Get in my belly!

Triangle.

Wrath!

My little ponies or my adult ponies?

Considering a car ran up the guy wire of a utility pole in my area, this wasn't so weird.

Prove people positive poems are pretty punk.

Interesting to see pony content turn up in this round. As the author points out, the rhymes are sometimes weak (as are the rhythms). I just wish I knew more about what was going on. Apple Bloom's situation doesn't sound dangerous. I don't even know what's so urgent about them getting together so that surviving the journey there feels like it was done for some purpose. Aside from the rhymes/rhythms, there's also some mangled grammar, and not the kind that feels like it was done in service of adapting the language to the meter. A cute snapshot, but I don't know what the meaning is, since it seems like it's supposed to have a plot, but I never understood what it was.

I'm fuzzy on the meaning of this one too. Someone is waking up, and I'm not sure whether the un-parenthesized words are thoughts the narrator is having about himself or about his tasks for the day. So I can't get into his mindset. I would guess the latter, since it would mesh a little better with the ending, where he decides to go back to sleep instead of dealing with paperwork. That'd tie in with the humor aspect of it, but even then, I never figured out what exactly would be parasitic, etc. about the rest. Maybe he was just thinking through random "P" words, and "paperwork" made him decide not to start his day? I kind of liked the vague sense of mood I got from it, but I'm not sure about the meaning.

Seems like a case of unrequited love. Though I can't tell if the man is actually fat or if the narrator is only saying so to try being insulting. It's not that often you see a fat person (assuming the answer to my previous comment is that he actually is fat) as an object of romance, so that's refreshing. It puts me in a mind of Paprika! I'm not sure if there was some sort of rhyme scheme attempted. There are only two lines that outright rhyme, but a couple of others might have been slant rhymes. Like the others I've reviewed so far, I wish this one had more of a plot, but it comes closest. I don't get a sense of whether the man has actually rejected the narrator or if the narrator just feels he's unapproachable. Probably the former, but there's not a lot here to say how fervent or long-suffering the narrator's efforts have been.

This is something you rarely see in these write-offs, either poetry or minific, but one I've advocated in the past: use some sort of word gimmick. There are lots of ways to do it. This is a good one, by modulating the number of words per sentence/line (what I expected here is to have every successive line to contain one less word, which isn't the pattern, just that each line never has more words than the one above it). Another is to make every sentence start with the same word that ended the previous one. Another is to start each sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. There are lots of things you can do like that, and while they're not usually meaningful, they do provide a fun quirk and can add a little whimsy, and they can help prompt a writer into creative language use and perhaps even overcome some writer's block.

The sentiment here is a nice quiet one as well, where someone lets a fairly mundane thing overwhelm his capacity to do something he really should have. That's something I certainly fall victim to.

I can't tell whether this as an absurd story saying these things actually happened, or if it's a case of the narrator deliberately exaggerating just to entertain his parents (or put off their complaints at his lateness), but I don't think it matters. I enjoy it equally either way, since it's just as absurd to the reader no matter what. It's a hard thing to quantify when that kind of dichotomy strengthens a story or makes it weaker, but I think it works here. Probably because either interpretation doesn't change the meaning or the impact.

Hm, very reminiscent of the poem about... well, off the top of my head, I don't remember the poet's name or the particulars of it, but about someone leaving a note apologizing for eating some fruit. Nice inversion of it as well. It doesn't hang together as a plot so much (that last line would imply the narrator had made some agreement to eat the grapes, which doesn't make sense). It even feels like it's an amalgam of that poem and the fable of the fox and the grapes. Taking that into account, it reads less like the poem it's based on, which does improve things. Then I don't take this as a note to the owner of the grapes, more like the narrator's internal musing of how he might speak to such a person, and in this context, he might even be only imagining it as a hypothetical person. Nice wry humor in this.

With a deep breath
I channel my anger
Into appreciation
Of the sharp toasted odor
That steams from the ground beans...

Water flows, the rich ichor
Pours into that one perfect cup.

Ah, the refreshing, eye-opening scent!

William Carlos Williams
Evaded the snooty snarl of millions
While his verse made quiet bother toward
His dear native Rutherford.

Cartoon belles
Escape their hells;
These best of friends
Find better ends.

Propound
(adverbial)
Perplex
(unexplicated)
Palliate
(tension)
Precompose
(back to bed!)

Because I could not start my car,
It kindly stopped for me.
The windshield guarded my pale face
From its temerity.

It growled and rose before my nose
And carried me away
Its waves of steel made me flinch
And dive out how I may.

Since then, it seems, I've told the tale
Repeatedly all day
For I surmised the horsepower
Was hampered by the hay.

Can I tell the tale in eight words?

Or will I need just barely seven?

At this rate, there's no space

To make apology to dad

For letting it slip

Too long, and

Trailing off

Sadly.

>>Griseus
>>Pascoite
>>GroaningGreyAgony

Thanks, folks!

And sorry for not commenting this round. This is me trying to understand how free verse works, and even after reading books on the subject and lots of the stuff itself, I hafta say I still don't get it. To me, this seems like a micro-minific with semi-random line breaks thrown in. I'm starting to I'm too tightly wrapped or something... :)

Mike