Snailgate

"the only question, was how long it'd take
for nature to run its course"

I didn't take that to be about the snail - "civilized man" has a lot to answer for...

Atakti

There's no pulling the wool over your eyes is there (:>

Cheers for the look in and words.

snail?
man?
?civilized?
(?hierarchy?)

eye like
this poom

Daniel,

eye'm happy this tickled you a little.

thanks lots for stopping by  and laying down your thoughts.  appreciated much.

A bit of an oxymoron with that man, no? I read this a metaphor for humankind's stewardship of the earth, or lack of it...

Jazz Man

no getting away from your astuteness at all.

thanks lots for the drop-in  and words man

No problem.

Sadly it is all about timing. "Large reward offered after nearly 100 birds killed in Long Beach, Washington", was one of the headline stories in today's paper.

Strider,

Good to see you man. Thanks for the kind words.

Eamonn

What are you planning on doing with this piece? Do you plan to work on it some more? I personally think you have something very profound snuggled up in here, and I adore the original thinking in it.

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Maggie .

I like your thinking, truth is I had planned on taking this a little further then got totally lost   in the different strands and veins of possibilities.  

I definitely plan to go at it some more. I find that in most cases, waiting for the Eureka moment to hit works better for me than trying to find it. (also weed helps too in fairness to it)

if you  have any suggestions I'd love to hear/ read them.

thank you kindly for your interest :)  

I have never liked to critique in terms of what I want to see come from a piece. What the writer wants should be first priority and then the reader's thoughts taken into consideration. Having said that, lol

My suggestion would be this.

You seem to be making a direct correlation between political, or social cover-up and the snail.

Based on that ?

I question your word choices. Here is an example.

"Last night
a snail died in the Kalahari desert
having been dumped there by a civilized man"

Now something a bit closer to this train of thought I am having.

On a previous evening (almost a news cast approach)
a snail was covered up
in the Kalahari desert, shredded
by civilized man.

Mind you, this is a top of my head example, but hopefully you get where I am going.

Spare down the small stuff, give more umph to the verbs, and choose verbs that conjure up your political subtext.

That would be one way of going ;)  

Maggie.

see this:

"On a previous evening  
a snail was covered up
in the Kalahari desert, shredded
by civilized man."

is an enormous help. It gives me a more refined?  voice and also gives the option for an opening stanza.  

I  was going to use 'civilized man' in the above draft but felt it was kind of taking away from the abstractness or concreting my take rather than  leaving the reader to  'get' it which is fun in it's own right.  

I'm going to spend some time figuring out the language and maybe making a more specific point which I was reluctant to do in the first draft.

definitely will use the suggested stanza if  that's ok.

cheers :)    

By all means use it :)

I am glad I could help :)

Magdalena,

no, I  didn't know that snails have four noses. I'm sure given time I can come up with a kick ass reason why though :D  

I think grasshoppers have their ears on their front legs.

Thank you kindly for stopping by :)

Jack,

Good to have you here, my friend. Thanks for the kind words.

This is different xoxo

There y'are gigi me o'l flower :)

thanks for dropping in