Shallow Graves

This is great, in itself; it also reads beautifully, I notice. I notice this is marked 'miscellaneous' but for me it was autobiographical, in relation to my own experience. I think Gogol talks about 'poshlust' (pronounced 'pooshloost' more or less, which I think is hard to translate from the Russian but means something like surface civility and civilisation covering an inner lack of it); I'm not sure if that is what you mean here exactly but for me it was a kind of middle-class English poshlust, which I think is a lot more current and prevalent than many would care to admit. I admire your courage in addressing this area of chronic decay in our general zeitgeist.

Thought this was great. Reads wonderfully,,as animan said. "Yawning sun" I thought was excellent. Yep, really liked it.

Thanks both of you and for the cherriness. I do like the pretty cherries.

Poshlust is precisely what I meant, yes. And re miscellaneous...all poems are autobiographical in the sense that I would also classify my thoughts and ideas as part of my experience of life as well as my actual experiences as events etc so I avoid that and head straight for classifying all my poems as miscellany. If that makes any sense...

I think so!?

'Feign' or 'fawn'? Not that there's really a right or wrong in poems...nice poem, which stays the course.

Fabulous writing again, expressing perfectly thefrustrations of non connection in suburbia. this could be anywhere.Again, i applaud mightily.

ditto earlier comments - you've described with consummate exactness the tension between social mores and the truth below the surface. Superb.

Gosh, thanks all of you. Feign is what I meant. Feign isn't followed by what we're feigning as I mean feigning everything as we eat potato salad.

Animan - I make very little sense...I just read it again (my comment I mean) I do talk some utter crap!

Its sad to say that this doesn't only happen in suburbia. I really enjoyed this, mainly because I can relate to it. On such bizarre outings, if anyone asks 'how was it?' I always have to think, unsure of an answer, and then say "OK." When I really mean "totally unsatisfying." Its great to see this experience encapsulated in words so well.

Good work Doeslittle. Those last few lines made my stomach drop they hit so hard.

Great poem. It describes this social malaise so well.