Am I going to be a poet

It’s worrying that when you put up a poem for critique and nobody answers for over a week and nobody posts another poem.

Is it so good everybody gave up or is it so bad everybody is afraid to post their poems because they cringed so much and do t want to risk making other people cringe with their poetry.

Maybe it’s just so meh nobody bothered.

My poor ego.

Thanks Kieran maybe I have got a big middle class these days, most of it comes from memories of my childhood though and things I seen around me. Maybe I’m a middle class person that sees people who started at the same point as me not getting the same shake of dice that I got.
I wanted the start to be simplistic and childlike to start with the youth and just wanting a poem to rhyme then changed it up abit with a wider view.

When you say explore my own feeling about homelessness are you saying I should say

Fella outside shop
Gave me disdain
I couldn’t be arsed to learn his name
I work all day he acts lame?

That sort of stuff?

I appreciate you taking the time to read it. Thanks.

Anyone? Two poems? Anything?

Insect Overlord wrote: »

Wind up merchant

Are they that bad?

If the bag was full of spuds
I’d give it more interest
If the bag was full of spuds
It would have received more attention
If the bag was full of spuds
I’d put it somewhere safe
To keep it from the fella in the bag.



There’s a lad sat on the sub bench ready
Serious
Head moving with the ball and the tackles
Ready to give it everything
Ready to run through walls
Ready to realise he’s just not good enough
Ready to give up.
He could do with a bag of spuds
A bag of people is no use to him.

Thank you berties horse it’s very easy to say bad things but it takes a real hero to say nice things.

Hi windy floating nothing on her way unpress pause when I find remote blanket couch Todd from that thing work to American football noise braces young lad n work wife problems, horsing birds, Fargo Todd from breaking Bemidji Souix falls ted damson Kirstin dunst

Burst and noise and darkness panic, don’t wake anybody in the room and hands like cleavers trying to hit the alarm, don’t wake the wifeher voice at this hour boils a mans brain.




I’m trying a new James Joyce technique.

There is a guy I know who has a charity that can throw me a few hours a week teaching a class but I need to sort my self employed tax stuff, I find that too complicated to bother. Forms make me feel like my privacy is being stripped.

Lightbulbs for the working class


Pushing and grunting and freezing and hurting,
A weary soul from the privilege comes cycling,
Through the slums of the working class red back lightly blinking,
Heading for work like a tax paying citizen.

In each direction the sorrow near blinds him,
May have their blinds up
He couldn’t still see them
For they must get dressed in the dangerous darkness
For theirs no lights on Cept the street lamps that guide him,

Can we get light bulbs for the working classes
They must be putting their jocks on in complete darkness
They may need to protest against some injustice,
Think their children are better off with no other purpose
Except leeching the money we have to pay nurses..



I feel like this one is what I was born to write. It’s an early draft but I’d really appreciate if somebody would help me notice the good and bad in it.

Peaceful is a valley or a peak depending on whether it is about to be kicked up a hill or down a hill.

A skull with a bag for a body,
It won’t survive the winter,
If it got any thinner it might snap if I didn’t step over.

I give it a euro if I’m on a date
Careful not to touch it
Just like I drop money in a bucket on my way to spend my wages on landfill.

One per cent at the top
One per cent in the bag
One per cent of what you spend on christmas decorations
One per cent spent on public service art installations
Find a few quid from somewhere to fix what’s forgotten by welfare
It can’t cope in the world forced upon it,
When they decided you can’t do just what you wanna
Because somebody else likes it peaceful
Spending on anything other than people.



I wrote this because I probably felt a bit guilty, the other day I went to one of the few old school Dublin fry up spots left in a changing city for my lunch.

Tenner for a fry so big I couldn’t eat my dinner 7 hours later. Couldn’t finish my work for the day because I was too bloated.

Anyway this fry shop is on a street that any bus that travelled up the Malahide road to town would stop on but doesn’t anymore. It’s just full of sleeping bags and peoples skulls wrapped in skin. Where I was working there was two tents beside the entrance just off o Connell street. I seen two people shaking a man who looked dead, asleep at a postbox on abbey street. On my way back from breakfast he was trying to get to his feet but couldn’t. They were probably trying to move him from the front of their business or checking if he was ok, who knows.

I didn’t stop, hardly anybody did. In too much of a hurry. Went into the bookies, two lads I work with were putting on accumulators, I don’t bet so I just stood in the middle of the bookies looking at the sad acts in the bookies then I looked out the glass panel in the bookies door and I could see two addicts having a chat, like me ma would have a chat with a neighbour or friend she came across while walking through a super market _ just like real people having a chat and I realised we don’t even see them as humans anymore.

I went back to the job I was working on, it was a public service office we were doing construction in, their canteen had a cool coffee machine and we all sat on the rather comfortable seats and had a coffee before going back to work because we were all too full from the fry. It lashed rain when I finished work I cycled by them all again in my top quality rain gear, on my top quality bike in my top quality country.

Baron Kurtz wrote: »

He looks at things and words just fly out. Like that bag of spuds, for example.

I’ve never seen words fly out of a bag of spuds.

How did you feel for the people in the story with the bag of spuds in it? Was your honest opinion that I should watch what I say?

What would you rather have under your stairs, a homeless person or a bag of spuds?

What about the guy cycling to work through a working class estate thinking the poor working classes didn’t have light bulbs because their lights weren’t on? Or the one about summer. I feel you havnt read my body of work.

IAMAMORON wrote: »

There is no working class in Ireland, everyone either works or they don't. Or they might be homeless and desperate, or they might still be spending their great granddads fortune. It doesn't matter.

