Raph's Website » The Sunday Poem: Lions in Vegas

The Sunday Poem: Lions in Vegas

October 8th, 2006 (Visited 3751 times) Tags:

There are lions in the middle of Vegas.
They sleep on plastic floors, and hunt nothing
To the chimes of endless treasure.

They prowl fifty acres of air, they take us
by surprise, but work six hour shifts,
These lions in the middle of Vegas.

A grand bubble in the middle of a bubble
At the edge of a bubble in the middle of a desert,
Ostentatious signs of endless treasure.

Outside, the predators chase fickleness,
Count odds and error. Everyone is watched
Watching the lions in the middle of Vegas.

When you reach the river, the lions lurk
Waiting on the other side, hungry,
Jealous guardians of their shiny treasure.

Whose entertainment is whose?
Which bubble is likely to break us?
We play lions in the middle of Vegas
But are prey to dreams of chiming treasure.

It’s an ersatz villanelle, written hurriedly amidst the endless noise of casinos. The lions in question do have their bubbly fifty acres within the heart of the MGM Grand. You can walk under them and look at their big plush paws as they sleep on the transparent floor for their six-hour shift, after which they go home to their Vegas home off the Strip, like every other performer here.

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Raph’s Website » The Sunday Poem: The State of Poetry wrote on October 29th, 2006 at 10:44 am:

[...] There are also all the overtones of bad poetry — some of which I have no doubt posted. There’s oodles of LiveJournals with atrocious wordsmithing, the sort of thing that once lived safely within the pages of unicorn-speckled notebooks or Goth-clad folders. Certainly, as I comb through the hundreds of poems I have here, finding ones that don’t make me cringe is challenging. It can take years to see how bad a given piece of work is, you see. (Although, interestingly, some of the few poems to garner comments here have been the ones that I dashed off the morning that the poem was “due” so to speak, like “Lions in Vegas”). [...]

Ryan said on October 8th, 2006 at 11:51 am:

I wish I could explain why I really like this poem, but I read it and just had a very delightful feeling when I finished. Bravo

Wizzel Cogcarrier Wizzleton IV said on October 8th, 2006 at 7:07 pm:

I don’t know why, but I’ve never really liked most poetry. There are the greats, whose poetry I enjoy reading (Longfellow, Tennyson, etc.), but the only work I’ve ever really been inspired or uplifted by is High Flight, which I posted a week or two back. Ironically, it was the man’s only poem.

High Flight

I can really get into literature, though. I hate to fill a stereotype, but Tolkien… damn. He wrote some of the best, most inspiring fiction I have ever read.

Example.

(Sorry for the self-reference, but I didn’t feel like looking them up.)

magicback (frank) said on October 8th, 2006 at 9:51 pm:

Interesting poem.

More interesting is that sleeping lions are used as a featured content and the end to the poem:

Who is doing the performing? And do they perform in 6 hour shifts?

Frank

Kim Pallister said on October 9th, 2006 at 9:39 pm:

I really liked this one. Nice.