The answer is in the firehorse of our lungs,
the below bellows of something that yells unknown into the empty
— keeps yelling until we learn not to ask —
we do not listen, and search for something
in everything, like a man hungry for religion,
or sex. We ask where, why,
who, what, and when, and the nature
of the names given to us when we were first born (wet, and big-eyed,
and open-mouthed), and then again at six,
when our spines are heavy enough to slope
into a divided, shifting question mark, we ask
with our bodies instead, yearn with our curious eyes
and curious hands after being told to keep quiet too many times;
we tend our wanting hands into a garden
that grows over our neighbors’ fences, asks for fruit by taking it,
asks for a semblance of another person,
someone to eat dinner with, to hear our name from. At 16,
our hands grow into each others’ hair. We ask if love
tastes like each others’ mouths or if we are slipping
into infatuation. We do not ask anymore
at 25. We are too afraid of a yes, too afraid of lighting everything afire
with the embers of our mouth. Our spines grow heavy,
bend into the earth like roots and we are too weary for the asking,
too weary to hear as the answer eats its way from us,
tells us yes, again and again, until the grass has gone gray, until
everything around us has burnt.
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139,529 Literary Works • 672,599 Reviews
Hello....*waves with a smile*
"The answer is in the firehorse of our lungs,
the below bellows of something that yells unknown into the empty"
Are you referring to our conscience in these lines? Because, I was really astonished by the description (in a splendid way, off course).
The poem stirs the mind of the reader and compels him to 'question' himself. The metamorphosis a person goes through time has been very nicely portrayed.
"tells us yes, again and again, until the grass has gone gray, until
everything around us has burnt."
Yes... beautiful lines and even in their sentimentality are very practical. I was moved by these lines.
The poem would've been more professional (Grammar Nazi alert!!) if the punctuation was not neglected. And also the capitalization of the words should be considered as significant. (I'm sorry, but, this is a review. Please try to understand, my shackles confine me).
Please write more and write better. It's a very good work.
This gives me a lot to think about.
I enjoyed this. It is beautifully written and I think it is very good in all that it is.
This is not my favourite thing I've read, but it is still very good.
I like the flow of the stanzas and how you flowed to each one, I think it works very well.
You have a talent, I am definitely not the best to be writing poetry, but I still enjoy it. So seeing it written well is very nice.
Continue Writing!
Keep up the great work!
-Cody
Beautifully written. A tragic message of losing oneself. Dying before being dead. The flow was brilliant,you word choice was enchanting and haunting at the same time.
My only possible suggestion would be to work on the display of this poem. Perhaps separate 'We ask where, why..' with the next stanza. I tend to not create new stanzas in the middle of unfinished sentences. Did you do this to create a sense of flow?
A magnificent work. The very definition of beauty. I'm stunned.
--MS