When I read it I took it from the perspective of an older person who has been trying for years to have a child, looking at young people...teenage or otherwise...who get pregnant so easily...and not caring or even thinking about the young people's possible uphill battle...to the narrator they *must* be content...but the narrator is clouded with his/her own frustration.
Just another perspective.
Probably wrong.
wow.......that is such an interesting slant to it. grooove - i appreciated the *anger* in it - if that makes any sense.....even if i myself don't identify/agree with it. well done.
Rising from my bench, pretending to stretch,
Glancing around, this thinly veiled caveman excercise
I practice with pastiche, cunning,
Undoing a button as though only to let my fat breathe,
Instead bringing fully to light the tip of my plumbing,
Smartly quieting nature's alarm clock.
It trickles slowly, among leaves and needles,
Rivulets finding a new path once expelled.
One always wonders just where it goes:
Into the air with the heat, or the cool ground with the roots?
How much of me is in this thunderstorm,
Or that Dogwood's branches?
Will they come to chop me down, long after I die?
It's his old house--
He lived in it
For a few years,
Just him and his mother--
That I drive past every day
On my way to work
That crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go.
I knew him while he lived there,
Although not as well
As I know him now,
But I drove him home
A handful of times,
Drove around that circular driveway
And left him by the enclosed front porch
Searching for keys
In the dark.
It seemed a nice enough place--
Perhaps a bit run-down,
In need of a few repairs,
But never destitute--
With a liberal sprinkling
Of shade-bearing trees
And inevitable critter-housing shrubs
That, as a boy,
I'm sure he loved to play around,
Imagining all kinds
Of bizarre world-changing events
Taking place to and because of him,
Right there in that shady lawn.
And inside
On windblown evenings,
Hot mother-cooked meals,
The smells of which one can never forget,
The textures and spices
Or maternal food and the kitchen
Where love made it
Shining through to his adult world
Always, especially when he couldn't
Fully remember it.
And then,
A short time after I came to know him
They simply moved,
Although I'm certain it was quite involved
For his mother and him,
To us--his friends--
It seemed they had just
Transplanted,
Picked all worldly things up
And trotted off to another home
In a nearby trailer park.
It wasn't so bad:
We still saw him just as much,
And it wasn't any further away.
Strangely, though,
The next people to take residence
In his old home
Were acquaintances of ours:
Party friends who approved of us
And liked to do
The kind of things
That we liked to do.
And so it was
A short time indeed
For my friend
Until he returned to the home of his childhood,
A very short time until he stood again in his old bedroom
(now belonging to a rancid acquaintance
with a poor moustache and stained skin
who had his bed in the exact wrong place).
The bathroom that had been
Ruthlessly spotless before
Now a colony for any live,
Microscopic entity that felt like moving in,
The sink now a brown problem
Instead of a pearly white altar,
The toilet barely flushing,
And the light bulb refusing to be changed
So one was forced to pee in the dark.
The kitchen now not that of the mother
But of unkempt communal
Post-adolescent living,
Issuing not aromas
Of hearty, oft-prepared
Casseroles and soups
But the microwaved plastic
And congealing trash
That comes with being awake all night
Or not knowing where your money is.
And no one eating their vegetables
Or drinking their juice,
But ingesting all varieties of terrible things,
From three-day-old chicken
To high grade opium
Which any mother
In her right frame of mind
Would surely disapprove of.
This is not to suggest
That we had anything other
Than a marvelous time there--
my friend included--
And after a few hesitant moments
Everyone seemed to forget
That he had ever lived there at all,
That it had ever been anything other
Than what it was now,
Or that it could ever be anything else.
Soon enough,
The acquaintance with the questionable moustache
And stained skin was arrested,
Followed quickly by all the others moving out,
And the house was out of our hands,
Forever to be becoming something new
For someone new.
But it still crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go
When I drive past it
On my way to work;
The way it stubbornly denies
That any time has passed for anyone,
The way it cages past
Like a commodity.
I imagine what my friend must have felt like,
Doing what we were doing
In that place;
Perhaps he was searching
For some sign that what he had once known to be true
Could always remain true,
That what had happened in his childhood
Somehow remained in that house,
Only to find that the more you examine
Things you have already done,
The less those things tend to acknowledge you,
And if you allow yourself to
You can end up in the center
Of a room that doesn't care about you,
Wishing for portals to your former self,
The loosing of clocks.
The less those
And the house was out of our hands,
Forever to be becoming something new
For someone new.
But it still crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go
When I drive past it
On my way to work;
The way it stubbornly denies
That any time has passed for anyone,
The way it cages past
Like a commodity.
I imagine what my friend must have felt like,
Doing what we were doing
In that place;
Perhaps he was searching
For some sign that what he had once known to be true
Could always remain true,
That what had happened in his childhood
Somehow remained in that house,
Only to find that the more you examine
Things you have already done,
The less those things tend to acknowledge you,
And if you allow yourself to
You can end up in the center
Of a room that doesn't care about you,
Wishing for portals to your former self,
The loosing of clocks.
