I agree, this is too long and repetitious and inventing a word like 'diers' to enforce a rhyme just isn't on. 'I'm a headache in the head/Of an infantile cupid' is tautologous - where else would the Cupid have a headache? Really, this has no focus but misery.

Hey, I still like cochlea. This seems a little less sensuous than it did before - I'm not sure what other changes have been made - but it seems to me smoother and less memorable. I wouldn't have changed it. But you can't please all the people all the time...

Stanza 6 is great - I love a judiciously used pun. I think the last stanza also sums the whole up very poignantly. I'm afraid I don't know what an EKG is, so I'm not sure if I entirely get stanza 2, though the meaning is clear, but generally I think this is one of the best things I've read on this site.

I commented before but never voted - here you go. I think end slightly lets it down, too limpid, too unearned, but the piece reads beautifully. Is the 'orange sun' over the Seine in the second stanza a reference to a Monet painting - is that the connection?

For once I can agree with Rockmage. It's probably what everyone on this site, in fact everyone everywhere, really wants and you have put it beautifully.

Hi - good to see you again! Like this a lot. 'Cochlea' is a strangely anatomical word to use, it makes me feel almost queasy, and I think that's good - shows just how far those women burrow into us, even though we'd like to pretend they don't. A good tension between that and the last stanza. Nice one.

The villanelle is tough little nut to crack and i think this pretty damn good. I don't really like 'ev'ry' - I think the metre would make the syllabic count of the word clear, and it would be nice not to have that archaism. But it's only a small thing and it's made up for by 'wet silty clay' - you've obviously been digging in my garden. Not wanting to get pulled into the British pomposity argument above but - really, the Brits don't have the monopoly on pomposity. Our most pompous novelists are laugh riots next to Dom de Lillo or Sinclair Lewis and as for linguistic rigidity - have you seen the New Yorker? It's like Edith Wharton never died.

Do you have kids? This does sound like the conversation a parent has with himself whenever the darling child misbehaves. A typo in 'offspring' but otherwise I like this, it's a good bit of polemic.

This is really new from you! This like Ezra Pound meets Lenny Bruce - really enjoyable and funny and letting its satirical teeth gleam. It's good to be abck on the 'ranker. The end of a very long dry spell has brought me back and it's good to see old friends here.

Horus

It's been a long time since I last came here and some of the old timers have gone - where is God'swife's poetry? - but how good to see you're still here, still spitting it out according to your own personal rhythm - I like it.

This is great - controlled, wry, well-paced, dispassionate but bursting with sadness. Lovely lovely stuff.

The problems with this could all be sorted out by substituting the word 'ISRAEL' with the word 'NEWPORT PAGNELL'.

This made me laugh. That is a good thing.