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Friday 21 March 2014

Party Animals


.

Frescati backe: photo by Hans Söderström, 30 October 2013


The party animals all lay battered
and discarded
in the weeds and tall grass
with the party long since over

a lot of time would have to pass
with no one to notice it
before the march of progress
could begin again




 
animals # 5. Horse (Stockholm). This party animal didn't make it back to the stables: photo by Hans Söderström, 21 February 2008


Cheers! (Party animal, Srockholm): photo by Hans Söderström, 18 March 2011
 

Untitled (Stockholm): photo by Hans Söderström, 2 November 2013
 


Untitled (Stockholm): photo by Hans Söderström, 2 September 2013



Untitled (Shop window dog, Stockholm): photo by Hans Söderström, 20 June 2013

8 comments:

Lally said...

nailed it once again Tom with the perfect juxtaposition of word and image (though for me the words would work with or without the images, while the images work so much better with the poem...)

TC said...

Thanks, Michael.

A ghost just passed through the room and said softly, "Yes, a metaphorical reading is possible... Philip Seymour Hoffman in the tall grass."

With a little help from our friends, we discover things we have not quite intended...

TC said...

The power of autosuggestion, terrifying.

The party to end all parties.

Did you touch anything? (Phil Hoffman in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: Sidney Lumet)

Barry Taylor said...

The doleful lost tin goat stooped under the dead weight dying civilization on his back, that's where this slow-burning fuse of a poem ignites for me. Terrific word-image detonations, Tom.

TC said...

Thanks very much, Barry.

I love this Stockholm-based photographer's work, for the delicate sense of humour in particular.

In that department, many are called, few chosen.

Mose23 said...

Great post. I love the clumps of moss about the dog's feet in the first photo, thick enough to halt the march of progress.

Delia Psyche said...

I'd like to see more of the second party animal. Looks like equine--cervine?--legs protruding from a potato chip bag. Well, equine, since it didn't make it back to the stables.

TC said...

The moss, yes, definitely a progress-retardant. Things do not go easy for party animals in the far north. Still it appears there are efforts made to provide them succour and shelter. That corrugated tin roof for example.

About that second (equine) party animal, what got (and continues to get) me is that terrifying accusative stare. The desolation of the scene suggests that the life of a lost party animal cannot be pleasant, even when it has succeeded in finding its way "back to nature".