last days

[amuse]

i have not
held you
though you're
warped
to me
in me for dear
life

-oh, if i only
i could
choose yours
over mine

where will
you go when you
fade from
me
when i no longer
see you grow
in my dreams?

will you stay
in the stars
or again scan
these horizons?

whose mini will
you become
and as
you grow
will you help
each other
shine?


her renal
function will be
better than mine
but i ask
i demand
i growl to know
what??? of her heart

will you be
her world
as you would
have been mine?

[blp]

A bit ordinary for one of yours, a bit lacking in anything to get hold of really, but some nice touches. I like the three question marks and the renal functions bit, though it comes out of nowhere. Wondering, in the second strophe, whether you want both th 'i' in the first line and the one in the second. Looks like a mistake.

fade from dreams, scan stars. These are clichés.

[amuse]

it is bad isn't it?! :nod:

i know it's really banal, but it's sort of deadening to find out you can't have a kid that you're carrying. so i think the deadness and bad poetry is better than making it good in this case. if that makes sense?

good to see you. will hopefully write something better soon.

edited it a bit but have to run/catch a shuttle for my micro class

[blp]

Good to see you too, but how awful for you. The only equivalent in my life was my then girlfriend having an early term abortion a few years ago and even that felt devastating. I'd have thought this must be much worse.

I see what you're saying and sort of relate to it. It's a bit like a micro version of the old 'what can poetry be after Auschwitz' question. Certainly the idea of writing some nice, well crafted little poem in the face of something frankly hellish seems pretty distasteful. But aren't you stuck if all you can do then is write something half baked instead?

I recommended Llorca's essay on Duende to Dailen recently and, at the risk of sounding fanatical about it, which I'm not, perhaps it might point a way out of this impasse. As for poetry responding to something hellish, off the top of my head there's Paul Celan on the Holocaust, Plath, Adrian Mitchell and Denise Levertov on Vietnam, bits of Rimbaud, Dante. Also might be relevant to look at Kathy Acker, especially Blood and Guts in Highschool, though she's a novelist, not a poet.
My own approach, in evidence a fair bit on this forum and I understand if it's not your cup of tea, would be not to try to write a poem at all, but to take notes on my state of mind and on what has happened. Chances are it'll end up a poem. And might even incorporate some of the above. The first strophe for instance is pretty good when you know what it's talking about. Perhaps you kept the subject matter vague to try to 'universalize', but I think we need orienting a bit. Plath shows how explicit you can be about your subject matter without seeming trite.
Of course it all may really still be too raw to deal with properly at all.

[amuse]

mm. am fascinated, just googled Llorca and found this (http://www.musicpsyche.org/Lorca-Duende.htm) and do appreciate your other suggestions, especially as they relate to history. love that subject and really need to broaden my awareness of poetry.

***
what you wrote helps. i haven't the notebook with me today, but after class and reading your comments was finally able to write - frankly horrific stuff. there's a lot of stench and sewage under all the ice here. but at least it's something. i'm really afraid of how i feel about all this...

***
thanks for understanding.

[blp]

A pleasure. 'Stench and sewage under all the ice'. That does sound like something - really something. Good luck wading in.

Nice googling. I hadn't read that essay myself in years and had fogotten just how amazing it is.

[jon1jt]

I might as well add my two cents; the poem is a bit stale, although its ordinary quality and 2-3 line structure works. Keep on writing-- good luck!!