Stop stereotyping everything. No one cares.

Write about topics which really invigorate and enthrall you, things that entice you.

Everyone has access to light bulbs in Ireland, this is not the dark ages. Get with it.

I don’t think you understand. The literary piece is from a posh guy commuting to his work in the city centre. On his cycle he must pass through a historical council housing area which is right on the doorstep of the city. He calls them working classes. He is genuinely worried because all their lights are off. He thinks they are getting dressed in the dark and can’t afford lightbulbs.

I think you struggle to find meaning in my work. Would it help if I typed it in capitals and stuck it in a daily mail headline?

victor8600 wrote: »

You are a poet. So what if you are misunderstood, lots of people don't understand James Joyce, yet he is considered a genius.

I think you should stop treating us to your fine art for free and publish a book.

Thanks you victor but if I charged for it the people who need it most couldn’t afford it.

tedpan wrote: »

You're a poet and you don't even know it..

Thank you ted pan. Today my boss was pushing schedules on me that I found unrealistic and I thought to myself, why not jack it in and go full time with my poetry, but. I realised I can’t have control of my work if I charge for it. I was thinking of writing a poem about that and the state of the health service.

Lets burn that rice cooker
You could have boiled it
Could have fried it
Could have campfire stoved it.

You had to have the shiny thing in the shiny magazine.
You had to feel bad until they told you to feel good.
You had to post a picture
You had to order pitcher
You had to advertise to your faux friends
A product you only want to show people you have it,

Social media loves ye
Marketing loves ye
Consumerism loves ye
The one per cent loves ye
But all your friends hate ye
They don’t have a rice cooker.

Soaked. Our hero arrived in work baggy eyed, bleary eyed, his hair gel from the night before had ran down his face in little tree branch streams straight into his half shut eyes.

The morning had started well he left the house on his bicycle, dry sky, no need for raingear, cycled right into an event. One of them storms they name, close the country down for and yet people can cycle through them. Well our hero can anyway.

He also has the power to work all day soaked to the bone now that he has to work all day soaked to the bone. He had a change of clothes he used to leave in the drying room, a shipping container with a fan heater in it, but they were stolen. A couple of scaffolders were very vocal about things going missing and how it was the foreigners but our man of the hour, coffee in hand had seen it all before and was very sure the scaffolders were the ones breaking locks and stealing clothes and tools hoping to go through the pockets later.

Old bleary eyes had drank way more than he should of last night but hangovers don’t affect him anymore, they take the boredom out of the morning when he is still half cut and help him arrive at lunchtime without struggling with hunger or boredom. There is so much protective stuff to put on these days it is like a morning ritual he hates. Into the bag, dig through lunch, raingear, the odd tool, bottles of water, flask, socks he doesn’t remember putting in, eventually finding a glove or glasses then digging again. The glasses really demotivate him everytime he puts them on, they fog up as soon as he starts working, he takes them off whenever he is sure the safety officer isn’t around.

Off he goes on his one man war against the lack of hotel rooms, office spaces or housing. A one man mission to earn enough to fill his house with distractions so that his family will be too busy to bang on the bathroom door when he sits down for ten minutes of quiet when he gets home. Still soaked, nostrils full of dust, hair full of tiny bits of concrete, feet stinking. He doesn’t know if it’s good or bad that his hearing is going from constantly being in the company of drills, grinders and diggers.

There is a new method of pest control brought in by the builders, it involves putting a canteen 15 minutes from the site ensuring nobody has time to get to the canteen and back, so all eating happens on the road, under shop awnings, hard hats, other people, a plastic bag anything really.

He earns more than most salaried or paye workers. He hasn’t got a degree so degree people think he is stupid. He charges for his work so his customers think he is a robber. He lost interest when the kids were rambling on about some YouTube something so he’s in the doghouse there now.

Half thinking of getting a new car on hp just to do something but doesn’t want to commitment. Got a dog 7 years ago and still doesn’t know why. Always in the door when it’s closing, always under the feet when they are moving, always making horrible noises with her mouth and snots when it’s quiet and he is on edge, trying to fix some modern problem like tvs or internet or lego.

Half thinking of building a home gym out of steel brackets he uses in work. A squat rack and pull up cage like they have in modern gyms, nowhere to put it though. Probably wouldn’t use it anyway. Probably try convince his friend to build one so he can use it in his house.

Anyway he thinks , time for action. He heads up four flights of stairs down through the gap between the flights he can see the scaffolders starting the ascent. He heads straight to a pallet of scaffolding poles he had seen them load last night. Wheels them right to the edge of the loading bay and pushes them straight off. Four flights crashing down to the street steel banging off steel a pallet truck scraping, then bashing off the wooden planks, people heard roaring all while he slowly, calmly but most importantly quietly and ecstatically heads to a second staircase where he heads to the sixth floor, climbs his ladder and starts drawing marks on the ceiling to drill later. Oblivious to what happened. Can’t believe he missed it and didn’t hear anything. Inside he is dancing, playing the royal Albert hall, there is classical music coming from his drill, whenever the grinder starts up it sounds like the opening dialogue from the war of the worlds musical. The ambulance sirens reminded him of an N.W.A. song. That brought him back to his youth. A time when he was heading to college. A young accountancy student. A white van pulled up. It was his friend from school being driven by an older man. He didn’t understand why our superstar was going to school when he was getting paid to learn his job. Come join us he said like a witch or cult member, they all laughed. Our hero jumped in the van, his new coworker told him to make a joint and easy E roared from the speakers.

IAMAMORON wrote: »

Has he worked out where to hide the dead bodies yet?

Maybe, who knows, I didn’t even know he planned on hiding any.