Walking In/With Dream (A Short Narrative Poem)

[MorpheusSandman]

Preface:

I know many won't read this simply due to its length; it's difficult to ask strangers to invest any kind of real time into something you've created. But what I offer in return is a work that I've spent the past 2.5 months in conception and creation. I've sweated over every line, created a very challenging (for myself) format, and generally tried to write the best poem that I could at this time with my greatly limited abilities. I realize that I use a very neoclassical (some may say 'archaic') diction, but hopefully that won't be an obstacle for people in connecting with what I'm saying.

Walking In/With Dream

1 Verses per the dusky guise I’ve written:
Settled now beneath the gaze of mother’s
Edge, horizon crested eyes of others’
Witness, singed with amber haze, to listen
5 Calmly for the call for all to cover;
Canvassed now with mellow cloak of dying
Double lux’ry, he will soon be lying
Down in night, embraced by Earthly lover.
Skies of endless seas in play with ark of
10 Life, who dwell in darkness daily ever
Lost, and I who ‘bove all seem to err worse
Love her still and only wish a spark of
Light for inspiration soon; but never
Would I’ve looked for such a story perverse.
15 With eyes and mind returned from majesty
To dwell within a cell (but by whose word?),
With self and mind in umbral mantle cast,
Return my eyes towards sepultured day;
The night sky ‘rayed majestically in dark
20 With stars enclosed in deepest sapphire blue
As if all time had stilled the ocean depths;
Beyond all senses free, as well from laws
That rule all else; the mystery, if solved,
It does not cease to awe those well aware
25 And I, though awed, still pow’rless to do else
But fixedly admire from afar.
To bed and sleep I soon descended then
To seek some ease for weakened mind, and peace.
In twilight mind was sleeping silence rent;
30 In chaos born the shaking bellow waked.
With eyes downcast I, shocked, then saw the cause;
A figure standing in the shadows at
The end of my bed, cloaked in brightest black,
It opened yawn the cloak revealing night;
35 Within the welkin cloak I was devoured.
Floating on upwards through clouds interrupted by planets and
Stars; atmospheres I ascended through heavens imagined but,
Then, only in dreams, and, stalling, soon was stopped
Amidst the black engulfed in ether’s womb.
40 In placid waters dry I swam a void;
Surrounded all and nothing ever prime
Until a chime then sounded and appeared
The figure; One with all within and out
With just a penetrating presence marked.
45 And I would ask of where and how I was;
The air it swallowed whole my sightless words.
By thought the stranger spoke and nothing said;
The great enigma was itself; by sense
Received intent that in the prime I dwelt.
50 The highest high, the Genesis of all;
Of nothing, everything composed complete;
It’s here I wished to be and grasp a light
From utter darkness; see from there to here.
I downward cast my eyes and mind and saw
55 The ark that held within myself asleep;
‘So this must surely be a dream.” I thought.
‘So this must then be Dream.” I knew, and feared;
An Endless being gathered me and rushed
Me to his realm with myst’ry hidd’n intent.
60 This freedom vague, uncertain, terr’bly free,
Unstable, waver, grasp illusions round
In dance and sing disharmony and with
A thunder deaf’ning diss’nance strike me down.
Towards a light and tunnel do I flee,
65 Though strained to progress in the drowning void.
I gaze into a darkened mirror shine;
A guise stares back and lures me to the edge
With eyes of gold, a witness under sea,
A haze of calm upon the crested ledge
70 With voice of richest tone that calls to me
Within the penult of the living night,
The deathly polar of the solar day;
I fall through ages, born upon a bay,
I land in flooding tears and blinding light
75 That strikes my senses, lost to rage, I see
A world of life around, a painful sledge,
In love I’m hammered into raging seas,
Between two worlds I am the chosen wedge;
The lust’rous mirror dark too watches mine.
80 Now fled I’m captive; held within a cell
As harsh notes strike my ears they grind and grate
In horrid song as shadows dance around.
A perfect base existence I now live,
All stable, sound, all tangible and plain.
85 This realm, all too well known to me, I have
Returned a wayward infant, still confused.
A rustic chime then sounded so to mark
The advent of this journey’s weaver near.
The king of dreams then towers over me,
90 The monolithic presence bleakly stares;
So deathly pale in face with eyes of pitch
Abyss and inf’nite depth; within contained
The chaos and eternal night; A verse
That turns to one within those spheres.
95 His cloak was of his eyes in every kind.
In sleep his realm to rule; creating dreams
And nightmares for all living creatures here.
Within his fists he held the dust of fear.
The fear and pain within me seethed; a sea
100 In rage with pleading eyes I looked to him,
Through blind and crying mind to him I wailed:
“What judgment sentenced mine and others’ lives;
Forever left to wander, ever lost,
Forever left to search for soothing love,
105 Forever left to wonder without light?
And do I ask too much if I would ask
To fill and so no longer feel the void?”
Fettered feet, broken mind, shattered will, crying eyes, praying hands;
In these things I was held in requests of the being in watch.
110 “These revelations that you seek are not
Of mine to give.” He said in midnight tone.
“Then what of all this journey through the prime
And chaos nightmare space?” I shrilly asked.
“You sought the source for inspiration nigh;
115 I brought you there upon your own request.”
“No better am I for your gift! Why can’t
You just bestow upon me talents great?
You gave your boon to Shakespeare and to Hou;
From comic dreams on a midsummer’s night
120 To Tempest spells; A time to live and time
To die, to youthful red balloons in flight.”
“In polar truths you seek beyond your kin,
In Gaian ways precise, and like you are
For wanting else; your revelations don’t
125 Reveal a truth more than exchange a myth
For myth. Upon a trivial path you stand,
So choose the center, faithful ever more.
The lux’ry that you seek’s too burdensome
Right now. With quiet patience wait until
130 The day your great white whale appears to hunt.”
Dawn then broke and all illusion vanished;
The opened sphere looked on the yawning Earth,
Rising with the hours, darkness banished
And marked by steps, the journey given birth,
135 Cresting the horizon, singed with fire,
That burned the vivid colors in the sky,
Reaching t’wards that richest heav’nly spire.
My tears the warmth then kissed so softly dry.
Looking t’wards that double lux’ry heaven
140 I saw the king of dreams sail into day.
I was struck then, by epiph’any leaven,
As like the Mary C’leste he cast away.
Lost in twilight’s eye, the piercing gaze,
I’d live and love; in dawn break guise’s haze.

