Time and Graffiti

by Daisuki

  • Poetry

Published May 14, 2012

In Poetry

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Time and Graffiti
 
I am tired, and I tell her so.
She shrugs and devours a star,
ashes blackening the corner of her mouth.
 
It is the same mouth with which she
grows rosemary and kisses tobacco-saturated lungs.
 
She exhales,
and somewhere a moth adapts to smog,
wings of sand smoked out by aerosol fumes.
12, 15, 18 years and still the paint
covers and follows the grooves of cold bricks.
 
She dries and cracks it, so that by 21
it must be tainted again, but more exactly and now
with a finger embraced by a ring.


I can die now, I say hopefully
but she tells me to hush and wait my turn
and that she is busy racing by.
Comments & reviews · 1
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Rydia
Review
Rydia wrote a review Review · Jun 24, 2012

There's something very beautiful about this. There are parts that feel not quite right but there's a certain disconnected flow that has a raw power to it. In essence, I like this and I'll try to find a way you can make it even stronger.

Stanza One: I was uncertain at first. The idea of someone devouring a star made my mind think down wrong lines but then I paused and tried to actually think what that would be like. I want you to capture that visual. I found it difficult to quite make the connection and you just need a little something more there to pull the reader in. This star swallowing woman, who is she? Is she grafitti on the wall, is her hair star spangles, are her eyes blue? I'd like to use my imagination here less because I feel you must have a strong visual in mind and this is one of those times I want to see what the writer sees.

It is the same mouth with which she
grows rosemary and kisses tobacco-saturated lungs.
Perhaps the she is a real person then. I'm not sure what I thought after reading this the first time, or now. They're both very woven together and I don't suppose that not knowing really matters. It's open to interpretation, very cool. I like the combination of one thing you can do with the mouth and one you can not here and the casual juxtaposition of both, somehow that worked really well for me and these two lines are where you caught my attention and where I started to re-think that first stanza.

Stanza Three: Beautiful. It perhaps put me off for a moment, seeing the numbers there but other than that, a very powerful stanza.

Stanza Four: This stanza I didn't like as much. It's far more confusing and less visual and I don't know enough about painting or art or any of that to know what's going on. I don't understand what you mean by tainted or where the ring comes in, though I'm guessing there's a love story here and the couple have got married, but if that's the case, you need something more. You're missing the line that connects all these dots and it shows a lot in this stanza.

Stanza Five: Back to being beautiful.

Overall

I feel there's a lot I don't understand here and some of that doesn't matter because the images you have are so beautiful and the words so touching but somewhere it does matter because it feels just that little bit too disconnected. I'm sorry I don't have much advice on how you can make it easier to understand, I think perhaps if I knew more of what it's about or what your thinking was, maybe I could at least give you my views but for now I can only say it's on the right road.

Send me a pm if you've got questions or want to talk about it, I'm always happy to share my thoughts,

Heather xxx



'This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.'
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy