Like:
A lost puppy
missing--
never found
free from will.
A sidewalk
without cracks--
creased--
crossed
skidding over edge.
A cup of tea for a sweet tooth
though I'm tasteless
& you're gone--
grown--
beyond me.
A lost horizon
carriage misgiven,
first tooth lost
left without
pillowed change.
A lost flame
church candle extinguished
but still smoking--
floating.
A bumblebee in Autumn
gone--
grown--
beyond me.
A first toke
smoked--
park bench under stars.
Left hungry
mouth parched--
pasty,
and clayed
but still smoking--
floating.
3 comments:
So different! :) Glad to see you experimenting.
At the end of this piece I felt in an existential mood. It was great this piece provoked that.
Some things I think worked particularly well:
The sidewalk stanza was a great image. It's not cracked but still ever so slightly distorted. It's great how imperfection rears its head even to uncracked sidewalks.
"First tooth lost/left without/ pillowed change."
It gives the sense of growing up. Also growing into disappointment.
The repetition of "gone-- grown-- beyond me" was interesting because I tried comparing tea to bumblebees and how the two, at least for me, represent two different seasons and how even in both, 'you' are 'beyond me'.
Ultimately, this piece pushes disappointment and a release at the end, but still floating ("hWhy am I on this Earth?")
In fact, upon more readings, I realize that I enjoy each stanza on its own or when paired with the one that it repeats.
All but one. The first stanza felt out of placea and less grey.
There was more optimism in the first stanza than in the entire piece and I felt a shift in emotion from it.
some parts of this I really liked, but some I found didn't work as well.
"a lost puppy
missing"--I find missing is redundant after just saying lost,
"free from will"
I don't get what you're trying to say
A sidewalk...
not sure about this verse...
can a sidewalk be creased? it's interesting...still not sure how i feel about this verse.
However I LOVE the next verse
A cup of tea for a sweet tooth
though I'm tasteless (LOVE THIS!)
not sure about the next two,
but I like the last stanza
"mouth parched
and clayed" especially.
So I think the idea is good, but you could make this piece stronger by changing/editing some of the verses.
I like the alliterations and I like the quipped style (like Mike, it's interesting to see you experiment new things), but I'm not too sure about the message. Is it alienation? Is it the feeling of not fitting, not having a place in the world anymore (like the bumblebee)?
It's interesting how I automatically took all the images and ideas presented as similes, whereas actually they're just exposed to the reader, and it's the reader's job to connect the dots, see what he needs or wants to see -- and they might not be anything at all, maybe it's just a chain of poetic thoughts. So in the end, the question above is probably useless.
As to the images themselves, I want there to be an underlying consistency in them, and this is what I've got. It feels very suburban at first: the puppy, the sidewalk, the cup of tea, the lost tooth. It almost feels like warped childhood memories. The church candle is problematic for me, it brings in a whole lot of other problems and ideas and concepts which clash with the others. The bumblebee itself I found good but random when related to the other stanzas, but then the growing up part I think acts as a kind of transition toward the last stanza, which I took as the present state, whoever was reliving those memories now grown up, smoking on a park bench, in whatever mood that stanza gives off (a kind of persistent melancholy, I'd say, although this is unclear).
All in all, I did like this. I like how you worked so many complex themes and concepts in such economy of words, but like Emlyn I feel like it could need more work to perfect the images and hone down on a cleared message.
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