All look Same......

many moons ago GM advised me to keep my poems ......open-ended rather than explicitly detailing in a scenario . the theory was if a lil' enigma ....or mystery exists it would force the reader to think ...puzzle ..work out ......interpret ....even misinterpret .....what the poem stood for .

without consciously keeping this instruction in mind I seem to have stumbled onto GM's way perchance maybe subconsciously ....& I have to say your interpretation is wonderful & your hypothesis that the 'flaccid penis' si boyh the result & cause of nuclear havoc is an amazing blinding leap of thought !!!

thank you for 'fave'-ing !!!

warm regards,

ash9

felt it in my gut. gotta go.

This is excellent, Ash. Spare and yet it really makes you think and can take your thinking in any number of directions.

I'm incredibly happy that I caught the notification in my inbox this morning that there was a new recommendation up, more than happy that it drew my attention to this work, and I agree with greenmountaineer that this is a poem that says quite a lot.

I think it says far and away much more than the total of its word-count, and with a sneaking, sleeper form of force. It appears, ostensibly, to be a calm and gentle, short little blip of ruminative thinking and observation. Nothing wrong there in the slightest, and with plenty of beauty to behold on its own.

The power within it that I see becomes more and more apparent, however, once the reader really considers the three images you present, and starts putting them into context with each other instead of just looking at them individually. The ellipses help this, giving a sense that there is more to consider than just the three images on their own, that there is something else to to think about. That perhaps the thoughts are trailing off and there something being left unsaid that should be pondered on, left to the reader to explore and follow on their own. When that happens, it isn't hard <Ha ha, I just caught what I wrote while rereading it for grammar and punctuation. A happy little accident.> to start seeing the connections between the three forming and becoming apparent. Green has it right, I think. I see plenty of relation between the three.

I look at them and I see a flow of narrative with nearly frightening clarity, told with readily visible detail that is quite grand for a work that's as succinct and straightforward as a three word title and a nine word body:

I see an atomic weapon making its cloud in some poor city's dying hour, forcing and signaling the end of a conflict. In the aftermath, those who survive that nuclear nightmare moment of eradication, and the horrifying days of corrosion, collapse, decay, and the slow finalizations of destruction that follow; and have no means to relocate to a place that isn't devastated, are forced into scavenging supplies for survival where they can from the decimated earth. These wretched, deprived, bereaved souls find themselves turning again and again to the hardy, nigh-symbolic form of fungi that springs up growing and feeding among all the dead and scorched matter left behind. The flaccid penis, hanging like an inverted mushroom or mushroom cloud, seems fitting to me in that being placed at the end of the work, it appears to me as a marker stating 'this is what caused the sorrows that are the first two images.' Inverted as it is, it marks to me that it's out of place in terms of chronological order, and is at the end only as a stark declaration of the cause of the two effects already laid out; the answer to the question of 'what caused these two terrible things to happen?'

Am I reading too much into this? Perhaps. Probably. Most likely. But this poem struck me powerfully almost immediately upon reading it; and the imagery presented and the imagery that it conjured into my head were clear and sharp, with a laser fine focus. For me, those are some clear indicators of poetry that matters and is great. To me, that's what this poem is: poetry that is great, and poetry that matters. I don't mean to gush or to ramble; I was just delightfully startled by how hard I was hit by this small, simple, and yet stealthily dynamic and forceful little-big poem. By how much weight, power, and impact you managed to wring out of twelve words and nineteen points of ellipses.

In short (a little late for that I suppose, but oh well): Wonderful job on this Ashesh, well done indeed. You've made something that speaks volumes to me in so few words it's almost scary. Thank you for a beautiful gem I'm sure to return to for future consideration and enjoyment. An easy five, and more if I could.

wD

The fractured English of the title is intriguing. I thought of how people stereotype others, in this case, the Chinese. It added to the satire of how unique things (or people) are in spite of apparent sameness. Maybe you didn't intend this, but that made the short poem say so much more to me.