Just Babble
EvilToasterElf
Posts: 1,119
We are all little share holders
in a market of secret circles
that teters like a steel rocking horse
to the metronome of a whistling God
Time, that thresher of the stars
beckons the listless to stare
Always up at the summer moon
which shares the sky with clouds
Under which I walk in brown sandals
across broken twigs and the slack
of rope I lend my mind, is knotted
by the cracks of wood under my steps
To the bend in the trail
which I can not see, but know
a dead oak, lashed by lightning
stands watch, stained black
where the lightning pierced its bark
But like a mansions marble lion
this guardian does not deter
but rather ushers on the traveller
and the ground slopes up
a bouldered crevace where
sapplings wither with thirst
The rock, the storyteller
an immortal grandfather
whose lap we all sit upon and
listen to the history of the world
between his granite knees
I dream of dynamite, tunnelling
like a dentist drill through the
mountain into the sticky cavities
of emeralds and diamonds
Only in the bowels of something
so lifeless and permanent do
I understand what it is to be alive
To trade in days and seasons
through winter crashes and
summer gains, as my bones crack
like a thousand little alarm clocks
seizing me to alertness, hypertension
was a gift, arhtritis a blessing
that passes the time spent
musing over the fate of grandchildren
skipping over the loose ground
of grass clippings, and crushed ant hills
in a market of secret circles
that teters like a steel rocking horse
to the metronome of a whistling God
Time, that thresher of the stars
beckons the listless to stare
Always up at the summer moon
which shares the sky with clouds
Under which I walk in brown sandals
across broken twigs and the slack
of rope I lend my mind, is knotted
by the cracks of wood under my steps
To the bend in the trail
which I can not see, but know
a dead oak, lashed by lightning
stands watch, stained black
where the lightning pierced its bark
But like a mansions marble lion
this guardian does not deter
but rather ushers on the traveller
and the ground slopes up
a bouldered crevace where
sapplings wither with thirst
The rock, the storyteller
an immortal grandfather
whose lap we all sit upon and
listen to the history of the world
between his granite knees
I dream of dynamite, tunnelling
like a dentist drill through the
mountain into the sticky cavities
of emeralds and diamonds
Only in the bowels of something
so lifeless and permanent do
I understand what it is to be alive
To trade in days and seasons
through winter crashes and
summer gains, as my bones crack
like a thousand little alarm clocks
seizing me to alertness, hypertension
was a gift, arhtritis a blessing
that passes the time spent
musing over the fate of grandchildren
skipping over the loose ground
of grass clippings, and crushed ant hills
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
just my thoughts, though...
"Cause I can't wait to figure out what's wrong with me
So I can say this is the way I use to be" -- John Mayer
When was a poem ever impoverished by an abundance of images? From Book Three of "The Iliad" onwards, similes and metaphors are stacked on one another almost for pages on end. The Imagists used nothing but them. What flow do you want? The flow of a story? Poetry draws attention to its own self-referentiality by foregrounding equivalences between formal features rather than by emphasising the communicative prevalence of its subject via a syntagmatic (no, not synctactical) axis of communication. In other words, discourse takes prevalence over story in poetry.
It is via the impression made by textual effects rather than by the syntagmatic reference to 'theme' that a poem, to quote TS Eliot, manages to "communicate before it is understood", and poetic flow, as it were, is dynamised, not impeded by the use of images.
So there.
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
actually I think this guy is brilliant.....arthritis....arth-writis....he's a good peom writer....I love the images.....just worried that some metaphors might be getting a bit mixed up.....my favourite bit is the stained oak.....somehow it reminds me of the fallen Christ....and it's always around the corner.....the thousand alarm clocks image is a bit chilling....hehehehhe
i am mine.. and that is no B.S.
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
The rock, the storyteller
an immortal grandfather
whose lap we all sit upon and
listen to the history of the world
between his granite knees
I dream of dynamite, tunnelling
like a dentist drill through the
mountain into the sticky cavities
of emeralds and diamonds
In the fifth line, there's a change in perspective where the subject switches from onlooker to actor, though the subject is acting in a dream state. It's not that any of this is wrong, but it might be what others are mentioning is a bit jarring in flow. Perhaps a smoother transition can be considered, as simple as a line break?
There is also something similar in the following stanza as follows:
Only in the bowels of something
so lifeless and permanent do
I understand what it is to be alive
To trade in days and seasons
through winter crashes and
summer gains, as my bones crack
like a thousand little alarm clocks
There's another shift in perspective/voice where the ephiphany is presented as a choice made the subject, rather than something that just is. If think if you got rid of the words "Only" and "do", the epiphany would be presented as state of being rather than a choice.
There's a similar shift in the first stanza, where the first line presents an omnipotent narrorator, when the rest of the poem presents the subject as a participant. Perhaps if you made the first line the title or got rid of it entirely, since it's a bit diadactic, and start with the second line the voice would be more consistent.
This is all nit-picky, pittly stuff, and just my thoughts on your elegant poem. Great work.
lol...