The deck of Cards (the club and diamond)
The two frowning men,
with their unkempt stubble,
sooty hands and silent postures
looked on in blackness at the young prince,
as he strutted across the village square,
flanked by gruff guards with pointy spikes.
One whispered something in the others ear
and he smiled with skulduggery.
The young prince with his chest puffed wide
continued to boast around his square,
and as he passed the men
they were now grinning even more broadly.
The prince now looked puzzled as their gaze fell on him,
and continued to parade along, but this time with less convictions.
By Anonymous
So just want to chat about this poem Month of June which came in anonymously and came in as two poems. Interestingly the poem that I chose was the Deck of Cards (the club and the diamond), which came in as a typed up paragraph. I don’t know what it looked like written out longhand but I loved it because of its sinister sort of decontextualization. It was taken out of context, we’re not sure where we are. It almost feels like with the mention of pointy spikes, guards, skullduggery, sooty hands and village square, it made me think of Medieval times for some reason, and the characters are being named as Prince. So what I did with this poem, I don’t know if you’ve seen the version that I did, I added some line breaks to bring out the already established line lengths, two frowning men *enter, with their unkempt stubble *enter, sooty hands and silent postures. It is very cinematic, if you look at the, or what I enjoyed about breaking the lines out is that you see a sort of plot developing and there’s kind of a complex few things going on, an interaction