Centrifuge (the poetry contest-edited)

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Points 1145
Reviews 41
She wakes.
Her eyelids divorced by electronic matchsticks-
screaming in paranoia; panic.

She stretches and yawns and stretches for the
bottle of pills on the dresser.
petrol in her car and her heart won’t break down.
So the sun will burst through the horizon.

All of the answers in the universe
resting, dissolving: almost malleable between her fingers
a capsule as blue as it is magenta:
yin and yang, flaunting its controversy.
The answers are not answers at all.

An illusion of stability,
of train tracks and footpaths and monuments.
of centrifuge.
Her irises are the sunlight
and gravity flows through her veins
and the universe revolves like a record:
the same old song,
The same old Song.

The hooks have lost their teeth
and rust in her arteries
while the chorus marches marathons
through her cortex.
But
she knows every single word;
every grating inhalation
is tattooed on her corneas
and branded on her tongue.

And she dances to the music
like the arm of a metronome.
tick tick tick, faster faster
faster, the ticks become a blur of static
that festers in eardrums;
corpse in a cave.
Until dry bones and shattered dreams
rattle the train tracks.

The pills stave the infection
as she flails in the vortex
of tax forms and toothbrushes,
mortgages and soap.
A diary of paper cuts and cotton wool
lies on the dresser.

Ink envenoms oxygen.

She lives in a photocopy
Déjà vu, déjà vu.
2 dimensions,
charred fibres,
caustic ink
fading.

And the pages turn like helicopter blades
chasing each other, accelerating, screaming
in pain until they break off into the atmosphere
of blue and black and nothingness
and freedom.
forgotten.

But she is no wingsan, no 3rd dimension,
just a cacophony of line and footstep,
cause and effect.

A marching band plays her song and
all of the ants sing along.

oxygen thieves.

But there she stands,
surrounded by mirrors
and she knows, she knows
she knows the ugliness she shares.
She runs,
her legs like helicopter blades.
Back to her lot, her bed, her dresser.

The band bows and the spotlights crash to earth
like meteors,
Darksilentcoldblindness
alone alone alone;
Free;
She can taste it on her tongue:

burning, blistering from routine friction
but the universe within her bucks
every answer at once: affliction
and the fear becomes the crux.

Retreat.

She prints out another blade
and crushes it between her palms
Wastepaper.
sleety, jagged mountain
Déjà vu.

She forgets another face
another name, another number.
Another scar, another heartbreak
Déjà vu.

She drowns another universe
in the depths of her soul
and returns to the matchsticks.
12:02; 12:02; Déjà vu.

They burn chartreuse her retinas until
the answer melts her eyelids.

Hallucinogenic hiatus


vu

fading.


I smash the mirror into a thousand lucky fragments,
and close my eyes and wait 'till I explode.
Last edited by erratik_statik on Wed May 20, 2009 12:06 pm, edited 3 times in total.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .

"The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" T.S Eliot




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Gender Female
Points 2016
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okay so i have no idea what in heck this poem is about, or what any of it means, but i LOVED it. it was wayyyy awesome i don't even know why, though, cause i don't get it. but just the language and imagery was like "what the heck!" freaking awsome! yea sorry im no help in terms of constructive criticism, or even encouragment for that matter. just know that i really liked reading it and maybe if i had hours to spend i would spend hours trying to figure it out. as it is, ill just stick with saying that it was awesome. nice work!
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." ~ the catcher in the rye




Random avatar
Gender Female
Points 1610
Reviews 47
This was really good.
With long poems, I usually get really bored after awhile, but I actually read through the whole thing.
I'm not sure if I'm right or not, but it reminded me of someone thats just, like, there.
Not really living, but like just existing.
I thought it was beautifully written, and I loved the variety of words you put into it.
The last two words I had to look up actually, but to me it made some sense.
Very nice job.
NaNoWriMo, ftw.




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Gender Female
Points 1290
Reviews 7
That is an amazing poem.

I did not get what it was about.

I tried to start guessing and the first thing that came to mind was a printer XD.

Kudos to you (Y)
Keep writing.
xx Lara
"A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life." Charles Darwin.




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Points 1145
Reviews 41
edited... a different ending

:-)
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .

"The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" T.S Eliot




User avatar
Gender Male
Points 890
Reviews 19
This is rather interesting. I like the universe you created and the scene that you were depicting. It is very dark, and intense yet more real than a tim burton movie (hehe). Now, this is just personal preference but I think its weakness is its length. You used 109 lines in this poem. That will have a dampening effect on the explosiveness of your poem especially since your ending clearly references to the beginning of the poem. In cases like this, some readers may fail to connect the dots, leading many not to truly understand what your poem means. Others, will get lost amidst the lengthy train of thought. So you might want to look into that. However, I will have to commend you because despite its length, your poem flows well, and is very engaging to the reader. The words used is also expertly laid on the tone that you set at the beginning. I also liked how you capitalized on the tone by switching the persona at the end (when She becomes I). That made the experience more surreal.

The only line that I felt was out of place though was "12:02; 12:02; De Javu". I know that you probably intended this to mean something, and I think I understand what you were trying to say, but from an oral perspective, the repetition and the sudden internal rhyme makes it sound a little..(for lack of a better term).."cheesier" than what you might have intended, and I think you could have done away with that.

Anyway, this is a good entry.

Keep at it!
-Tyler
and that night the sky was blue

length, you are my enemy.




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Gender Female
Points 1231
Reviews 14
I loved this!

I agree that I don't really know what this poem is about but whatever it's about, it's seriously good! You have beautifully written this poem and it's especially good becasue you'e varied your words. I didn't actually understand some of the words :oops: but that's only becasue I'm not the brightest girl in the world!

I must say though that the poem is extremely long. mynameisTyler said that it's 109 words long and that is seriously long! But becasue it was extremely well written it didn't actually bother me much.

Overall, I adored your poem and I can't wait to read some more of your work.

Keep writing!

Meg

xoxo



Sea and Sky- both blue. Once, in proposal, Sea turned red. Sky's father- Sun forbade so she wept as rain, uniting the lovers in defiance.
— AlexWrites