Born to Hang

Appreciated Ted. I did wonder whether the sudden flick between the past and present was lucid enough. On an international site, it's good to share our own cultural heritages. It's how we learn empathy. If I read another Hallmark (un)poem on here, then the cyber gun will be loaded. Lol

Well damn!

The black and white picture, and the text format (mimicking old newsprint?) you chose really add to the almost surreal nature of this write.  
Outstanding details capturing the period and the brooding air to the moments.
Your word build brought the missing color to life.

Awesome write!  My reward to read.

Many thanks Styx. Truly stoked you picked up the newspaper font gimmick. Can only repeat what I commend to Ted.

Your opening has perfect proportion and pitch, a soft drip of milieu paint onto the hushed white canvas. There is a kind of awareness one either has or does not have, develops or does not develop, there is no kind of poetic awareness that I am aware of, that you do not fully express in your writing. The imbued characteristics of the harbor, wind, doorway, they come to life before the mind's eye in gorgeous alchemy.  

Your second stanza builds us toward that rising crescendo. I think, perhaps, when we die, we go into that music that we touch into, with purpose and inspiration. The most moving artistry holds that kind of hope for me, a place beyond this mundane world of suffering we sink into, when we're not creating. The images come alive, the souls move and breathe and live in your writing. You should be submitting these operas to poetry magazines my friend.

I went and looked up the definition of peroxide just to ponder the image you create in stanza 3. I thought of a rising storm and I thought of paroxysm, and how, in your writing, a storm is both a storm and a feeling and how the rattling and rising is probably both a physical lust and a murder, when considering the context in your Author's Notes. You have such a breadth of world knowledge, events and places, in your writing, that I am unable to perceive by my lack, but the feelings, depths and images come across to me with vivid presence.

Your fourth stanza evokes scenes of the hidden life behind the outward face of relationships to me, the sinister and discord that is hidden, the rot within that seethes and bubbles outward like disease. I suppose alcohol is often portrayed as such, I am reading The Shining currently and it's a recurrent tool of the symptoms of a maladjusted person, so there is a certain circumstantial bias there I am looking through. I remember my wild drinking and drugs days just after my first and worst heartbreak. I know now I was trying to numb one pain with another, a pain I could choose and thus control.

I was just thinking about the title, Born to Hang, it is another sobering thought I often have, we are born to live but also to die, and the two are inseparable. If a person develops a certain brain chemistry where they are sociopathic, they are destined to live and die in darkness, in a sense. There are so many fates I am grateful to not have known, but we all meet the tightening noose eventually, the opposite end of the opening tunnel of the womb, I suppose.

Brutal men prefer blondes strapped to their windscreen and knuckles is powerful. To consider how little we consider the object of desire as a person, it is dehumanizing, it seems to me like you bring that reality across with terrific presence. The idea of the slap of gears changing brings and impersonal brutality across, the cruel and obtuse ways we use each other.  

The metaphor or fish nets as a sail gets me thinking about desire and how it carries us away. Her keel lists to an eternal groin is a powerful image to contemplate. Your closing stanzas have a kind of visceral melancholy about them, further evidence of your adroit alchemy, the sense of being cut and broken and destroyed, the coming to nothing of all passions and follies.  

I love the unconventional grammar of stilettoing, another earmark of your writing, that you will take the language codex into your own waters and use it uniquely. Also where you say newspaper'ed history. It reminds me of a conversation I was having by voice text whilst out walking yesterday, about how the capitalist experiment has failed and will, in the far flung future, be reduced to a few questions on a multiple choice socio economics exam. The simple captions and explanations that so obtusely fail to capture the feelings of what occurred, are quite the opposite of the best of what we find in poetry, which lacks exposes the living soul.

It is always an experience Rob, what more could one ask for in this life, but a worthwhile experience.

I'm at a loss for words to post a reply which would do justice to your comment my friend. You've always taken the time to detail and encourage. It is truly appreciated.

The peroxide blonde has always, for unfathomable reasons to me, been associated with a certain type of female. 'Brutal men prefer blondes' is simply a word-play on the Monroe film 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.' The Hampstead hostess set had a reputation for attracting boorish and crass affluent men. Blakely actually once punched her in the stomach, causing her to miscarry their child.

I was seriously considering departing DU 12 months. It was folk like your good self, who have made it worthwhile to stay. Keep the faith. Rob

I'm sorry I haven't been around much, my home has needed so much renovation this year just to remain livable and I'm trying to stay ahead of the costs. When I'm not doing that, I tend to be relaxing or handling the other demands that crop up continuously.

It's always my pleasure and honor.