I
I have found a place between several seas,
where the ground is several inches
above my forehead, my ankles thatched, cross-hatched
rooves of seaweed breathing green.
I knot my heart around my ribs every morning, lull it into
a deep forever sleep. Exodus is not so kind, but escape
is nigh kinder.
When night comes, it is only to be cruel.
Stars like lighthouses burn away at my skin--
what is pride, but for Alexandria? A poor pity for me,
but even lighthouses are destined for burial.
The stars will be blown out, the world
will fall; darkness engulfs the spaces between my fingers--
kindly, never, never kindly so.
I have found a place between several seams,
a fraying end where beady eyes stare out
at sea, calling to riverendum, asking its blank, unseeing
expanse for a dream. I wish for a ship to sail me all the way home.
But some nights, when the moon is still, and I am wasted
for breathing, the clouds pant in effervescing cycles and I
feel at home. You have been attending to my ears in the form
of newspaper tales; I know it is you who whispers to the wind
to carry its fortunes nearer to me, spear the worst of them,
cage me. I am a tree, slick with frost, a nettle-cage of pine, wandering
the brim of a geographical wonderland, the edge
of a globe, the underside of a hat--crudely made
and turned out up and over against a blizzard.
I am a tree; your words lunge in tidal waves
of cold--the kind that turns museums into mausoleums,
never kindly, kindly so.
I have found a place.
II
Now, this is the part where I find a shelter from the rain;
this is where I talk about completing what we started, about
lilac umbrellas in silken showers swallowing poetry with their undersides, never
being hung out to dry, words dripping, falling off the
edge. This is the part where we run into the sunset, into an endless
stream of oaths, of promises fate forbade us from making
a long time ago.
This is the part where you plunge into the cold, heartless belly,
of a beast that has no name and has several and sometimes
none at all. I have found myself a stream to drink from, made a boat
from the frost your tears left on your cheek, found a stronger eddy
of photosynthesising platelets in my own name. This is where
I run; I take you with me; the sea swells and the stars
drop one by one. The lighthouses have lost their way, wading
in marshes; the wind has dropped
its fortunes in a city where the sun forever sweats; the night
is in deep sleeping, and this is where I exit escape
for something never kinder, kindly so.
III
This is the part where I am left
hanging onto you by the skin of my teeth--yelling
into the distance
for something that has never been there.
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140,703 Literary Works • 673,672 Reviews
Hello, Pompiepoo, here to review you!
The way you break the line here suggests intoxication. I'm not sure if that's what you were going for, but I really like the double meaning that you created with your line break. Good use of enjambment.So I read the review Monsters left you, and I agree with all of it. So if you're looking for a second opinion about that review, I support it. That's not to say that there isn't anything else to say about your poem here.
This is a Pompadour™ poem. If your name wasn't on it, I would know that you wrote it. I really enjoy that you have such a distinctive style, and that I've read enough of your poetry to know that you write in this way.
As a Pompadour™ poem, it does have its flaws, though. Your poems are funnel shaped, tapering to a point at the end where we get to the lovely, clear point. But the beginnings are always broad, always dazzling. Dazzling is a good thing and a bad thing. While it is full of spectacle, it is hard to see beyond the circus sometimes to the meat behind it. Your poems are best read quickly and without too much intent to analyze, like going on a roller coaster ride. You read it for the experience and the rush, which is wonderful. And at the end you get a nice souvenir, something that will make you remember the poem for days. But I wish that the souvenir was more anchored in the whole poem.
I feel like you realize what you're trying to say while you're writing the poem (which is not a bad thing). You get to the realization at the end, and that is really all you need, but what you should do is put more of it into the beginning and middle of the poem and strip away just a little of that spectacle so we get a proper taste of it. Don't get me wrong. I love all of your imagery, the way you mix unexpected things together to create fantastic images. But there's so much of it that the point you're trying to get across is put on the sideline.
When I started reading the second part of this, I wondered why it wasn't its own poem, but the first part does draw connection to the second. They do work together, but the second one is more focused and I like it better. You're getting around to what you want to say. The third part is the stripped down, here it is, point of your piece. The second and third parts work very well together. Try to pin down that first part, though. It's getting away from you. I like it, but there are some things that I don't think are necessary in this poem. Snip out some of your metaphors and save them for a rainy day, in another poem.
You use place so much and so importantly in the first part that I feel it's underused in your second part. Try to incorporate more of a sense of place in the second part.
That's really all I have to say. I realize I've said a lot about your style as a writer in this review, but I hope that you can glean something about this specific poem out of what I said. Sorry I rambled a bit :p
Anyway, happy review day, and keep poeting!
I love this, but I feel it gets off to a bad start.
I'd be remissed if I didn't say that the internal rhyme here isn't a little bit beautiful; I think the rhythm and it's rhyme is entirely how I like it. Although, like most times when I love it from that perspective, the diction is off forming a conclusion only influenced by the words and not the content. This poem, in my opinion, takes too long to reach anything of use, but at the same time is great because it merely sounds that way. We see this is most prevalent if we take it out of context; and analyze what the words actually mean, and you'll realize they make small things so complex that it's impossible to grab the images without looking at the definitions of each word.
1. the ground being inches from your forehead has what significance again?
2. In the second line, when using the definition to replace the words reads something like this 'My ankles covered with straw, shaded with parallel lines, in the roofs of seaweeds' which is gobbledygook (I love that word).
I also think this comes from someone who knows their way around a cliche, "knot my heart around my ribs every morning," but simply doesn't grasp that experienced writers find the medaphores in the imagery, directly from the same place they are gaining inspiration from, this makes it a refreshing, but still disappointing.
This is another thing I admire, the only explanation I can think of about why the character thinks the stars are in our world, is because he simply doesn't know. That is so subtle, yet so intuitive about your character that it is brilliant. Of course, the ambiguity when you compare them to lighthouses, if it was your intentions to be referring to lighthouses then you should have used a metaphor and not a simile, which again has me questioning whether I love this poem, or I merely like it.
Stanza three is so shockingly great that I feel like it should open the poem.
Okay, okay, I'll stop pretending. I love it.
The poem overall has a fresh amount of all literary techniques. The rhythm is on point, and does exactly what it should, change the way it is said. I have a couple of things I would do differently, but that is a matter of opinion. Great job, here.
Have a good day!
Hi Pompadour,
This is a cool poem, really cool. I love how you can imagine yourself as a tree. It's so cool.
Part 1
This has an amazing opening, "my ankles thatched, cross-hatched rooves of seaweed breathing green." - although watch the spelling (could be dismissed as typo) of 'rooves'. The thought of ankles being "thatched" is so imaginative.
I've also discovered a new word "effervescing"! You've also thought about the climate that the tree lives in, which is also imaginative.
Part 2
Talks about the uses for the tree, I love how you compare it to a 'light house', and makes you think of it having much the same property, as we know where we are; in the same way that a light house does.
"of a beast that has no name and has several and sometimes
none at all." What are you trying to say here? You contradict yourself while telling us two things at once, does it have a name?
Part 3
This is the part where i'm questioning if you are talking about a tree...
Are you? Please tell me, I'm a little confused.
But it's wonderfully written, and really nice to read,
Thank you,
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