Come, Mister!
-
Hey, Mister!
So I stumbled into an area
Rank with stench
of sweat, seductive
sex and squalor
A plump old pimp sings to me:
Hey Mister! look see;
Pretty girls so young,
donÂ’t worry, donÂ’t worryÂ…
He didnÂ’t have to
be in suit and tie
It seems to me
he didnÂ’t need
a Marketing degree-
for men to flock
to him. This Pied Piper
who trolls this street-
his song is wanton-ness,
Sick and sweet!
This ill song so tempting
I fight for my betraying body not to turn weak
Ladies of the night
in this glare of bright lights,
wait with glassy eyes,
with hungry sighs
But listen, their wait will not be long
Again I hear the Pied PiperÂ’s old songÂ…
Sick and sweetÂ…
Sick but sweetÂ…
[/u][/b] -
touching on a touchy subject, hey?
Coming back to the poem.
am not sure whether this one works.
seems like a draft, written in a haste, though i like the way it reads like a song. Maybe some rewriting helps.
Just my opinion, sorry if i sound harsh.
-
No worries about sounding harsh, by the way, i didnt think it was harshOriginally posted by dsnake1:touching on a touchy subject, hey?
Coming back to the poem.
am not sure whether this one works.
seems like a draft, written in a haste, though i like the way it reads like a song. Maybe some rewriting helps.
Just my opinion, sorry if i sound harsh. .
In any case, i appreciate all feedback good and bad. I showed it to someone and his comments was that the break in the 2nd and 3rd stanza made the poem feel disconnected and he thought i was talking about 2 different people instead of the pimp alone. Just wondering if anyone else felt this way? -
The poem seems to lose focus in the last stanza where the subject seems to have abruptly changed. Or maybe the poem just tries to touch on too many things and never really explores any of them fully.
1) character of the pimp
2) N fighting against temptation
3) ladies waiting for 'customers'
Minor nitpick - be consistent with the way you begin a line (I mean line, not sentence) - whether you want to capitalise the first word or not. It's a little confusing with some of the lines beginning with capital and some are not.
eg:
So I stumbled into an area
Rank with stench <-- capitalised here
of sweat, seductive <-- not capitalised
sex and squalor
A plump old pimp sings to me:
Hey Mister! look see;
Pretty girls so young, <-- capitalised
donÂ’t worry, donÂ’t worryÂ…<-- not capitalised
-- It's difficult for me to understand exactly what 'betraying body' is. How does it betray? Why is it refered to that way?
-- I feel that Pied Piper reference is not suitable. Usually this reference is used when people are lured to a single object, not multiple ones like a group of ladies. Pied Piper lured persons to a place or thing, not to another person or groups of persons. Just IMHO.
-
Originally posted by Bluesky_Liz:
Its about the protagonist, who chanced upon a street, and meets a pimp, who tried to lure him to a w-h-o-r-e-house (censored word in this forum again).
[b]The poem seems to lose focus in the last stanza where the subject seems to have abruptly changed. Or maybe the poem just tries to touch on too many things and never really explores any of them fully.
1) character of the pimp
2) N fighting against temptation
3) ladies waiting for 'customers'
So i was trying to develop sequences of the different scenes and people he meets along the way to his descent.
I gotta go back and see how I'm 'losing' my readers...and re-work this thing.Originally posted by Bluesky_Liz:
Initially, the subject feels a certain disgust towards the pimp and what he represents. But there is a struggle between the logic of the mind, and the impulses and desires of the body. The body wants to experience what the mind knows to be bad.
-- It's difficult for me to understand exactly what 'betraying body' is. How does it betray? Why is it refered to that way?
This was what i wanted to portray.Originally posted by Bluesky_Liz:
The image i had in my mind - which perhaps i didnt convey very well in this poem, was that of the pimp leading men to the whorehouse, leading them to their immoral doom or end.
-- I feel that Pied Piper reference is not suitable. Usually this reference is used when people are lured to a single object, not multiple ones like a group of ladies. Pied Piper lured persons to a place or thing, not to another person or groups of persons. Just IMHO.
Hmm....sounds like i have alot to refine, based on the feedbacks you guys gave..haha...
Actually i wanted to write about the male motivation to visit a prostitute. How this compares with the traditional sexual relationship with a wife or a girlfriend. But as i wrote, the poem took a different turn. Perhaps i should have stuck to the original aim, then this wouldnt turn out so awry! Yikes! -
I am a very harsh critic so I am not going into details.
All I want to say is many poets have written about this topic and IMO it has lost its magic. Unless you can give it a fresh coat of paint, my advice is to drop it.