Rising from my bench, pretending to stretch,
Glancing around, this thinly veiled caveman excercise
I practice with pastiche, cunning,
Undoing a button as though only to let my fat breathe,
Instead bringing fully to light the tip of my plumbing,
Smartly quieting nature's alarm clock.
It trickles slowly, among leaves and needles,
Rivulets finding a new path once expelled.
One always wonders just where it goes:
Into the air with the heat, or the cool ground with the roots?
How much of me is in this thunderstorm,
Or that Dogwood's branches?
Will they come to chop me down, long after I die?
Again, I hear Larkin but this is great. I like the repetitive use of present participles and the strange significance of the description of rivulets of piss finding a new path once expelled.
With fond wishes and intentions well
We parted on that sidewalk,
In front of the white house
With the L-shaped porch.
You essenced a smile, bless your heart.
I turned the ignition,
And wept until I forgot why.
Yes...completelt true.
ThE QUESTION-
what makes you cry?Is it sadness?confusion?Death?
I think its the death theory mixed with being shot down!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A whisper and a thrill
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
well...I can cry for all different kinds of reasons...sometimes it's just that there's too much emotions at once...too much to process....often, it's because I am helpless to change something (this might be a masculine reason for crying...)
Inside the walls of a heart
Reside the remains of past,
And all pitside is the future.
Inside the walls of a heart
One gets Cabin Fever
And sweet smells, delicate.
Days climb past, askew,
While the months of yourself
Pile up a barricade of love
Inside the walls of a heart.
And here you lay
Asleep and asleep
And I no longer afraid
As the light drapes you
halfdark
I will shift slowly
slowly
Dare not crash this
One Singular Breathsmelling Moment
I feel as though I should have a birthday poem for you today, but it's not actually my birthday yet, so maybe I'll have one tommorow! Here is what I do have:
With the Body I Go
The cats, unused to seeing me
So early in the morning, peer quizzically
As I move about the room naked and bloated,
Smelling my armpits and drinking fervently water.
I am not certain how many times the cats have seen a nude human.
I settle on the couch
And they seem to forget that I am here.
They proceed about their own nonsense.
I don't necessarily need them to notice me.
gROOVE...THAT'S "hORROR-POETRY".
NEW TITLE.
Good, but it falls under horror!
I can see why you say that....the last line is left rather open....perhaps I have started a new genre (actually I'm sure Poe did it...but I could bring it back!)
you sound like you've gone through a lot....what could you be afraid of?
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
i love teh phrase 'to challenge love's govern just once'.....
....they're asking me to prove why I should be allowed to stay with my baby in Australia, because I'm mentally ill......and they think I should leave......
it's not so bad...but to make it bearable I must go to bed earlier....went to sleep at 8PM last night (is that crazy or what?)....and that gets me 8 hours of sleep.....going to bed at 8 PM gets me 8 hours of sleep...it's fricken nuts!
I've decided just to wait for a governmental job with the state to open up cause I need the benefits...for now...I'm also working on the play and
helping out at the theatre company in town that I used to work for,
Passage Theatre Company.
A whisper and a thrill
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
Comments
wow.......that is such an interesting slant to it. grooove - i appreciated the *anger* in it - if that makes any sense.....even if i myself don't identify/agree with it. well done.
Glancing around, this thinly veiled caveman excercise
I practice with pastiche, cunning,
Undoing a button as though only to let my fat breathe,
Instead bringing fully to light the tip of my plumbing,
Smartly quieting nature's alarm clock.
It trickles slowly, among leaves and needles,
Rivulets finding a new path once expelled.
One always wonders just where it goes:
Into the air with the heat, or the cool ground with the roots?
How much of me is in this thunderstorm,
Or that Dogwood's branches?
Will they come to chop me down, long after I die?
It's his old house--
He lived in it
For a few years,
Just him and his mother--
That I drive past every day
On my way to work
That crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go.
I knew him while he lived there,
Although not as well
As I know him now,
But I drove him home
A handful of times,
Drove around that circular driveway
And left him by the enclosed front porch
Searching for keys
In the dark.
It seemed a nice enough place--
Perhaps a bit run-down,
In need of a few repairs,
But never destitute--
With a liberal sprinkling
Of shade-bearing trees
And inevitable critter-housing shrubs
That, as a boy,
I'm sure he loved to play around,
Imagining all kinds
Of bizarre world-changing events
Taking place to and because of him,
Right there in that shady lawn.
And inside
On windblown evenings,
Hot mother-cooked meals,
The smells of which one can never forget,
The textures and spices
Or maternal food and the kitchen
Where love made it
Shining through to his adult world
Always, especially when he couldn't
Fully remember it.
And then,
A short time after I came to know him
They simply moved,
Although I'm certain it was quite involved
For his mother and him,
To us--his friends--
It seemed they had just
Transplanted,
Picked all worldly things up
And trotted off to another home
In a nearby trailer park.
