton more than whichever horror novel inspired it.

#4 Mobile Home - The first stanza delivers a gut punch to armchair liberals (like me, I suppose); the second is almost aggressively in-your-face, but I know the poem has a political point to make (and axe to grind ).

#5 Exodus - Am I in an abandoned mental institution? I feel like this is straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It is uncomfortably real, and brought me back to several readings.

#6 Wrap Around Porches - an ourobouros. It is a bit of tongue twister in places, a bit breathless - seemingly buzzing with the impatient energy of a twelve year old boy. I do think it could use some punctuation here and there. Just me. While it was slow to grab me at first, it really grows on me on follow-up readings. It's got the gm touch and diction. South Philly? Jersey?

#7 I like this one a lot as well, except for tripping over those peeling fascias.

A few nit-picky comments:

- because wind chimes are stuck in the place in which they've been hung, I would replace 'finding' with 'greeting' - that relieves my image of a wondering wind chime

- 'ghostly wraith' seems redundant ('wraith' seems sufficient), but it's all in the name of poetry...

- the peeling fascias just don't work for me

- and, niggling stickler that I am, I would replace the period after 'she is' with a comma

#8 - Love the playful satire of the next one !(My fascias are peeling...)
I might have covered more ground with" 'were sure to perform / by mouth, body or hand'


(And I am very sorry my own muse was so goddam slow. I'd say it's getting old, but a few other poets would lash me, and rightly so. So I'll just stick with lazy.)

 

[Magnetron]

(And I am very sorry my own muse was so goddam slow. I'd say it's getting old, but a few other poets would lash me, and rightly so. So I'll just stick with lazy.)

Would that be an Ashesh lashing or a Magnetron lashing?

 

[AlwaysHungry]

The untitled poem that begins "My fascias are peeling" made me laugh. I think it's a parody by UYS about our Lit friend, Ash who likes to write playful verse about BDSM.

The Golden Globes?

A Hall To Call Home

Odin, the Old One, hear this ode
to our hall, our home and hearth.

Lumber built and long with vaulted loft,
tightly thatched that kings and thanes
might meet, talk and moot.
We boast and brag, drink mulled brews,
and feast and fete by warming fires.
While outside, winds whistle,
snow swirls and warmth is scarce.
Inside there is; mead, meat, companions merry,
pulses, parsnips, various pies,
howling hounds, lyres and harps,
trestle tables between posts of timber,
shields, skins, tapestries sewn,
benches, beds, ovens for bread,
useful utensils and you.
Snug, safe and secure.

I like this one because of its musicality. I am a sucker for alliteration, assonance and consonance. Give me a heaping helping of those, and I'll go home satisfied. I'm a cheap date.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Well just as I was about to ask for revisions, we've had two more very late entries! You'll have to once again fly blind on who wrote what, but please do the critiques.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Just a Little House

She needed to go, leave her home,
place of desolate feel,
find a new place, all on her own.
This move has such appeal.

There are books lined up on the shelves,
about fleeing women
from a perfectly happy home,
to exotic region.

She was not an abused woman,
Her life a normal case.
She didn't want to go to France.
Local, up country place.

Searching through country homes for sale,
she found what she wanted.
It was an old miner's cottage,
tall gum trees were planted.

It had three main rooms, front largest.
Front had kitchen one end,
tiny sitting room, place for two,
open fireplace, for friend.

At the back there were two bedrooms,
tiny bathroom on side.
Much work needed to bring it back,
making it clean inside.

Decisions made, contracts were signed.
At last this house was hers.
It smells really bad and dirty.
Much work, each one concurs

New walls, new floor, new everything,
Yet all its charms remain.
It kept its old world feel, no smell.
White paint inside the main.

Outside had a new, red tin roof,
boards painted sandy brown,
the trim deep red to match the roof.
A veranda to crown.

Now bring it back from house to home
a place to lie my head,
it was the small one on the right,
room for one single bed.

The next bedroom was much larger,
in there was a double,
for any friends to stay over,
always good, no trouble.

Two chairs in front the old fireplace,
two bookcases behind,
books in place, within easy reach.
Old chiming clock, great find.

Across the room, simple kitchen,
looks like such a poem,
with dark stained, timber floors, throughout.
Now's time to call it home!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

The Stones of Avdat

Now kissed by churning sands of time
Through windows blind and gutters dry,
Since candles flickered meek against the lime
The emptiness declaims, its croaking sigh
Another sign that no one waits nor breathes
Within, amid these ruined, crumbling stones
Which once bore silent witness to crusades
And sheltered nomads come to rest their bones.

