"I might only have one match, but I can make an explosion."
To be a hyperbole
All my life I have been a ray of light aspiring to be the sun, a flame trying to be an explosion a firecracker display of color to illuminate others’ starless skies with a presence too large to miss
because I fear an atrophic legacy or the life of a wraith condemned to invisibility
{I am a hyperbole an exaggerated caricature rendering trying to expand myself so others will notice}
a neon sign glaring on thecorner of rundown Main Street in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night
I was born with a phoenix heart burning and burning and burning itself into ashes
but every day at dawn my heart sprouts wings of fire and keeps burning down all the trees others have planted
i hold nothing back and I am aware I am a fading star, just a supernova eager to burn and one day all the light I’ve tried to generate for others to look at will fizzle out
i will no longer dazzle the light will dim, the way the jealous moon bleeds the fire out of the sunset
this phoenix heart might beat too fast and hardfor others, burn too bright who shrink away from the flame,
but I will never stop creating wildfires for others, burning down forests only for lush new life to emerge
when the last speck of gunpowder remains i will make an explosion to rock the universe and even when I burn down to the bottom of the candlestick, I’d rather be a hyperbole than another understatement
1/30
Last edited by bluewaterlily on Sun Apr 02, 2017 12:47 am, edited 2 times in total.
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
Ahhh, gorgeous lines in here. I felt my heart surge in the "but I will never stop creating wildfires for others", it's so satisfyingly triumphant. Beautiful!
Thanks so much, Audy. That really means a lot. This was such an emotional poem and I hope that it made sense. When I was writing it it took an unexpected turn. I wanted the premise of the poem to be about being a hyperbole, almost over-exaggerating our identity around others so they will just see you, almost like you're trying to overcompensate for being invisible. I hope the message of the poem was clear, and sorry for all the typos that I have to fix (it was 2 am). But again, thanks for reading and finding meaning in my sleep-deprived poetry.
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
Inosculation Definition: 1. A naturally occurring phenomenon in which the roots, trunks, or branches of trees merge.
My memory spans the length of our roots that are woven together into a tapestry that recites the tale of two conjoined hearts intertwined around the same set of heartstrings and beating to the same song.
But sometimes growing means growing apart and there is only so much room for our roots to sprawl
lately we are in a competition snatching the last bits of sunlight our branches now diverging to different patches of a fading sky
but we are tightly woven eternally inevitably interlaced and even when the flood waters submerge us and Zeus's lightning splits the sky and cleaves us asunder,
our roots will anchor us to a common foundation.
2/30
Last edited by bluewaterlily on Wed Apr 05, 2017 2:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
I love the sentiment of your poem Inosculation! I like that you had the definition in the poem too, or as a pre-note really because it added a lot to the poem to know what that word meant.
All in all, I love the structure, the punctuation, and how you took us through the process of diverging and coming back together again.
Wow these are good! I especially liked Inosculation. I'd never heard that word before.
"All of the Above" makes me think of "Gone Girl". I just read the book recently (if you've seen the movie, the overall plot is the same but there's definitely more room to get into the MC's heads) and Amy used to write personality quizzes so they pop up in the book. But aside from that connection, it's just so much truth.
"You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand." Leonardo Da Vinci
Aww, thanks so much @niteowl! I really appreciate you taking the time to read and comment. And it might surprise you but I still haven't read Gone Girl yet. That was completely coincidental.
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
hold me in your hand, unwind me spin me dizzy let me cut a path across the floor of your palm.
watch me orbit around you like a solar system moving around the sun and even as I whirl,
your gravity holds me captive in this chain of orbit. you laugh as I perform for you, spinning circle after circle, like a girl twirling on the ballroom floor for an audience of bachelors,
even when my heart wobbles in my chest I will continue to spin and spin and spin, listening to your delight as you spin web after web of laughter for my ears ready cocoon me in your game of spider and fly
but even when I exhaust all the force keeping me in rotation, the world will tilt and the skies will spin in a kaleidoscopic blur
the dizzy hangover will feel almost as good as being yours even if it was only for the show and the curtain has fallen.
5/30
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
I pretended to be asleep when I heard the groan of the bed and felt the weight on your side lift from your side to shift to my heart and I heard it groan, buckling like knees of Atlas as he tried to hold the weight of the world
{I didn’t see the hairline fractures in my spine until I looked in the mirror the next morning}
you left in the dead of night when my breath was frozen in my chest, lodged in my throat like the bite of Snow White’s poisoned apple that made it so I couldn't regurgitate the one word that would've compelled you to me
{stay}
I had made the mistake of leaving the door ajar when I climbed into bed and spilling under the crevices was the moonlight from the window a map that guided me to the screendoor, your portal to Neverland.
My eyes were ajar like that door but I kept my back to you as you rose to leave without a single kiss
Your ghost steps padded down the stairs and you closed the screen door quietly but loud enough t make this whole house shudder as if it was the Liberty Bell when rang for the first time, cleaving my bones with cracks
I laid their like a corpse too listless to move and sleep eventually claimed me even when you wouldn’t.
The word {stay} faded into the static whitenoise of my head, still list ening to the dropped signal of your invisible trail
6/30
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
you disappeared, a magic act of dissipating into smoke and mirrors but no one saw you all I know I woke up
and you were gone so was my heart
under the starless sky veiled in the cloak of nighttime,you had carefully exhumed from the desecrated cemetery of my ribs the mummified heart that you had embalmed not too long ago
you had wrapped it in bandages for healing, you told me but I should've known they were a burial shroud the cloth you waved around to perform your magic tricks
but you didn't have to steal what was already yours, what I had left on the altar as an offering to you
7/30
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
there’s a war going on outside and the world is on fire i don’t dare venture beyond this window seat, a pane of glass the only divider between the shrapnel words they hurl that explodes in my backyard
i stuffed my ears with cotton Mama told me it would help but it doesn’t drown out the sounds, only muffles
i stuffed my ears with cotton but it doesn’t shield me from the shards of shrapnel that embed themselves into my skin
i dabbed at the gashes with cotton it slowed the bleeding but it didn’t stop the infection from Seepin into my tissue and festering
i stuffed my ears with more cotton but it didn’t quiet the civil war of words erupting in my skull
i stuffed my ears with cotton until I couldn’t hear the ticking of the bomb of my own heart
8/30
"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden
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