Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.
besser blocks (with video)
besser blocks
I hate besser blocks
I hate besser blocks
I hate besser blocks
besser blocks are a bugger.
they are ugly, course and grey
hollow rectangles
making a squared off infinity
of unending drear
where you, my love
brown solemn eyes,
regard me with a hint of sparkle
above your freckled nose
and full lips
I hate besser blocks
I hate besser blocks
besser blocks are a bugger.
they're used to build grey constructions
jails and factories,
that just get in the way
of life
while you
your knickers slipping to the floor,
your long lean legs,
like a colt,
ready to bolt
I hate besser blocks
besser blocks are a bugger.
moving and laying them
scrapes skins from hands
and blackens bruised nails
meanwhile
my fingers are drawn
silkily, softly inside
your welcoming warm cunt
besser blocks are a bugger.
If I don't see you
If I don't hear you
If I fail to love you
truly madly deeply,
self-consciously
Then when I die,
I might as well come back
as a besser block.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n4YCBMI-g4&feature=youtu.be
About This Poem
Last Few Words: In the United States also called concrete block, cement block, cinder block or foundation block, characterised by having two hollow inner sections.
Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing Stage: Editing - rough draft
Comments
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
this needs something
let's just say I can't put my finger on it.
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
that makes a pretty good poem, joe, thanks
but you know I've got to push the boundaries. I'm not being cynical. The besser blocks are integral.
Love and life are never that simple.
Oh, and I may take some of those suggestions and edit,
people sometimes ask me "where do your ideas come from?" The question usually baffles me, the only answer is "I'm a poet". But sometimes they come from reading theoretical physics, cosmology, floating in a boat or in this case, staring at an ugly grey block.
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
I pun you over the goal posts
yes, cinder blocks, if you read the "last few words"
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
an extraordinary thing
I only found out the other day that the origin of the word "bugger" is not to do with anal sex but derives from a word for heretic! Well bugger me dead!
Kailashana2
14 years 3 months ago
*cunt* always offends my
*cunt* always offends my sensitivities. sometimes that's a good thing.
however, in this case it is so incongruous in/to the context of concrete and the skin you love to touch, that *cunt* is worse than any harm a besser block can do or be, it that was your intention it worked for me, as you can see.
I probably would use *warm welcoming holy ground*.... to tie in the besser blocks to the beauty.
~A
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
thanks anna
definitely not going to use holy ground, don't want to separate it from the earthly realm, and there isn't time or room to introduce the whole sacred sex thing, tantra and chakras, the best alternative I can think of is
your welcoming warmth
which I don't like, as I said before, it sounds coy. but its the best I can think of as yet.
Kailashana2
14 years 3 months ago
I'm reminded of a Rilke poem.
I'm reminded of a Rilke poem......."Dear Darkening Ground"
perhaps using that one line would be *enough*. and if you wanted to you could attribute that one line to Rilke as Rilke's poem begins with:
"dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we've built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour
and grant the churches and cloisters two,
and those that labor--maybe you'll let their work
grip them another five horus, or seven
before you become forest again, and
widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.
Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're real and ripe and worthy of you.
I want only seven days, seven
on which no one has ever written himself--
seven pages of solitude.
There will be a book that includes these pages,
and she who takes it in her hands
will sit staring at it a long time,
until she feels that she is being held
and you are writing."
I love your creative genius, when you get going Jess. Who would have used *besser blocks* in a love poem but you?
~A
p.s. There's a long story, a *herstory* in that poem for me.
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
oh dear anna, now you've got me going
I really see what you, and Rilke are saying, but it would involve, for me, a whole new poem, I don't feel able to just nod in that direction.
I am taking this under serious advisement and I thank you. And hey, its nice to be talking poetry and love again,
scribbler
14 years 3 months ago
hello
I think this is basically a love poem about a guy who has better things to think of than blocks. In that context I agree with anna...............pause for gasp of astonishment..........lol, in that a softer word than cunt is called for. Also if it were me the poem would have ended with a line about the girl and thus shown that protagonist had finally gotten his priorities straight................just a few thought........................scribblerPS could use "self" instead of cunt ?
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
you are both right and wrong, stan
I am really still poised over that word, it has its strengths of honesty and its drawbacks of crudity.
However in the end the poem is about the protagonist and his growth, or lack thereof, his ability to love well, or end up a besser block, so it is more a poem of self than a love poem and ends fittingly.
So I can keep my un-blemished track record of not writing love poems [teehee]
scribbler
14 years 3 months ago
Uh OH !
your track record just ended,cause like it or not, I Still think it's a love poem lmao. You need major editing to make it read as you intend in my unlearned opinion.................stan
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
sprung
ok, ok, I admit it.
Just because I don't want to re-write it.
scribbler
14 years 3 months ago
l
ol
Roscoe Lane
14 years 3 months ago
May i suggest,
May i suggest cingulum. Tho i much prefer the original, it halts the reader, and starts them thinking of what it has to do with beeser blocks. Regards Roscoe...
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
or yoni!
had forgotten yoni, but I am tending to agree with you
Race_9togo
14 years 3 months ago
Jess
"Your welcoming wet"?
"You warmth of wetness"?
"Your eager wetness?"
