no good words

Kwyjibo
Kwyjibo Posts: 662
edited April 2005 in Poetry, Prose, Music & Art
Why are there no good words
to describe that dark sweet skin.
Ivory and alabaster certainly could
never describe its tint.

There are no words that fit at all
when I try to tell of your obsidian
raven-like hair. The innocent look
you flash from beneath that tress.

That terribly innocent look you award me--
so sinister in intention, so disarming and perfect.

My mulatto mistress, my southern princess,
how do you take my words this way?
The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway, is that its you, and that you're standing in the doorway.

I write down good reasons to freeze to death in my spiral ring notebook. But in the long tresses of your hair--I am a babbling brook.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • FinsburyParkCarrots
    FinsburyParkCarrots Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
    What's the historical timeframe for this piece and who is the speaker? If it's a modern-day speech, the term "mulatto" carries a lot of ideological baggage that alienates a large percentage of an audience. But if the utterance is historically framed in another era, that would shift the pertinence of the discourse. Is the speaker a slave master, for example? There's nothing in the piece to suggest it isn't, or that it's "personal"/"confessional" poetry. I feel the poem needs some engagement with a historical moment to clarify its ideological perspective.
  • Nast
    Nast Posts: 127
    How do you take my words away?

    -D
    The king of run on sentences...

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