this old feeling

[blp]

it’s poison and you develop
a taste for it as the palate matures
you like old cheese and sour things
you like being hit and the sting
of being chided and hated

or else it’s because one’s a child
and still likes the comforting, rich
smell of piss on one’s blanky
burnt toast, the residual bedroom
pong of defecation

knowing I will never be clean
who threw the meat in the source
before the villagers’ faces turned green
and maggots were found in the well
and they found you drinking bleach

[Riesa]

it’s poison and you develop
a taste for it as the palate matures
you likes old cheese and sour things
you likes being hit and the sting
of being chided and hated

or else it’s because one’s a child
and still likes the comforting, rich
smell of piss on one’s blanky
burnt toast, the residual bedroom
pong of defecation

knowing I will never be clean
who threw the meat in the source
before the villagers’ faces turned green
and maggots were found in the well
and they found you drinking bleach



ouch. disturbing! :eek:


you likes old cheese and sour things
you likes being hit and the sting
of being chided and hated

that made me think of Gollum.

shrunken, twisted, given up person, reveling in bitterness. what's it, a vision of a mass-murderer or the inner soliloquy of the crazy cat lady? your poetry is humanly raw, blp, I have to admire the fierce ugliness. It's a truthful image you present, albeit a miserably depressing one. (at least that's how I see it)

[blp]

Well...I can see why it might seem depressing, but it's really just about degrees of poisonousness and how we accept some (rotting cheese, booze) and revile others, see a taste for some as indicating maturity, while a predilection for others is seen as infantile and, in the last stanza, treat some as impurity (bacteria) and others as pure or purifying (bleach), when both can kill. Inherent in all this is, and what was really on my mind, is our relationship to pain, how we accept or believe we should be able to accept, some forms of pain as part of growing up and perhaps even like it, but how that relationship to pain, perhaps because it's a very delicate balance, can tip over into something really damaging.