no title

[blp]

when you see someone smile you thought you didn’t like
because someone was nice to them, you see inside

to that grey small place inside their face, the hollowness
that makes them someone, not a thing to be despised,

that forlornness that can always be woken to pleasure
from contact, that was always rent, necessarily, with

openness and yearning, soft, blinking eyes that always
remain vacant for kindnesses, their own and those that

appear out of nowhere, but never did from you who now
sucks sourly in a sudden dry, solitary shame, remember

only that the neglect you enacted was born of another,
of your own soft eyes, emptiness and imagining mind.

[Cellar Door]

Really lovely poem. I like it a lot... it's good advice.

On a lighter note, try working in customer service this time of year. I bet you'd be singing a different tune (j/k) :lol:

[cogs]

love the sentiment... i want to understand it:
is the grey place the smile or the eyes?
if the eyes are vacant for kindnesses, then how is it their own kindnesses?
'but i try to want what?' is at the bottom, which i didn't know if it was part
of the poem(i thought unlikely because of the horizontal line)
again, the subject is excellent, and i understand it to mean regret from seeing someone get love from someone else, since you didn't see what the new person saw in them?

[PrinceMyshkin]

I wish I had a better (or any) understanding of


another
of your own soft eyes,

because I admire the rest of this so much - and commend you for the seeming spontaneity of the form.

[blp]

Really lovely poem. I like it a lot... it's good advice.

On a lighter note, try working in customer service this time of year. I bet you'd be singing a different tune (j/k) :lol:

:D Thanks. I used to work in the exhibition shop at the Tate Gallery. There are some situations – even in art galleries – where no amount of good will or imagination can keep the misanthropy at bay.



love the sentiment... i want to understand it:
is the grey place the smile or the eyes?

Thanks.

No, it was just my notion of the life going on behind all that.



if the eyes are vacant for kindnesses, then how is it their own kindnesses?
I meant that kindness was openness.



'but i try to want what?' is at the bottom, which i didn't know if it was part
of the poem(i thought unlikely because of the horizontal line)
No, it's my signature.



again, the subject is excellent, and i understand it to mean regret from seeing someone get love from someone else, since you didn't see what the new person saw in them?
That's pretty much it, except that all the references to vacancy, space and so on are partly about potential. It's not so much that anyone could have seen anything in the person who receives the act of kindness at first. It's that the act of kindness was based on being able to imagine that potential – even perhaps in the face of a person with an unpromising expression.



I wish I had a better (or any) understanding of

Quote:
another
of your own soft eyes,
because I admire the rest of this so much - and commend you for the seeming spontaneity of the form.

Were you reading 'another' to mean another person? I could see that being an area of confusion. I realise now there should be a comma after 'another'. I meant, 'another neglect' - that the addressee was neglecting others because they were neglecting themself in the same way –*neglecting their own openness, in this case to better possibilities; a failure of imagination. Does that explain it?

*EDIT* Now I see what it looked like before. 'Another of your own soft eyes'. Doh! Yes, wouldn't have made much sense.

Thanks all. Glad you enjoyed it.

*EDIT* Or, as Daniel Johnston put it, deathlessly,

Friendliness is very contagious
The trouble is that many of us
wait to catch it from someone else
instead of giving the other fellow a chance.

[firefangled]

when you see someone smile you thought you didn’t like
because someone was nice to them, you see inside

to that grey small place inside their face, the hollowness
that makes them someone, not a thing to be despised,

that forlornness that can always be woken to pleasure
from contact, that was always rent, necessarily, with

openness and yearning, soft, blinking eyes that always
remain vacant for kindnesses, their own and those that

appear out of nowhere, but never did from you who now
sucks sourly in a sudden dry, solitary shame, remember

only that the neglect you enacted was born of another,
of your own soft eyes, emptiness and imagining mind.

Excellent poem! The couplets worked very well, I thought.

I have always thought we humans share a necessary sadness (is this what is called original sin?). We share an emptiness from somewhere or sometime that is beyond contact now.

All this to be filled, to be made joyous.

[blp]

Hi firefangled. Thank you!

I agree that there's a sadness and it's very pervasive, if not all-pervasive, but I think the emptiness is something more neutral - Lao Tzu's middle way; Aristotle's mean; and the centre is empty - to be filled, certainly, then emptied again.

[white camellia]

that forlornness that can always be woken to pleasure
from contact, that was always rent, necessarily, with

openness and yearning, soft, blinking eyes that always
remain vacant for kindnesses, their own and those that

Hi, this poem is intriguing. I think you captured the sense of 'emptiness' and its potentials. 'Forlornness be woken to pleasure from contact' - in what way - there seems much to think about or nothing at all if it's just meaningless repetition of certain course. Maybe the poem would express more with fewer words?

[Shadow Poet]

Although the poem was quite short there was nothing about it that said too little. I think at times like these I truly appreciate what a poet such as yourself has conjured up and I am satisfied with your presentation of thought. Wonderful!

[blp]

Thanks, white camellia and shadow poet. You might be right white camellia, it might be suffering from a lack of economy. It also might be that I'd have done better to be more specific about the incident that inspired it. Don't know just yet.

[symphony]

I like it just as it is. It flows and reads wonderfully for me.

[blp]

Thank you, symphony.

