Their limbs are knotted, coiled, and sleek.
Their voices are : tuba, bassoon, sousaphone.
They seethe with a dangerous sort of light,
dark and deep; red and blue hues.
Eyes like silk, eyes like landscape
look into them and you cross desert and valley
landing gracelessly in some ugly plain of desire.
There’s one with skin like a sugar cookie,
dusty brown and freckles like cinnamon.
And one with a face like a Grecian god:
jaw constantly clenched, perfectly squared.
It is not their faces, their arms that make you feel.
It lies in their sharp teeth and their sweat
In the way their lips form wide, steely smiles
Their coarse hands wringing out pain.
Inside of you: those humming, winged things that
Make you want to taste whatever they’re made of.
You can’t, ever.
Their animal souls call to other things
That aren’t, won’t ever, be you.
But in your stumbling inadequacy you smile without teeth;
These trivialities, the only beauty within or about them.
Their lives are tied to dust; their souls are stung with mediocrity
These words bind them to one sputtering moment
That is all they will ever be.
They sit in the upper left, their backs to you.
You gaze and want with all the pale lilac of your childish soul.
With just as much fervor, the feeling leaves;
scattering petals of stupefied shame in its wake.
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138,206 Literary Works • 672,083 Reviews
Dear Empress,
this poem reminded me of the Lila: An Inquiry into Morals philosophical novel by Robert M Pirsig, where similar internal events take place, but inside a man, and clothed in cold philosophical analysis instead of poetry.
He tries to fathom how, what makes this silly, dull, dumb, phoney woman Lila capable of making me wake up in a 'shameful plain of lust'? Is it some animal quality in her that transcends her intellectual and moral limitations? And what about me? When I cam controlled by these impulses - do I lose my humanity, or is this when I find it?
From here on, something happens with the rhythm: "Their lives are tied to dust; their souls are stung with mediocrity." As if the poem suddenly turns into a song, as if the bard whips out his instruments and starts strumming from this point onwards. Likewise this too: "And you gaze on and want with all the pale lilac of your childish soul." would only work with the relation to the other bits if a sudden change of the music's tempo would give it validity. IMO
To sum up: I love the way the poem starts unfolding by moving on from a specific situation to an increasingly generalized description of internal mechanics set into motion by this specific situation, we float there, we feel, and suddenly with clenched teeth the superego makes a comeback and stomps on the record, the music screeches, the objects of desire are tarred and feathered and put into the patty van, "nothing to see here, move along now, move along!"
Excellent
Wow. Wow! Nana, next time you want to criticize someone about words you don't know, maybe you want to spend two seconds googling it. Less keystrokes. Believe it or not, these are quite common instruments. The Sousaphone a kind of tuba that raps around you invented by John Philip Sousa. They are standard in brass bands, there is usually one somewhere in most schools, particularly American ones but not exclusively. There have been Sousaphones in a number of Simpson episodes, they're that common. You've probably seen one and just not known what they're called. Viol is not as standard in current popular culture, but certainly in the poetic vernacular, it's also knows as the Viola da Gamba, it's like a fretted cello used in Baroque music. Viol can also be used to refer to other members of the family, including the earlier double bass instruments. Shakespeare referred to them a number of times, and many poets after.
Empress, I like bassoon better than viol, because bassoons are just awesome and should be included in more poetry anyway, also it fits in with your sleek coiling dealy. Thankyou for keeping sousaphone, I am very much against dumbing things down and not challenging the reader, and really it wasn't that far of a stretch for the reader in the first place.
I liiiike this. It is like magic realism, if magic realism had a baby with Gymnopedie.
I like the balance of the words here, the three adjectives and the three instruments, and bonus points for choosing the weirder instruments, because God knows there are enough poems about women being cellos, and it captures this kind of askew exoticism. It is also like James Gleeson, surreal landscape in flesh, which works.
If you wanted to extend the musical analogy you could work from timbre before colour, colour at the edge of it. Red and blue is a visceral thing, am I right? Veins.
I don't quite see the silk tying in, a door or a map? 'Landing gracelessly in some ugly plain of desire" is one of my favourite lines. 'Look into them and you cross desert and valley' doesn't really move me one way or the other, but it's a transition line, maybe you don't want it as the focus.
Not bad quatrain, I like what you've done with the God. Thank you for not using the word 'chiseled'.
Also a good edit. Sharp teeth and sweat has a pleasing passing alliteration, like steely smiles.
Could expand on taste imagery, salty, steaming, this benign objectification. Again, good edit.
