sucking on ice cubes

by Dreamwalker

  • Lyrics
  • Lyrical · Narrative

Published August 2, 2012

In poetry (relatively current)

PreviousNext
drink deep
and fill your lungs with lake water.
it tastes cold and numbing, like snowmobile tracks
that winter you got lost and ran out of gas.
it’s a long walk to nowhere certain,
and you’re slow to start but quick to end.
 
I’ve been swimming;
taking laps and stretching muscles taut.
giving a little more of myself to the waters edge
and losing that calm composure of glassy wet.
it’s a whirlpool of things too desperate to feel
and too icy to accept.
 
you tasted the waters edge -
the one I damned myself to freeze in –
picked up those woolen gloves, and winter boots,
dressed the skin I couldn’t touch, and walked away
before winter could catch the snow from the tracks
and you’d lose your way, too.
 
so here I’ll stay, a wintry relic.
a frozen mark upon the surface of a lake in mid December,
where the ice’s too thin to cross, but too thick
to break free from,
and words that swell like blue and swollen lips
are illusions I can’t afford.
Comments & reviews · 4
User avatar
aVeryThoughtfulBeing
Review
aVeryThoughtfulBeing wrote a review Review · Sep 22, 2012

I can't grasp the meaning, but it's very good use of words considering the vagueness and variety in them, and they all give a certain calm and cold image/feeling. Imagine a thumbs up in front of you. That's my hand saying this is nice. But I can't make a great connection or review without grasping the complete meaning, but for this it's more of a personal matter, of course it's there but as for me I can't see it everywhere, except the last stanza which was a little more clear.

User avatar
Hiccup
Review
Hiccup wrote a review Review · Aug 12, 2012

Hello, Dreamwalker (: I'm glad I stumbled on your poem, and let me just say I throughly enjoyed it. I have to agree with lilymoor on the title; it really gave me a great image of Summer and the heat, as I live in Georgia and do have a liking to ice cubes, haha. Of course, when I read it, I began to picture the cold and the snow.
I didn't see much to edit, but there are a few lines that have word confusions.
'ice's' should be changed to 'ice is', but besides that, everything seems good.
Once again, wonderful poem, and I look forward to reading more poems from you.

-Hiccup

User avatar
lilymoore
Review
lilymoore wrote a review Review · Aug 10, 2012

Hey there, Dreamwalker!

First and foremost, let me just say that I was hooked at the title. Something about the idea and the image that it stirs up, well, right away, it reminded me something of a summer poem, girl on the porch sucking on ice cubes to keep cool. But then you turned it around and you gave me this very chilly poem that, though not what I expected, was worth the read.

The first thing that really stood out to me about this is the way you alternated in telling the story, second and forth stanzas speaking about the narrator and the first and third stanzas focusing on the "you" of the poem. Your word choice was really good as well. You picked words that didn't just mean cold but felt chilly as well.

A couple nitpicks:

it tastes cold and numbing, like snowmobile tracks


"Numbing" is the big issues I have with this line. The water tastes cold and numbing. The parallelism that makes lines like this stronger is missing with the word numbing. When keeping lines parallel, it would look like "colding and numbing" (which is wrong) or "cold and numb." Numbing just feels weird because it's in a different tense from the first descriptive "cold."

and words that swell like blue and swollen lips


"swell" and "swollen" are too very similar words and I don't know if I like how they sound so close to one another, especially if you take out the first descriptive "blue" and then it just reads as "swell like swollen lips." Just something to keep in mind. It actually wasn't something I noticed until the 3rd time I read through the last stanza.


Otherwise I liked this overall. The exactness of "you" in the poem is a little vague but it leaves a hint of mystery for the reader and influences the cold and lonely feeling of both winder and loss really well.

Best of luck and if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM or leave a note on my wall.

~lilymoore

User avatar
StoryWeaver13
Review
StoryWeaver13 wrote a review Review · Aug 2, 2012

This was written really well! I have to admit that I kind of stumbled on the first stanza because the way it was worded tripped me up a little, but I love the way you're describing everything. It's interesting that you didn't capitalize any of the first lines....it works better in some poems than it does in others, and in yours it's okay although it doesn't seem particularly necessary. You also have a line "Where the *ice's* too thin to cross" - change it to ice *is,* and I think that it will actually flow better.
But all this being said, this really was a pretty fantastic poem. *liked!
It flows well and it's soo creative; I just wanted to read more and more. There are a lot of maudlin, singsongy poems on this site, so it's nice to see these unique ones now and then.

Keep writing,
StoryWeaver



You, who have all the passion for life that I have not? You, who can love and hate with a violence impossible to me? Why you are as elemental as fire and wind and wild things...
— Gone With the Wind