[SleepyWitch]

I've read this a couple of times over the past weeks now and I still don't understand it, but I like it a lot, especially the last 2 stanzas :) will read it slowly a couple more times to make sense of it.
by the way, you've been shamefully neglecting the bad and weird poems :)

[blp]

I've read this a couple of times over the past weeks now and I still don't understand it,


The hollowness is where thinking and feeling takes place. I think what I'm getting at is that, for something to be going on inside a person, there has to be space inside them for it to happen. That space is what makes someone human, someone who can be empathised with. The smile gives us a sudden access to it or to awareness of it, of something going on behind the eyes. But, in a small way, that awareness comes a little late for the person who'd already made a harsh judgment. They feel a little ashamed of not having operated on the assumption of the other's humanity, of having judged them rather treating them well in such a way as to bring out their potential for feeling, which could have been pleasurable to both of them. But the reason this happened was that the judger neglected his/her own interiority.



by the way, you've been shamefully neglecting the bad and weird poems :)

That's kind of you to say. ;)

Thanks for commenting, sleepy.

[Riesa]

Hi blp, I love the first two and a half couplets. I am sympathetically engaged immediately with both the observer and the observed. To me, these lines illustrate that humanity we all lack at times, and strive for a bit of self-awareness and enlightenment when it would be so easy to dismiss the more intricate and interesting layers of a person by remaining insensitive to another’s interior. There is a softness in your words that is almost holy.


I’m not as fond of “that was always rent,” as the rest, rent seems violent here but after that, the rest seems to fall back into that calm observational wisdom that this poem is so full of.


I'm not as certain of the meaning in the last two couplets, I think that it is self-criticism, and an acknowledgement that there is a oneness to us all?

I wanted to comment without reading the responses to it, now I'll read what everyone else has said and see if any of my questions are answered.

I like it very much all in all.

[kiz_paws]

when you see someone smile you thought you didn’t like
because someone was nice to them, you see inside

to that grey small place inside their face, the hollowness
that makes them someone, not a thing to be despised,

that forlornness that can always be woken to pleasure
from contact, that was always rent, necessarily, with

openness and yearning, soft, blinking eyes that always
remain vacant for kindnesses, their own and those that

appear out of nowhere, but never did from you who now
sucks sourly in a sudden dry, solitary shame, remember

only that the neglect you enacted was born of another,
of your own soft eyes, emptiness and imagining mind.

Lovely, blp.
Somehow the poem seems very suitable at this particular time of year, when customers queue up for holiday bargains, and how everyone has the right to pleasant, courteous service, not judgement. :)

[blp]

I’m not as fond of “that was always rent,” as the rest, rent seems violent here but after that, the rest seems to fall back into that calm observational wisdom that this poem is so full of.

I know what you mean. Can't exactly remember why I put it in, but I was aware of it at the time and felt I had a reason.



I'm not as certain of the meaning in the last two couplets, I think that it is self-criticism, and an acknowledgement that there is a oneness to us all?


There's self-criticism in the penultimate couplet, or even a sort of self-disgust. The last couplet is sort of critical, but more constructively. It's saying that rather than compound the problem of judging someone else harshly by then judging yourself harshly for doing so, it would be better to recognise that you only neglected the other person's humanity because you were already neglecting your own - that the same space, softness, potential that is in the other is in you. It's supposed to be kind rather than critical.



Lovely, blp.
Somehow the poem seems very suitable at this particular time of year, when customers queue up for holiday bargains, and how everyone has the right to pleasant, courteous service, not judgement.

Oddly enough, the thought that sparked this did come to me in a shop. I was waiting in line at the checkout and was looking at a checkout girl who seemed kind of blank, switched off, dull. The guy next to her said something nice to her and her face suddenly came alive.

Thanks to you both.

[kiz_paws]

It's saying that rather than compound the problem of judging someone else harshly by then judging yourself harshly for doing so, it would be better to recognise that you only neglected the other person's humanity because you were already neglecting your own - that the same space, softness, potential that is in the other is in you. It's supposed to be kind rather than critical. What a beautiful thought! :nod:

Oh, if only the world could think like poets.... we'd be so much better off **SIGH**

[this sentiment gets me into trouble with my hubby, who has a linear brain for the most part, and I say so tongue-in-cheek.... enough said, I am crashing your poem -- I may blog about this discussion he & I have now and then ...]
~K♥zzo

[Riesa]

Imagine how the guy would feel if he knew that his kind word inspired a poem.

[blp]

Oh, if only the world could think like poets.... we'd be so much better off **SIGH**

I agree. With one or two notable (http://autonom.motpol.nu/index.php/2008/07/22/radovan-karadzic-selected-poems/) exceptions (http://www.pamayres.com/).



[this sentiment gets me into trouble with my hubby, who has a linear brain for the most part, and I say so tongue-in-cheek.... enough said, I am crashing your poem -- I may blog about this discussion he & I have now and then ...]
~K♥zzo

Quite alright.



Imagine how the guy would feel if he knew that his kind word inspired a poem.

Yeah, but I'm not going to tell him. I can tell just by looking at him the guy's a jerk. (kidding)

[kiz_paws]

Oh I had to check out those "notable exceptions" you slipped in there, blp. :D

Dear me, the second one made me smile.

Point taken. :lol:

[blp]

Point taken. :lol:

;) Maybe the point is, if only all poets could think like poets.