cleaned up

EvilToasterElf

this poem just got a tense enema, but it still needs work, if you can't think of anything to say just tell me what you think of the last stanza.


Right After Breakfast

The white drains out of your eyes
and hazel fills the void.
Pupils flare like a drifting lunar
capsule a hundred thousand miles from your smile,

crest white, oxidized teeth glow in
harmony, arm & hammer gums resolute
against the backdrop of plaque armies, roaming
across the wasteland of pancakes and bacon
on your tongue.

Which lashes your upper lip, tastes remnants
of Mrs. Butterworth and greedily slops it up.
Your lower lip covers the top and the top covers the
bottom, facial tectonics drive the continents
of your cheeks, momentary valleys of dimples
emerge and disappear.
Cool crumbs attach to moisture and fall like
boulders into an earthquake.
A glass of milk vanishes, it bumps
your adam’s apple out an inch
on the way down to the darkness of your stomache.

The smell hangs in the air, from the empty
plate on the table and taste in your mouth
into the cobwebs of your nostrils. How your face contorts,
those hazel ships shut their airlocks,
while lips twisted into a smirk
Lines gather around your nose and the corner of your eyes,
and the room fills with the sound of your inhaling,
drawing in the lingering scent
of the best god damned breakfast you’ve ever had.

And how your face changes when you sit up,
to the sound of chains rattling.
How your eyes fall to the floor, when the key turned the bolt.
How your lower jaw hangs like a derelict ship after a squall,
when the priest begins reading the litany.
How the stubble on your face, hidden in the ecstasy of breakfast, is now clear,
like the growing shadow behind as you stood up, blocking the room’s single light.
How the echo of your footsteps down that long corridor, are the only thing I’ve ever
Seen bring tears meandering like drunk drivers down your cheeks.
How the proudest man I know walks with his back bent, defeated so utterly, and
right after breakfast.

of_the_girl

.....wow.....


I'm sorry, but that's all I can utter right now.

I really really like this though... perhaps I'll think of something more intelligent to say later.

FinsburyParkCarrots

"Facial tectonics". That's genius!

EvilToasterElf

Thanks all, the setting of the poem is pretty obvious when you read the end right?

FinsburyParkCarrots

The end reminds me a bit of the end of Camus's "The Outsider."

EvilToasterElf

It might be harder as an Islander actually, the poem was intended to describe the last meal of a death row inmate, hence the litany, the bolt, the long hallway, all of these things are preserved more in American cinema than anywhere else really

FinsburyParkCarrots

No, I got it. Mersault goes to his execution at the end of Camus's book.

olderman

i enjoyed this very much.. you have a talent for animation using words..

Buru

the meaning is pretty obvious (last meal before deathrow)
so your last stanza is clear, no worries there

from the first part of the poem I thought you felt disdain for this person greedily eating pancakes. Great writing by the way and very descriptive of all the eating motions and sensations.
From the second part I got empathy for this proud man that is now broken.