Whales and Wheat

Astral Star

6-7-06
Blush, turn around, this whole thing is upside down
The boys are shy the girls ain’t weak
Where in the hell is that bald eagles beak

Right in front of you a blue giant triumphs
Soaking up the krill and the candlefish
Yellow bulging eyes of a yesteryear smile
Flying in and out is the only way to cover a mile

Soot infused dreams of the money running amok
Didn’t see the picture of a lead filled limp duck
Slung cross the shoulders of a wise gentle man
Who flings an arrow across the prarie and the sand

Feel the rough wheatstalks brush agains your shin
Riding a motorcycle with a third seat
Too long to control, too short to make it there.
Why would you reappear in your underwear?

Midsection midsong midcloud miday midlong

justam

I don't know what this means, but it's interesting!

FinsburyParkCarrots

The ambiguous nature of symbolism allows for many responses. I like the way this poem steadfastly refuses to provide the reader with any clue as to the grounds for its symbolism (whether public or private politics, sex, relationships, the inner psyche, or all or none of these). It keeps the poem open ended and the reader has to look for it for meaning. Samuel beckett would write and leave the potential for interpretation open too. Often his work was, by his own admission, pure play.

Your poem's openendedness seems to me to effect a statement on whether language and poetry can ever "mean" anything of itself, in relation to our lives, except if its images operate somehow on a subconscious level, infusing with our dreams.


Thanks for this poem.

Astral Star

Your always so right on in your interpretations of my work. Thanks for taking the time! It was play on words mixed with sex, politics, leisure, and dream symbolosm. Very open to interpretations but very specific to me. Do you ever write poems or songs with imagery or analogies that are completely esoteric to yourself?

FinsburyParkCarrots

I think that is how a lot of the best songs get written: "Strawberry Fields Forever" lyrically mixes childhood memory of local place with a psychedelic dreamscape, and it brilliantly fuses nonsense with profundity.