All Paid Expense

limklad

For some reason, My mind seem to getting back to creating poetry after 20+ years after leaving school. I was brutal at it in school with pass leaving cert English. My creative juices seem to start last Thursday. I just cannot seem to shake it. I found my self rhyming at lunch and meeting at work on Friday and ever since. So I just giving in.
I create this poem in response to a post today.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057243307

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=91143061&postcount=80
Name of Poem: All paid Expense.

I met a young buck
He threaten me.
He wanted I got,
Do I give him another choice.

Brilliant idea,
I will add more to that.
Offer the offender,
With all paid expense.

With 3 square meals,
In a very secure building.
He feels very at home,
In his new abode.

He will have his very own servants.
They smile and grin.
Their very dedicated service,
Will opens and locks doors for him.

He may or will have,
His very own suite.
With their very best,
Available washing facilities.

There also will be,
His very own desire.
In order to head,
To the exercise yard.

Arrangements for travel,
Is also met.
There is a door to door service,
So he travels amongst.

He will have his very own driver,
With accompanied two.
With dedicated transport,
To make him feel blue.

Security be met,
With their special uniforms.
It is vital for service,
While he travels along.

To make him feel safe,
There is backup on hand.
It be foolish to catch him,
For they gets own dire.

There is also available company,
Where he can make new friends.
In order to help meditate,
Or decide what to do next.

They may even offer clothing,
If desire come dire.
Be warned, the style and colour,
Is per the owners style.

Have a sneak peak for yourself,
to judge for yourself.
It can be upgraded,
If government spend.

If it not up to spec,
They can come in all shape and size.
Like this one with service,
With all else they provide.

If it meets your criteria,
The service is prompt.
Then pick up the phone,
And dial 911

Copyright @2014 Limklad

heathledgerlove

Hello! Great poem. I like the line length.

First off never mind how long it is since you did English in school or what scores you got. You can see for yourself that being inspired by the most accidental of prompts can yield results like you have here. Though of course if you are to improve it is absolutely no harm and quite advantageous to immerse yourself in existing poetry to learn more handy techniques and useful expressions and manipulation of language. As to your poem:

As I mentioned before, I do like the line length, very brief and kind of sharp and not quite angry sounding, but flippant and confident. This is appropriate I feel because you (or the narrator of the poem) are taking the line of a person who has been wrongfully accused of a crime, is that correct? And subsequently threatened? But you turn that around on the instigator.

I have to say that the images presented in the poem are pretty standard; in that you are describing fairly familiar scenes of being incarcerated in jail, presumably because your foe in the poem has broken the law, you have called them out on this and they have been punished. By the time the reader gets to the lines, for example,

“With 3 square meals,
In a very secure building.”

any mystery as to the “All paid expense” element to the poem is eradicated as it becomes inarguably clear that this is a poem about justice (both physical – incarceration, and moral – the writers is presumably still free), and henceforth any images and hints about the perpetrator being put up in some sort of institution with free meals and etc. is unfortunately devoid of ambiguity. It's obviously a jail. Of course this may be intentional; you intended the reader to twig this right from the start. In which case, well done! Is this also a criticism on the supposed lenience of Ireland's criminal justice system or the state of our prisons?

What I found really arresting about this work is the kind of language used. That is what really makes it stand out. Colloquial speech patterns, with no particular adherence to proper punctuation and grammar, are a really effective mode of poetic construction, and it was ideal in your usage here.

I'm seeing glimmers of the famed modernist era and beyond in this work. Let me attempt to explain my ramblings; the opening stanza of your poem.

“I met a young buck
He threaten me.
He wanted I got,
Do I give him another choice.” (I would actually add a question mark here. Yes I see that the verse has come to an end, but finishing on a question mark will make the line flow better into the rest of the poem, because you are of course answering this question.)

Anyway! I appreciate the idiom “young buck” because it makes the poem and the character in question immediately relative to anyone who would use these particularly Irish phrases. Moreover, the usage of Irish-esque language and slang has always been appealing to the international literary sphere for whatever reason! But history shows it.

Really like the next couple lines, about “He threaten me.. He wanted I got.” For some reason it reminds me of the ee cummings poem Yugudah, (argh, actually ygUDuh ), with the highly stylized colloquialisms (nay it's practically in code, the language is so very specific) I'm going to have to go look it up in order to represent some lines....!
“ydoan
yunnuhstan

ydoan o
yunnuhstand dem”

This of course has to be read aloud in order to understand the words alone, leave alone the meaning! Of course this kind of poem takes 'everyday' lingo and speech-isms as far as it can go, to the extent that these modernist poems are as high-faluting as any complicated Shakespeare or Byron eloquence!

You have toed this line while remaining understandable and relatable, which is important if you are to reach an audience.

Many and many's a poem (nay, volume of poetry) has been written about prison, and how it reflects a certain imbalance and inhumanity that is ingrained in the law, and in society in general. You seem to be taking a more glib and sardonic line, which works very well in the context of the poem as you are imagining the fate of one particular 'criminal' who is personally incurable:

“...available company,
Where he can make new friends.
In order to help meditate,
Or decide what to do next.”

You go on to imply that it's not at all a bad job being locked up as there are people ( servants! ) waiting on the prisoner hand and foot with bed and board provided! But of course any reader who is half-way informed will know otherwise. In this comedic way, you remind me more of the likes of Roger McGough, and for example, his poem about a teacher enforcing order in the classroom:

“He picked on a boy who was shouting
and throttled him then and there
then garrotted the girl behind him
(the one with grotty hair)”

....

(until at last)

“....teacher surveyed the carnage
the dying and the dead
He waggled a finger severely
'Now let that be a lesson' he said.”


Outrageous of course, and not realistic but implicit of the kind of torment one could go through in the classroom. Or in your case, the prison. You of course retreat from such grotesque, Roald Dahl-like descriptions!

I confess that I only read the opening post of the thread that you linked to, the one which sparked off your imagination. Thinking back if I confused the perpetrator with the 'victim' as depicted in your poem I apologize!