a thank you to tae-tae

[amuse]

this fragrant
death has saved
my life

presaged by white hearses
rolling last week down
broad street

and eulogized at your
sister's wedding -
"love is kind...
the greatest of these..."
we are not kind
we were not
great we were lumps
of coal
and i believe that
though others
may find us more
sparkling than
the brightest of diamonds
it will be a long while
before we will
hang out our stockings
for fear of more
blackened futures and
bittersweet memories

but i am glad
that she is vapid and
not pretty, simply
compliant and not all that
exemplary once
bed sheets clothe
her, be they jersey,
flannel, or the
finest egyptian cotton.

it makes it a little
easier to bear...though
it's no easy task to forgive
myself for loving a man
who can order and nurse
a drink -
and thereby lose
his child. no easy task.

new york was naked on
saturday i hadn't seen
it since the towers fell
and five thousand
people were erased in moments.

on friday i found myself
naked and free
exposed and dead. i cried then
as i cried saturday,
(mostly for my idiocy)
then returned to my ugly dirty
beautiful town where
nothing's as insane as new york,
as tangy as san francisco
where one in five women
are depressed and
where i can die a
fragrant peaceful
glorious death.

i have never
looked forward
to my
next incarnation
with so much
anticipation.

[mono]

Wow, I stand speechless!
I love much of the color usage, symbolic, I think, for multiple ideals:

presaged by white hearses
rolling last week down
broad street
. . . and the concept of delivering a eulogy at the wedding. Afterwards, many of the casual recognitions I find essential to mention; at a death (but of not necessarily another human), the sentimental, detailed moments tend to mean the most.
I hope you take it as a compliment, amuse, but never has your work sounded like something Pablo Neruda would admire, and wish he wrote it himself. :)

[amuse]

i didn't realize his work was posted here already - didn't remember hearing of him before, so thank you :) :) for introducing me to another poet, mono.

i found these links. :) will also check out the posts (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/search.php?searchid=45757) in poems and poetry.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~agreene/Neruda.html
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-bio.html

also mono, i was a bit worried after posting that maybe i was too mean, too personal, had shared too much of my ugliness in this poem. a b****, in short. i'm glad you found the poem likable, nonetheless. you are very forgiving. thank you so much.

oh gawd. now i'm really - um? - really umdumbumfounded. just googled for more info on him. hadn't realized...

[mono]

also mono, i was a bit worried after posting that maybe i was too mean, too personal, had shared too much of my ugliness in this poem.
Argh, do not say that! :D
All poetry, especially free-verse poetry, I think should consist of the most raw of emotion; the more real it seems, the more a poet captivates the reader. Emily Dickinson, for example, had roughly four poems published in her lifetime, so one could assume that she intended none of her other poems for others' eyes; she wrote personally for herself, encorporating the deepest, unbiased feelings, not trying to impress readers, and now, after her death, many consider her one of the best poets to have ever lived.

[blp]

also mono, i was a bit worried after posting that maybe i was too mean, too personal, had shared too much of my ugliness in this poem.

Agree with Mono. I think that kind worry is often a good sign. Anyway, at first, reading this, I assumed most of it was invented and subtly surreal. Didn't like the bit about the man nursing his drink and losing his child - seemed like a loss of control somehow - too obviously oddball, a break in the flow. But perhaps it was simply based on fact. Hmm. Also not sure about some of the NY lines. The repetition of the word 'naked' doesn't work for me. But there's an awful lot to like. Especially the bit about the woman being vapid and not pretty and the whole bit about coal and stockings.

[amuse]

oh! hadn't realized the repition - you're right. :) nice call. the man did nurse his drink/lose his little one...i liked being able to use "nurse" to contrast who should have been watched. the NY lines were awkard, i agree, but i'd just been and it was pretty emotional, seeing the...um...fenestration in the skyline, i felt a certain kinship with the finality of the towers end and my relationship. so they were just sort of appeared at the point where i saw that and a new tomorrow. the surreal bit...sometimes my stuff's not that clear and ends up being more of a watercolor than a snapshot...sort of hard to be effective, at that point i end up exchanging mood for form. of course that doesn't always work, glug!

this helps...will now take a good look at this one after reading your comments.

i so appreciate your critique! blp, thank you thank you thank you.

[blp]

the surreal bit...sometimes my stuff's not that clear and ends up being more of a watercolor than a snapshot...sort of hard to be effective, at that point i end up exchanging mood for form. of course that doesn't always work, glug!.
I think this is one of the most interesting and tricky things about poetry - and maybe art in general - this problem of how clear to be, the problem of getting from the initial blurt to something that works all the way through without it becoming dully overdetermined. Christ it's befuddling.

Yeats:
A line may take us hours,
But if it does not seem a moment's thought
Then all our stitching and unstitching
Has been for nought



i so appreciate your critique! blp, thank you thank you thank you.It's a pleasure.