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[Vincent Turner]

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They speak at first with their eyes,
desolately glazed and imploring.

I am knee deep in shit.
There is a shadow called struggle
day or night it will not leave my side.

They speak in threes
Casting weathered nets of dialogue
As though fisherman
Wearied by the flat horizon.

They were both users.
Social services, police, the lot.
Aint seen her for some time.
And he’s long dead,
Found, curled on a mattress
In a disused sugar factory.

Have you a spare fag?

When I press
they change tongues
Like children deprived of sleep.
We break for five,
allowing the tobacco
and the ease of a
late summer breeze
to do its work.

Without the formality of seat and pen
They often ask about me-
Does it upset you?
Sometimes, I say,

With clamped-shut eyes.


A reqquest for advice, should i keep the speach as seperate stanzas or gell them into the stanza's above them.

[Nick]

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Keep their dialogue separate. You say they speak in threes after a three line stanza of theirs. If their following stanzas are in threes...  Get it?
If you can use a font other than italics and different from the base script their dialogue will come across more natural in the piece.

Suggest you run your 'reqquest' line through the spell checker.

[Vincent Turner]

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cheers nick.

i get your point about seperating the speach.. three lines... three stanzas... i will give it a go, work on it a little more.... blah blah blah

but seriously thanks for the time

yours

Vinny

[exnihilo]

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They speak at first with their eyes,
desolately glazed and imploring.

I am knee deep in shit.
There is a shadow called struggle
day or night it will not leave my side.

They speak in threes
Casting weathered nets of dialogue
As though fisherman
Wearied by the flat horizon. (fishermen wearied by the flat horizon)? Something about this line is not working hard enough as it is, but it is a good image.

They were both users.
Social services, police, the lot.
Aint seen her for some time
And he’s long dead,
Found, curled on a mattress
In a disused sugar factory.

Have you a spare fag?

When I press
they change tongues this I love, the idea is chilling
Like children deprived of sleep.
We break for five,
allowing the tobacco
and the ease of a
late summer breeze
to do its work.

Without the formality of seat and pen
They often ask about me-
Does it upset you?
Sometimes, I say,

With clamped-shut eyes. I like this image, but I wonder why it's all by itself. I'm not sure, as the poem is now, if it's doing enough work to be allowed out on its own. 


A reqquest for advice, should i keep the speach as seperate stanzas or gell them into the stanza's above them. 

I think it works. It separates the voices. Also, I agree with the idea in regards to threes (or multiples of three). I don't think just three stanzas are neccessary, there may be too much happening to cram into only three, but an interesting idea to play with.

[Father Luke]

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They speak in threes
Casting weathered nets of dialogue
As though fisherman
Wearied by the flat horizon. (fishermen wearied by the flat horizon)? Something about this line is not working hard enough as it is, but it is a good image.

The reason it doesn't work is because is because it's incomplete.

Now, a fisherman wearied by a flat horizon at the beginning of a day would be
fagged because it's another long day, you know? Something not to look forward to.

Nets, and water, and fish gutz -- so too at the end of the day. So to say:

fisherman
Wearied by the flat horizon

...is incomplete.

fisherman
Wearied by the flat horizon,
walking into a new day...

or:

fisherman
Wearied by the flat horizon
walking home into the disappearing day

would work, because it has a reason for the weariness.

In the same way we don't care about characters we know nothing about,
so to, do we not care for descriptions which are incomplete.

As to the melding/meshing of the seperate (sp. should be: separate, by the way)
stanzas, don't change anything with that, it works fine.

[Vincent Turner]

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interesting feedback Father Luke, i thank you sincerely.

The image was incoplete, probally through my own ego, i liked the image desribed it a little, but did not push it, as such i now see i cheated both myself as a writer and the reader. This has helped, it has encouraged me to take a look at some of my other work, and see where i have repeated such laziness elsewhere.

I value your input father luke, as i do exnihilo.

regards

vincent

[Father Luke]

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Writing is in the details.

Keep at it.