In the nights so cold, [perhaps a comma right here?] the stars hang bright
and frozen, burn the crocuses in the oil lamp
I gave you, and imagine our fingers,
interlaced, my chest against your waist, [loved the little rhyme you have with 'interlaced' and 'waist'. and on your neck
my lips so chapped they crack. Listen to the sound
of a tree branch fractured by the winter storms, the dynamite
igniting in the darkness, softened by the distance,
and the snow-choked sky that trembles above us.
Some nights I have a series of dreams
I can't remember: though I know they gather
around a rape--and I am brutal because I am
naked, my body's figure formed against the lightest sleight
of evening, not because I am named--a cookie
is not the only substance that receives the shape
of the instrument with which it's cut--a distinction
I think the scientific community should observe,
if not everyone.
There is nothing more troubling than the way
we abolish language, the space between our frames
so narrow I scrape and break against you. Take me
in your arms like you did that night I called you,
hold me down--I am so tired of being a Lichtenberg figure:
this fern-like pattern that sprawls and disappears
in the wake of a lightning strike.
I lack a suitable god-term, a jargon for ultimacy,
finality. God staples you to the sparkplug
of life, leaves me to fight the bordered language
between lust and luster. Tonight I have a dream
I don't remember, and when you reach to wake me
from my thrashing, I shift away. This is the
rip in fabric, my shirt on the floor and splayed out
three feet before me, and my jeans around my feet--
your touch forgotten in advance--
This is a failure of technology in the oldest sense:
it allows us to see ourselves as changed and to remain
unchanged. It is an unwelcome reprieve from the blood
that spreads through me like a theory and lets me believe
these failures will become precious through repetition,
if unforgiven
In the morning, there will be a trail of thunderheads
behind us. You will wake before me and see the branch--
which we thought was far away--only several paces east
of where we slept. For today, suffering is somewhere else:
several paces east and past the orange trees. I would pray
to God if I believed in one; instead, I know only
the baleful forms our valences assumed in winter light: I have you
and the earth and the sky.
You put your arm around my waist; your fingers
sketch your name across my side and down my leg:
reclaim me from the dreams I won't remember, from
the forms I might become. Are you not afraid of how
these verbs decline? How poetry has yet to emerge--
the image is no substitute, just an anecdote in the mouth
of a stillborn. Your touch returns me from a heart grown soft
and frail, like lace, from age or lightning. Like a blouse,
the most elegant crimes were left undone.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
I enjoyed this. As Faith said, it definately has a certain elegance. A certain appeal to it. Very pretty words defining a pleasent enough topic I suppose. Although, as Jared mentioned, it does suffer from a little vagueness. It seems that all poetry these days - including my own especially - is straying further and further from reality and coherency. And while that, at times, can be liberating (for both poet and reader) I also find abstract language to be a barrier, as well. Maybe poetry has never been completely accesible to the masses, but I feel that in order to obtain any sort of readership, all poets should strive to give their readers a point of reference of some kind. Something they can relate a metaphor or a simile to. Or a complex idea.
That being said, I'm not sure I understand the relationship between this couple, the narrator's difficulties, and a Lichtenberg figure. I'm not too familiar with Lichtenberg figures, but I do have a general idea of what one is. In order to help me understand, and to help others understand as well, I feel that some supplementary information needs to be provided. Either that or the employment of simpler language.
However, in giving you this advice, I'm a pot calling the kettle black in every sense of the colloquilism. Relating to an audience is something I need to work and something I think many published poets need to address as well.
Regardless, good luck with this, Brad.
-Kylan
I think this one maintained a certain elegance throughout, and the second person wasn't quite such a slap in the face as it often is. But it still has those moments where you bounce up against the intended object of the poem...the first half of the final stanza would be one example. I liked the latter half. The poems you post here you are probably not considering publication for it, and sure, everyone can be forgiven a certain amount of egocentric love poetry...but as a rule, if you want people to appreciate it, the 'you' has to include them, the 'we' has to include them. There is a way to interact with a 'you' in a poem, even a very specific 'you', and the reader is drawn in...but your second person just as often repels, becomes insular and exclusive, and for this reason I think might alienate your readers. Sure, this can be used to effect, but you overuse it, and I don't think it does you any favors in having other people enjoy or relate to what you read. You often invoke great images, then lose them and lose the reader because the reader becomes more like voyeur than confidante.
This piece is very long, and very good. There are so many words that tell me a story in a way. The fact is though, maybe I'm just like drawing a blank but I can't tell if you wanted it in the end, or if you just gave in but you still didn't want it. The subject is mostly clear to me that it has to do with some guy, I'm not sure if it's someone you know. You might want to do that and say something about they guy, but that would be in a different poem. Because this one is something from your side, and any alterations that would include information on the other person would hurt it. But in another poem about this same thing would be good if you wrote something more describing the guy.But I can feel how you feel a certain hesitation from the person that's doing this to you in the poem.
Love the emotion