You Are Here

[Delta40]

Don't leave.

Your face is overcast
with that clouded look
when air is sucked outwards
and smothered by bleakness.

A sign of troubled times
lies bent and broken
at the end of the street
where a black dog barks.

You pour over emotions
as if sorrowful wounds
might be washed free
of the slough, to no avail.

The buoyancy of life
is torments cruel laughter
as your sensibility gushes
into the gutter.

Conduits of wretchedness
eddy you through sumps
like putrid human waste
where only the forsaken float.

I pray when it has passed
your blighted hope,
your unsheltered suffering
will echo and shimmer like a
subterranean rainbow.

Remain here.

[everyadventure]

There's a great deal of caring and empathy evident here.

[Jerrybaldy]

I enjoyed it Delta, but it lacked Deltaesqueness. It felt less personal . IMHO. ( trademark Bar)

[Delta40]

Thanks both. I thought it was personal but maybe because it wasn't located in the kitchen it didn't feel that way for you Jerry.

[PrinceMyshkin]

The meaning of these lines


The buoyancy of life
is torments cruel laughter

isn't immediately clear to me but my intuition is that there is something very deep (and somewhat scary) here.

I can't agree at all with the poster who thought this was less personal than other of your poems: I thought it was plenty personal albeit controlled with great dignity. It is a terribly, terribly sad (and angry?) poem.

[DocHeart]

I pray when it has passed
your blighted hope,
your unsheltered suffering
will echo and shimmer like a
subterranean rainbow.




I started reading "You Are Here" thinking of those bird's-eye-view plans full of squares that hang on the walls of large buildings, with a red dot somewhere.

I don't know how personal it is, Delta40. But I know that your last stanza can speak to a lot of people who wonder what all their accumulated sadness will come to. If it ends up shimmering "like a / subterranean window", then I guess it's not such a bad deal.

Always a pleasure to read you.

Regards,
DH

[Delta40]

The meaning of these lines


The buoyancy of life
is torments cruel laughter

isn't immediately clear to me but my intuition is that there is something very deep (and somewhat scary) here.

I can't agree at all with the poster who thought this was less personal than other of your poems: I thought it was plenty personal albeit controlled with great dignity. It is a terribly, terribly sad (and angry?) poem.

Now you're scaring me Prince! I wasn't sure about those two lines but they fit for me when I wrote the poem. Perhaps it would be better to consider what cruel laughter for the tormented sounds like.

[Delta40]

I started reading "You Are Here" thinking of those bird's-eye-view plans full of squares that hang on the walls of large buildings, with a red dot somewhere.

I don't know how personal it is, Delta40. But I know that your last stanza can speak to a lot of people who wonder what all their accumulated sadness will come to. If it ends up shimmering "like a / subterranean window", then I guess it's not such a bad deal.

Always a pleasure to read you.

Regards,
DH

You're spot on actually Doc (pardon the pun). I was thinking of those big red arrows that you see on a shopping mall map! Very astute of you. I agree the last stanza speaks in the way you suggest. We are all capable of rationalizing when our situation hits a downhill slope...

[blank|verse]

There are some very evocative figurative moments in this, Delta, which I think work very well.

The 'black dog' can be cliched, but is used in a literal sense here to good effect. This stanza in particular reminds me of (dare I say?) one of my favourite poets, Charles Simic. There's something disconcerting here, achieved through a mixture of the real and figurative.

I didn't like the solitary first and last lines and don't think you need them; nor 'to no avail' at the end of stanza 4.

And I think the latter stanzas get a bit carried away on their own rhetorical flourishes. You might like to compare them with the first stanzas, which are more simple, but more effective.

But overall, it's an imaginative piece with some emotional clout.

[MorpheusSandman]

There's something disconcerting about the somewhat distant 2nd person perspective (which is where I think the "less personal" criticism comes from; it's more an issue of perspective) and the immense depression described throughout the piece. It's that quality of looking in on suffering but being a bit helpless to stop it that provides the tension.

What I'm less sure of is the structural progression here. Stanza 3 would follow 1 much more smoothly than 2 does, which interrupts the focus on the person you're describing. In fact, I think this is the biggest flaw throughout the piece in general. When you establish a person as the focus but then begin stanzas by immediately placing focus on external elements (a sign of broken times, the buoyancy of life, conduits of wretchedness, etc.) it too abruptly changes where our focus is and it can be difficult to relate it back to the subject. So you might think about reordering the stanzas and the wording a bit, perhaps creating a smoother transition from the focus on the individual to those metaphors/flourishes that describe the individual and their situation.

[Delta40]

There's something disconcerting about the somewhat distant 2nd person perspective (which is where I think the "less personal" criticism comes from; it's more an issue of perspective) and the immense depression described throughout the piece. It's that quality of looking in on suffering but being a bit helpless to stop it that provides the tension.

What I'm less sure of is the structural progression here. Stanza 3 would follow 1 much more smoothly than 2 does, which interrupts the focus on the person you're describing. In fact, I think this is the biggest flaw throughout the piece in general. When you establish a person as the focus but then begin stanzas by immediately placing focus on external elements (a sign of broken times, the buoyancy of life, conduits of wretchedness, etc.) it too abruptly changes where our focus is and it can be difficult to relate it back to the subject. So you might think about reordering the stanzas and the wording a bit, perhaps creating a smoother transition from the focus on the individual to those metaphors/flourishes that describe the individual and their situation.

Thanks MS. I will edit it after some thought. Very useful review