Sparks and Rushes to the Head

Starting from the beginning of the beginning.

Moments

I found this one interesting, I don't know why it reminded me of the beats. I don't think that you play around with direction, pace and flow as much as you could, but the phrases certainly flow into one another and have a larger rhythm between one another. It is a hard thing to judge, and you know, as a musician, that a lot of the time the subtleties and nuances in phrasing get lost on a stage, you sometimes have to be more obvious about what you want. Another aspect that is perhaps too understated is harmony, in the sense of art, enhancing shapes and images with balancing images. These are just general ideas to help you with the feng shui that is poetry editing. Minutia Minutia Minutia, stock and trade of poetics.

have I never told you

once I felt the weight
of the invisible
thousand pound gorilla,
once--like ten long years
that pass now like a day,
how the gorilla came
like age, to lay upon me
and my
wrinkled paper thin chest,

I can't particularly comment on this stanza, because it's really all narrative. I like "Have I never told you", sort of like a parabolic phrase. There is nothing particularly excessive here, it's taut. Line length through the first few stanzas makes for kind of stilted reading, but the enjambment isn't particularly contrived. The gorilla. I have to get something off my chest too, and it is also the gorilla. When did sense imagery become passe? I see many very talented writers, you're not the only one, writing prose and poetry that is almost entirely without it. This is one of the beefs I have with the gorilla, because the gorilla's size is not the only part of them that would be oppressive at close quarters. They stink. They have a powerful animal stench, it's part of what makes them formidable, particularly to other gorillas. And I think if confronted with a gorilla, it would be the other senses that would make them confronting. We've all seen gorillas, at a distance, in films, in pictures, but the physical reality of that is largely alien. I get that in part this is the idea of the gorilla, it's being cute and post modern, it is a psychological gorilla, but if your gorilla gets beat up at school for having odorless armpits, then don't come crying to me.

The first stanza is perhaps not the vessel for aforementioned scent imagery, so here it is again with me less distracted.

of the invisible

This line ads nothing. The other lines have a focal point, a concept, cohesion. Not to say that every line should be important, quite the opposite there should be moments of tension, release, focus, unfocus, you know this, however this is an immediately shorter line which draws more attention, yet has less important words. Invisible is not the most essential element of the gorilla, not more important than the thousand pounds, for example. Which is my convoluted way of saying, "of the invisible thousand pound gorilla," is a better line. It also has more rhythm, kind of triplet to duplet. Invisible is triplet with quaver upbeat, then duplet, double dotted crotchet, semi quaver upbeat to scotch snap. My lover just came in and said 'No, it's all in 6/8', but where is the fun in that? My point is, even if it were in 6/8, which it's not, it still has a more natural rhythm. 6/8 is boring, shut up.

once--like ten long years
that pass now like a day,
how the gorilla came

I'm not sure I like the last line beginning on the 'how', it needs to join to the once, 'how' is too strong on it's own. I like the 'like ten long years that pass now like a day' aside, the italics do a lot for it to fit, but I think it's a stop-gap solution, it's a matter of directing focus. Whether that's fiddling with the enjambment or creating more dissonance in the second line so that the last one joins tonally to the 'once' as a resolution, I do not know.

like age, to lay upon me
and my
wrinkled paper thin chest,

I have a problem with the metaphor, principally driven by the word 'lay'. Age, especially cloaked in the passive verb 'lay', is a sort of like lowering yourself into an unexpectedly deep bath of warm molasses, and realizing far too late that you're drowning: slow, bittersweet, and increasingly degrading. Gorillas are a more violent image, particularly ones that throw your memories everywhere.

Kissing a Saint

I.
Once in a universe a child grows from the hand of Ba'al,
“Careful!”, cries the pious.
this child has been housing a stomach of fire
caged in ribs of ice, its black bleached faith
rubbing off like chalk after failed arithmetic;
son of man, your name is not called at the gates
you are another child coughing on your own soot,
faith, protection from vice is the big lie. the three
magi say the second rise has come,
let walk the rough beast as it coos and simmers
like the gentle cries of a new born child roasted on a pyre.
“Listen!” the pious plead, mute under
the shadow of the rising sun, they choke like moths on the light,
choke on trust like a curious demon rips from within,
no Heimlich tithe offered from indifferent heathens
on city streets; the homeless faith is to die alone
without being a spectacle.

II.
What lives under that rising sun? i have seen your reflection
under that rising sun; you are not an exception in the billions.
Sprawled on a cracked concrete red carpet,
they murmur
they whisper,
children orphaned by life in perpetual apathy
like drug addicts swimming in their pockets for the loose change
to make ends up gently like a blood rush in the sting, mumbling the names
of the names that have come before; orphaned child
write it on your skin, “never more pity the weak”
said Satan when he walked under that rising sun. i walked with him
giving the tender loin confession, thinking pity in a white glove
getting the steel grate of the sewer as pillow,
home again with the rats, dreaming of happiness above.

III.
In the Universe once, living under the parted sun,
i met the Saint of the city walking at night,
staring through me like i live in Hell.
i walked under that setting sun,
weighed down by the dead child in my hands;
i have married Medea and written wedding vows:
“come Cain,
come Abel,
flock the skin and let your father
love his lie.”