It wasn't so bad:
We still saw him just as much,
And it wasn't any further away.
Strangely, though,
The next people to take residence
In his old home
Were acquaintances of ours:
Party friends who approved of us
And liked to do
The kind of things
That we liked to do.
And so it was
A short time indeed
For my friend
Until he returned to the home of his childhood,
A very short time until he stood again in his old bedroom
(now belonging to a rancid acquaintance
with a poor moustache and stained skin
who had his bed in the exact wrong place).
The bathroom that had been
Ruthlessly spotless before
Now a colony for any live,
Microscopic entity that felt like moving in,
The sink now a brown problem
Instead of a pearly white altar,
The toilet barely flushing,
And the light bulb refusing to be changed
So one was forced to pee in the dark.
The kitchen now not that of the mother
But of unkempt communal
Post-adolescent living,
Issuing not aromas
Of hearty, oft-prepared
Casseroles and soups
But the microwaved plastic
And congealing trash
That comes with being awake all night
Or not knowing where your money is.
And no one eating their vegetables
Or drinking their juice,
But ingesting all varieties of terrible things,
From three-day-old chicken
To high grade opium
Which any mother
In her right frame of mind
Would surely disapprove of.
This is not to suggest
That we had anything other
Than a marvelous time there--
my friend included--
And after a few hesitant moments
Everyone seemed to forget
That he had ever lived there at all,
That it had ever been anything other
Than what it was now,
Or that it could ever be anything else.
Soon enough,
The acquaintance with the questionable moustache
And stained skin was arrested,
Followed quickly by all the others moving out,
And the house was out of our hands,
Forever to be becoming something new
For someone new.
But it still crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go
When I drive past it
On my way to work;
The way it stubbornly denies
That any time has passed for anyone,
The way it cages past
Like a commodity.
I imagine what my friend must have felt like,
Doing what we were doing
In that place;
Perhaps he was searching
For some sign that what he had once known to be true
Could always remain true,
That what had happened in his childhood
Somehow remained in that house,
Only to find that the more you examine
Things you have already done,
The less those things tend to acknowledge you,
And if you allow yourself to
You can end up in the center
Of a room that doesn't care about you,
Wishing for portals to your former self,
The loosing of clocks.
The less those
Again, I hear Larkin but this is great. I like the repetitive use of present participles and the strange significance of the description of rivulets of piss finding a new path once expelled.
Mighty work.
I like the idea quite bit. I'll give it a whirl and re-post it at a later time.
Thanks for the idea.
We parted on that sidewalk,
In front of the white house
With the L-shaped porch.
You essenced a smile, bless your heart.
I turned the ignition,
And wept until I forgot why.
thats the story of my life.
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
and as unpleasant as it can be...feeling things deeply and completely...it lets you know you're alive...
ThE QUESTION-
what makes you cry?Is it sadness?confusion?Death?
I think its the death theory mixed with being shot down!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
Reside the remains of past,
And all pitside is the future.
Inside the walls of a heart
One gets Cabin Fever
And sweet smells, delicate.
Days climb past, askew,
While the months of yourself
Pile up a barricade of love
Inside the walls of a heart.
And here you lay
Asleep and asleep
And I no longer afraid
As the light drapes you
halfdark
I will shift slowly
slowly
Dare not crash this
One Singular Breathsmelling Moment
To challenge love's govern just once.
The cats, unused to seeing me
So early in the morning, peer quizzically
As I move about the room naked and bloated,
Smelling my armpits and drinking fervently water.
I am not certain how many times the cats have seen a nude human.
I settle on the couch
And they seem to forget that I am here.
They proceed about their own nonsense.
I don't necessarily need them to notice me.
It is dark, and much too silent.
In the blackness, I can hear them licking.
NEW TITLE.
Good, but it falls under horror!
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
I can see why you say that....the last line is left rather open....perhaps I have started a new genre (actually I'm sure Poe did it...but I could bring it back!)
you sound like you've gone through a lot....what could you be afraid of?
One could say I've been through a lot, but all experience is really relative, no?
This poem is more retrospective than anything else...I won't deny that I am the narrator of it...the fear is cheifly that of rejection...
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
Glad to know I've been missed...afraid I can't stay long...have another 4 AM wake-up call....
nice to see you!
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
it's not so bad...but to make it bearable I must go to bed earlier....went to sleep at 8PM last night (is that crazy or what?)....and that gets me 8 hours of sleep.....going to bed at 8 PM gets me 8 hours of sleep...it's fricken nuts!
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?
how went the job search?
helping out at the theatre company in town that I used to work for,
Passage Theatre Company.
A whisper and a chill
adv2005
"Why do I bother?"
The 11th Commandment.
"Whatever"
PETITION TO STOP THE BAN OF SMOKING IN BARS IN THE UNITED STATES....Anyone?