In these ghost-ridden walls the laughter rings no more.
Back then the Nabatean traders’ faces turned as priests
Rang times for prayer, while the men - elder and infirm -
Sat cross-legged, pipes in hand, to sip their tea
And spit the mint leaves on the woolen rugs
For girls and women, timid behind veils, to clean.

 

[Magnetron]

Just A Little House

Another one that suffers from too much grand tour. I wanted to know more about the owner and why her last house was desolate. That was where the real story was at.

The rhyming is forced, especially with planted and wanted. The stanzas don't adhere to a strict rhythm, so I felt thrown from the horse at the deviations.

 

[Magnetron]

The Stones of Avdat

My only qibble is the last line.

Later cleaned up by timid women veiled.

would suffice.

 

[greenmountaineer]

A Little House a little too long. Like Mags, I too wanted to know why. Either that or leave mention of the departure out entirely and focus on the few stanzas that roll off the tongue to form a nice cameo of "a little house."

I thought The Stones of Advat was such a cameo. It worked for me because of its brevity, and it presented something exotic and original which sent my imagination on a journey, a good example of how poetry can suggest more than what the poem describes.

I confess I'm not a big of adjectives following the noun they modify as in line 2. It makes the language feel too antiquated and contrved for me. However, the poem describes antiquity, so I'm not sure I would change it, although I would roll a few alternatives around in my brain to see if they worked better.

It''s also a sonnet with iambic pentameter. While I'm partial to free verse, I do enjoy the craft of formal poetry. This has it.

I'd guess AH, although Mer may have found her Janey Come Lately Muse.

 

[Magnetron]

I think The Stones of Avdat and Mobile Home are clearly the most solid as is out of the batch.

 

[greenmountaineer]

"Mobile Home" was my favorite.

Initially I thought AH as the poet, but now I think it's Guilty Pleasure. (I almost wrote "it has that Guilty Pleasure feel")

I missed it in my first comment, but I think there were too many "he's" and "him's." That can work, I suppose, in that the subject is pretty much a non-person in the eyes of many, but with some grammatical changes, I think it would have been better, e.g., "needed day to day" and "along" without "with him" which is implied anyway, and ending the line that way, at least for me, made me think of the mononous and apparently aimless motion of the wheels.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

I thought The Stones of Advat was such a cameo. It worked for me because of its brevity, and it presented something exotic and original which sent my imagination on a journey, a good example of how poetry can suggest more than what the poem describes.
...

It''s also a sonnet with iambic pentameter.

Well, not entirely. It starts with two lines of tetrameter. The second stanza abandons meter altogether, along with rhyme. Had I written it, I would have gone all anal-retentive and kept futzing until I got the entire thing to conform to the form. But I didn't write it, and it's a lovely poem as is.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

The Stones of Avdat

Now kissed by churning sands of time
Through windows blind and gutters dry,
Since candles flickered meek against the lime
The emptiness declaims, its croaking sigh
Another sign that no one waits nor breathes
Within, amid these ruined, crumbling stones
Which once bore silent witness to crusades
And sheltered nomads come to rest their bones.

In these ghost-ridden walls the laughter rings no more.
Back then the Nabatean traders’ faces turned as priests
Rang times for prayer, while the men - elder and infirm -
Sat cross-legged, pipes in hand, to sip their tea
And spit the mint leaves on the woolen rugs
For girls and women, timid behind veils, to clean.

One minor niggle which isn't about the poem's context, is the beginning each line with a capital letter, which to me slows down the flow because to me Capitals denote the beginning of a sentence.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

"Mobile Home" was my favorite.

I missed it in my first comment, but I think there were too many "he's" and "him's." That can work, I suppose, in that the subject is pretty much a non-person in the eyes of many, but with some grammatical changes, I think it would have been better, e.g., "needed day to day" and "along" without "with him" which is implied anyway, and ending the line that way, at least for me, made me think of the mononous and apparently aimless motion of the wheels.

If the protagonist had been named "Jim," "Theo," or "Bryce," I would have immediately pegged this poem as one of GM's. But I agree that the absence of a proper name does reinforce the non-personhood and works effectively in the poem.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

One minor niggle which isn't about the poem's context, is the beginning each line with a capital letter, which to me slows down the flow because to me Capitals denote the beginning of a sentence.

However, that is standard practice for a classical sonnet.