Not that I don't like the word cunt in this context, I think it works fine. imo the brute-force crudity of it fits well with the bessers and the author's hatred and fear of them. To me its use also implies that the auther is already beginning to become what he despises, too.
I don't like the word "pert". "Cunt" shocks, but is in context; "pert" throws me off, it's not a word I would hear from a laborer or bricklayer, describing his woman.
But yes, it's STILL a god-damned love poem! LOL you cannot escape it!
Just kidding.
Excellent poem. When you get there, you don't just fly, you soar.
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
thnks Jim,
yes I get your point, need to have a look at pert. Snub maybe? Cute?
Kailashana2
14 years 3 months ago
perhaps....*pert* and *cunt*
perhaps....*pert* and *cunt* are meant to cancel each other out. lol.
they're equally obtrusive.
~A
Geezer
14 years 3 months ago
Just a word...
but it did the job. Made me think of someone who wanted to take the day off from [laying blocks] to lay his love. LOL. I agree about the word, [pert] not something I would expect to hear from a laborer. Nice work, ~ Gee
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
hard to parody self parody,
don't you think? I can't stop you but it would not be welcome.
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
originally the chorus was "I hate besser blocks"
3 times each time, I tapered it off in the edit. I do want to keep the repetitions as is because I really do really really hate besser blocks!
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
after much thought
I have eliminated 3 more besser blocks,
thanks
Kailashana2
14 years 3 months ago
Rereading this poem this
Rereading this poem this morning, I felt like a ton of besser blocks had fallen on me when I got to the word *cunt*.
I know that was your intention.
;-)
~A
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
ah, we're getting there,
thanks Anna
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
perhaps some explication is in order.
Yes there is an element of self parody here, if the language doesn't give it away surely the line "self-consciously" does. Perhaps it is the self parody that Bee mistook for naivety.
Anyhow the repetitions of block gradually reduce as the power of the lover's presence increases, turning on the fulcum of cunt to bring the subject's POV to relationship instead of object. I reckon it's kind of neat.
I'm pretty happy with this piece in this edit, although still not sure about returning freckled to pert.
Kailashana2
14 years 3 months ago
Maybe you could say *freckled
Maybe you could say *freckled cunt* instead.
;-)
~A
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
oh but Anna!
they say write about what you know, and I ain't ever known a freckled cunt.
pleiades
14 years 3 months ago
took me a few reads to like,
took me a few reads to like, to "get?"
the besser blocks repetition in this
i love this write
i love how, with each growing thought of her,
his need to express his 'hate' for besser blocks,
diminishes
she, and in turn, the way he feels, becomes the focus
'cunt' took me a few reads as well, to warm to ~
on its own, a harsh sounding word ...
but in the context of what he feels here, i don't
find it harsh at all
in fact, i find it rather erotic, and it's a word i don't
really like!
go figure
again, i love this write ...i find it quite layered
cheers
p
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
many thanks p.
that's the sort of reaction any poet would be chuffed by.
Pixee
14 years 3 months ago
Hello weirdelf
I always like what you poem. You have always poem well. And this one is no different. I am glad to see you back on the seen. I am there every now and then. Read you later my friend....
Pixee
Race_9togo
14 years 3 months ago
Jess,
I like what you've done with the "I hate" line, it re-enforces the feelings for your woman, and moves away from your hatred of the blocks.
Esker
14 years 3 months ago
and from the shadows..
I greatly enjoyed the whole construct of this poem of yours
maybe because I worked the block gangs for years
baking in the sun and freezing in the winter
mortar and mud mixer and dust
the caravan of trucks
and then all of us stopping by to slip fivers
in the thongs of strippers in the clubs
after work
I found this to be a marvelous poem
Thank You Weirdelf
weirdelf
14 years 3 months ago
many thanks, my friend
from you, this is truly appreciated. The best natural poet I have ever read.
Barbara Writes
14 years 3 months ago
Hi Jess, great poem
the repetition of besser block kinda throw me back with the first read.
but after reading a second and third time i got the meaning.
the fourth read was even better
this is a beautiful poem. I like how you made it flow from beginning to end with a marvelous
comparison between hate of besser blocks and secret love. it is riveting.
I especially like how you summed it up in the ending verses.
"If I fail to love you
truly madly deeply,
self-consciously
Then when I die,
I might as well come back
as a besser block."
Which is my favorite.
This is your best work yet that i have read.
weirdelf
7 years 2 months ago
a very late thank you,
Barbara
weirdelf
7 years 2 months ago
Reading back at the comments from when I first posted this
Just fucking get over the use of the word 'cunt'! It is perfect in context.
"meanwhile
my fingers are drawn
silkily, softly inside
your welcoming warm cunt"
Americans should remember that some of your earliest European immigrants were Puritans escaping religious persecution. It's a pity the Native Americans didn't slaughter them. You cunts can't even say 'sex' on TV without blushing. Your new president wants to teach abstinence instead of contraception in schools.
Get over it and grow up!
weirdelf
7 years 2 months ago
my bad
"many Americans"
It is also used so differently here. We say to a good friend 'how're doin you old cunt'
At the same time we also use it as a term of adoration for that gorgeous bodily part.