A Prayer for a Pitcher

This is what happens when I procrastinate for NaNo. 'Tis not pretty, I know.

Poor, pitiful pitcher. I wonder, do you have senses?

I hope you can’t taste - there are some awful, glompy things we’ve placed in you.

I hope you can’t smell - our concoctions are far from vanilla-scented.

I hope you can’t feel - oh, the long hours frozen in the refrigerator.

I hope you can’t see - see what a mess you are, we are, it all is.

I hope you can’t hear - can’t hear the things we say, the gossip and the vulgar tongue.

I hope you can’t think - because without a mind to translate it all, the awfulness would slip away undetected.

And finally, I hope you can’t live, don’t live, are unable - because life is a curse. A sometimes blessed curse, but a pain-filled, terror-ridden, horror-containing curse.

And, really, you can’t know what you’re missing - you see, that is the key. If you have never experienced life, you will not miss it.

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” This is a lie. When your life is loveless, you don't crave love. When your life once was but is not, then you’re empty, full of nothing. And when you have experienced something, nothing becomes pain. Nothing is only truly blissful nothing when nothing is all you know.

So there, poor, pitiful pitcher, what I pray on you is simple: feel nothing, know nothing, be nothing. Only then will you remain whole.

loveness, ultraviolet <3

Comments & reviews · 3
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I really liked this piece. It started out looking like a random apostrophe to a beverage container, then became a pretty profound meditation on life and existence. You also maintained your unique tone throughout, keeping it informal but not flippant; poetic but not overly wordy. Two small nitpicks:

I more so hope you can’t think - because without a mind to translate it all, the awfulness would slip away undetected.


"I more so hope" is awkwardly worded.

When your life is loveless, you crave not love.


"You crave not love" sounds pretty formal and doesn't really fit with the overall tone of the piece. A simple "you don't crave love" might be better.

Once again, great job!

~Warrior Princess

Random avatar
ireylcadence
Review

Creative. The best ideas can come from the most random things :)

Certainly very good questions to ask a pitcher. I enjoyed the smooth transition from slightly comical to much more profound. For a short piece, this is very good, but I'd love to see you expand on it--not in length, necessarily, because this seems like it needs to be shorter to be more effective, but develop the ideas more. Prove that life is such a struggle. Add examples, more imagery.

Keep writing!

User avatar
ErBear
Review
ErBear wrote a review · Thu Nov 18, 2010 11:48 pm

This is such an interesting piece.

At first, I thought it was a baseball pitcher, as in a human, because you started with the senses.

And then, as your story/poem went on, I realized that you humanized a regular, everyday object and opened our eyes to what it might feel, see, hear, taste, and smell.

It made me think :)

Awesome piece! :D

~Tay~



Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
— Carl Sandburg