The line break obscured the meaning for me. I don't know how to balance it, but at the moment it's fragmented.
'smile without teeth' is good reed of body language, you're supporting your abstract ideas, this is like magic realism to me.
Jock existentialism. I like it. Ties in with the Ancient Greek thing. 'These trivialities, the only beauty within or about them' is cumbersome. I see your forging a quatrain, but it doesn't sit right. Be Sappho..well, Sappho some of the time, you have all the words and concepts under your belt, but try not to use more than you need. Sometimes it can be a compensation thing, you don't think your words are good enough so you put more down to make up for it. Your ideas, your words, they stand on their own, be proud. This is what editing is.
Again, these last lines could be toyed with, maybe, maybe not. It would be worth writing it with as few words as possible and then something in between and then the same number, just to see where you think the salient points are. Use the sound of it to cause points of tension and release, to control the flow, you do this through the rest of the poem, and it's a rare skill.
What I really like about this poem is that it observes, it takes from every day life, but likewise it has deeper meaning, it philosophizes from common human experience, which is clever. Well done. Keep poeticizing.
Haha, what a fun idea! I love the imagery and descriptions!
- Things that could be improved though...
* Structur, please chop the big stanza in to a few smaller ones, it makes it so much easier to read.
* Look over the punctuation once more, the were a few errors
I loved these two lines espacially much;
"It is not their faces, their arms that make you feel.
It lies in their sharp teeth and their sweat"
Good Luck & Keep Writing
// Demoness
Hey there
First of all, I absolutely love this poem! It's full to bursting (in a good way) with gorgeous imagery that really works. I especially love the lines
There was one line that confused me however: Some ugly of desire? I just wasn't sure what that meant, or if you meant something like an ugly place of desire or just ugly desire without the of.
Overall, though, absolutely brilliant work
Hi empress!
Their limbs are knotted, coiled, and sleek.
Their voices are : tuba, bassoon, sousaphone.
They glow with a dangerous sort of light, <-- glowing seems a bit strange here
dark and deep; red and blue hues. <-- why these colors in particular?
Eyes like silk, eyes like landscape <-- why silk? This doesn't seem to be explained at all, which is a pity since it's an interesting image!
look into them and you cross desert and valley
landing gracelessly in some ugly plane of desire. <-- I think you mean "plain" - unless you are referring to the geometrical sense?
There’s one with skin like a sugar cookie,
dusty brown and freckles like cinnamon.
And one with a face like a Grecian god. <-- I think you should expand just a little on this.
It’s not, not their faces, their arms that make you feel. <-- the "nots" trip this line up.
It lies in there sharp teeth and their sweat
It lies in their wide, steely smiles <-- use a different word than "lies." For instance, you can talk about the sweat clinging to their wide, steely smiles.
Their coarse hands wringing out pain.
Inside of you: those humming, winged things that
Make you want to taste whatever they’re made of.
You can’t, ever. Their animal souls call to other things <-- are you talking about the guys or the winged things? Right now, it seems you're talking about the winged things.
That aren’t and won’t ever be you.
But in your stumbling inadequacy you smile without teeth;
These trivialities, the only beauty within or about them.
Their lives are tied to dust; their souls are stung with mediocrity
These words bind them to one sputtering moment
That is all they will ever be.
They sit in the upper left, with their backs to you.
And you gaze on and want with all the pale lilac of your childish soul. <-- why lilac?
With just as much fervor, the feeling leaves;
scattering petals of stupefied shame in its wake.
So! I did like this poem. I loved how it summed up the whole PE experience and how guys can kind of twist your gut. It was wonderful!
Rather interesting, very interesting in fact. I'm not quite sure if I interpreted it right, but each to his own, correct? Anyway the technical thing I found was
First, I'm not sure what the last two instruments are. I believe that you mean viola and saxophone. If they are, you spelled them wrong and the viola is not a bass instrument. That would be a cello or a bass. Second, if they're real instruments, you forgot the 'and'. You need an 'and' at the last item of a list. You also need to add periods in your poem so the reader doesn't go on and on past the natural point to stop. I would go through your poem and do that, mostly because I'm way too lazy to do that.Also at the beginning you think there are three boys because of the three instruments, but it seems like there are only two afterward. I would also fix that and see how many you really want to compare.
I like the imagery that you used. It was really powerful and I could see these boys playing in my gym class. The title pretty much says it all, doesn't it?
I enjoyed reading it and I look forward to reading more of your work. I hope I helped somewhat and this poem calls for an instant follow.
Ciao! I hope you have a great weekend!
-Nana