Ships

You can fight a Plague,

A penny for a life to save,

You can slip away,

A thousand for a getaway,

You can rearrange,

Fire, Water, Fung Shui,

You can stay the same,

Or you can leave the birdcage,

Two men at a bar,

One man drives a fast car,

Another has a beater,

And it’ll never take him very far,

And both men have the same scars:

Two men, same drink,

Two men, same dream,

Two men, same gleam,

One man is married,

One has a lover on the side,

One is entertaining,

And one just wants to get by,

Both of them are happy

both are broken inside,

It's funny when you say it,

But perfection is the greatest lie,

You never can obtain it,

But everybody still tries,

We all want to be famous,

Always reaching for the sky,

The Poor Man is nameless,

The Rich wishes his was never known,

Both men would love to trade it,

But the silver lining’s at home.

No matter what your aim is,

Everybody falls short,

And both men have the same scars:

Two men, same drink,

Two men, same dream,

Two men, same gleam,

And happiness is hidden,

Maybe a rainbow in a storm,

Or the moon beneath the clouds,

And apple pie that’s still warm,

The little things are faded,

So that you hardly can see,

The rich man says: “I hate to say this”,

“But wouldn’t you rather be like me?”

The poor says: “I guess it’s true,

Saying I’d rather be like you,

But I think it’s safe to say,

That you’d rather be me too,”

that’s kind of messed up, ‘aint it?

looking over to the other side,

Where the grass is always sunlit,

But your neighbour's porch is cockeyed,

And both men have the same scars:

Two men, same drink,

Two men, same dream,

Two men, same gleam,

Same sorrow: two classes

Happy home; Happy masses,

Big smiles, bad actors

Two days till the drought passes,

Last call, downed like swallowed pride

Two ships in the night, plastered,

Dreaming of the other side

Reviews

[emipoemi]

......mesmerizing!! It starts off clunky in musicality, and some of the rhymes feel forced, but the overall result is stupendous. It has a "All Along the Watchtower" feel to it with a little J Alfred Prufrock for some added spice. Those refrains are absolutely brilliant, and they come at the right time, and the ending is simply wow!! There's a je-ne-sais-quoi feeling I'm getting that's saying there could be more to it - some minor tweaking just to get the musicality flowing better - but it could simply be me. BUT, I do have to call you on the F-bomb! Because your poetry is sooooo good, planting this "bomb" blows everything to smithereens. Because that's what bombs do! It's all pretty and beautiful, then the swear ruins it all, because it doesn't really fit in as well as you might think it does. And because it only appears once, it's amplifies the jarring factor by 100%, given it definitely shows it doesn't have to be there. Yes, you could justify its presence by the fact that it's common bar rat language, but it ruins the solemnity that the poem creates throughout its entirety. GET - IT - OUT - OF THERE!! Other than that, brilliant! Tweak the clunkiness at the beginning, and this would be a genuine gem!! Well freaking done!

[emipoemi]

Did you do a thorough edit of this? For I just read it again, and it reads tremendously better!!
read moreDid you do a thorough edit of this? For I just read it again, and it reads tremendously better!!

You don't have to take this comment seriously, now, it's just something that occurred to me now that the musicality issue has been dealt with. The musicality is a key part of the poetic experience for the reader, and because the musicality is simply divine now, and the ending is great enough to elicit a catharsis of sorts, the direct dialogue ruins the solemnity of these two "dreaming of the other side". The dialogue is great in its own right, so if you want to keep it, it's your choice. But experiment with this suggestion of sound and powers and then make your final choice:

Combine the two stanzas where dialogue appears, but take out the dialogue:

".....
So that you can hardly see
That it's kind of messed up, aint it?
....."

With that, you still have two men of different classes, sitting together at a bar, but you also have that solemnity of their silence as they (secretly) dream about having what the other has.....and drown their sorrow of being "broken" with the brew they're drinking. The dialogue just ruins the solemnity of the image, and therefore the power of it is undermined. Think about it. If you choose to keep it, that's your choice. This is just something to consider.