the rather chilling tale of nuclear anhilation and the inevitable isolation

from the chilling lips of the last man on earth.


right click and save target or click on to open in a media player of choice.

http://www.easyvend.net/children%20of%20moscow.mp3

Hi Peter,
Wow what a very chilling poem - it is good in both forms but I feel it works better on the audio.

And may I be the first to say you are looking exceptionally gorgeous on your CD cover. (glad to see you have taken my advice about exploiting your assets)

Best of luck with the CD sweetheart.

xxxxx

I very happy with the audio version
quite excited about developing the audio side.

thanks for the feedback

That is so , horribly calm delivered, all so logical until even the transmission starts to break -- utterly chilling, Pete -- your introduction is terrific, too. I love the care and sincerity and passion you pour into these performances. Mesmerising!

Sorry about that -- specs missing and now retrieved (I'd left them in the aviary) -- crickey, that comma went awry as did some word endings! Funny the difference sight makes when you're typing!
It should read: 'This is so horribly yet calmly delivered...'

Mox

its a kind of self therapy for me too.
A way to pour out supressed feelings. I think we all do us creative lot on here!

The audio does the poem justice and I think for my poetry career it may be an importnat part to bring the writing to life and add its final dimension.

Sometimes I feel that I imply the feeling in the words but Know that the last piece will be added when its performed. Subsequently little pieces in my poems are missing until you hear me read them.

This is something Dave Morgan spotted, whilst he concurred the writing stood up on its own, he saw the final image as it was read. The pace / deliver and empthasis on certain words.

Regarding the Children of Moscow-

what we have is a flux of 2 scenarios t- the outer and inner world.

a silo captain with too much time on his hands now his duty to launch the missile is done. The image alternates between that of a bunker and that of a submarine purposley as the specific location is not important and the ocean is used as a metaphor for freedom both with the'ark' analogy and with a shark. the shark being an aggressor / animal

the 'ark' story with time to leave, get out. In nuclear war there is only few minutes warning (apart from the build up to war)

Guilt is dealt with and I would say it is a direnct reflection of my own harboured guilty feelings, probably in relationships of opposite sex, as the child in the poem is female.

the apologetic staccata of 'sorry' indicates the extent and also the need to offload the guilt

the calmness in the narration indicates the total acceptance of impending death, too late to fight it as oxygen is running out in the bunker / silo

I would say again the oxygen is a metaphor for the life of a relationship.

In order to progress in life I have engaged in psycho analysis both private and paid for. This I did as an insight into myself, being the curious technical type I took myself apart.
My shrink was a very interesting man of which I could write a poem on!

Pity that mental health is seen as some taboo in certain areas of society when in some situations, like mine, it was no different than having a psyhical work out at the gym.

back to the poem,

I was extremly pleased with this piece on a personal level.
I really love the breathing as it slows at the end and the machine that cuts in and goes beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

it leaves you with a question as to wether or not it was an automatic message, as the narrator (me!) goes 'to' , 'to' almost like a robot or almost like a learned response gone wrong, a bit like HAL 9000 form the film '2001 - a space oddyssey'

hmmm, it is definately a self therapy recording, and I am so happy you enjoyed it.

It is chilling, disturbing but strangely 'train wreck' curious.

the garbled info at the transmission break up at the beginning is interesting (and occidental / accidental)

we hear a justification of his job (relationship) as though it was a delayed transmission or something

so was the man real or, I mean what do we learn?

Moxy / anyone out there, did you see anything / feel anything in the piece of have not touched upon

are all our poems psycho analytical?

perhaps a question to Paul (KP) pensylvania psycho ward.

Hi Pete, Yes, I think you are in every sense a performance poem -- essentially, you're creating pieces that are meant to be heard and seen and animated/inhabited by your living presence. You create them, I think, as vehicles for your voice and personality, as a focus -- in fact they strike me as a series of impassioned meditations, monologues for a character in conflict, a character assembled from many opposing facets, but a whole character, a composite and engaging, fluent force. They're always enigmatic: you inhabit many different voices but they're all identifiably you.
I have had a few tutors who've catagorically stated that 'writing is not therapy.' Probably as a consequence, I don't see what I write as a means of analysing myself or of working things through. It feels more as if I'm chasing an idea/image and the sounds it makes, its song. But then I am new to writing poetry and I may not even be a poet -- just a user of words in a way that isn't prose: sometimes I even think about the stuff I'm shuffling about on the page as a series of hypotheses: equations. Ideas for how things might be.
However, you are a poet and your work has the glory of being stunning on the page and stunning when performed and if the poems allow you insights and a means of working through life's tortuous complexities, it further demonstrates the wonder of your words.

Of course -- you're a performance 'poet' although I guess you are a poem yourself -- a never-ending, profoundly stirring, richly rewarding epic!