[Alexander III]

This poem deserves to be bumped!!!

I will need a bit to organize my thoughts in order to properly reply to this piece.

[Buh4Bee]

Wow! is this dense. I had a hard time catching a line to keep me moving. It seems to be about the lose of your lady and the mourning you continue to suffer through or are trying to move on from.

Not sure what A3 means by bumped, but I guess, he'll fill you in later.

[PrinceMyshkin]

You're right, I'm afraid, that the neoclassic diction proved a stumbling block, for me at least, beyond which this is so dense with metaphor piled on metaphor that I couldn't untangle it.

A possibly minor issue: I googled "Hou" in search of someone deserving to be on a par with Shakespeare but found no obvious choice: a particle physicist I hadn't heard of before?

[tailor STATELY]

Beautiful nugget plucked from the ether. Well worth reading, even by one such as I (I avoid longer poetic forms, to my detriment and chagrin). I dialed up my word magnification to 150 % and read your poem many times to sample the richness of your prose.


Preface:

I know many won't read this simply due to its length; it's difficult to ask strangers to invest any kind of real time into something you've created. But what I offer in return is a work that I've spent the past 2.5 months in conception and creation. I've sweated over every line, created a very challenging (for myself) format, and generally tried to write the best poem that I could at this time with my greatly limited abilities. I realize that I use a very neoclassical (some may say 'archaic') diction, but hopefully that won't be an obstacle for people in connecting with what I'm saying.
I read your piece as an elegant, eloquent, not altogether loquacious, tale by/of a sequacious (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sequacious) poet.
from thefreedictionary: se·qua·cious (s-kwshs)
adj.
1. Persisting in a continuous intellectual or stylistic direction: "I make these notes, but am tired of notes . . . I want something sequacious now & robust" (Virginia Woolf).

Your archaic word play does not detract from your piece IMHO; it sets a stage that engenders all poets (past/present/future) who have become bereft of their muse, bringing a timelessness to your poem that I appreciate.


“You sought the source for inspiration nigh;
115 I brought you there upon your own request.”

Brings to mind a fragment of scripture: "... ask and ye shall receive; knock and it shall be opened unto you..."; And a perhaps an older saying to accompany it: Be careful for what you wish/pray for.

Thank you MS for sharing, and for A3 in bumping so that newbies like me might be able to appreciate hidden works. (How many more gems need digging out I wonder aloud unheard.)

[MorpheusSandman]

@Alexander: Thanks for the bump. I was rather disappointed when I posted this... geez, over a year ago and nobody replied. As I said in my PM to you I now see the flaws in it even if I'm most proud of the fact I got it written at all. I look forward to your more in depth comments.

@Jersea: He bumped this thread to the top; I posted this in December of '08. Yes, it's a very dense piece on most levels which, as I read it now, mostly reveals an enthusiastic poet in over his head. I don't think the diction needed to be that complex, twisted, and archaic. Too often it hurts rather than helps. But the fact that you interpreted against my intention is precisely what I wanted; I wanted it to be open. I had some friends read it as a parable about death, another read it as an abstract dream, another who caught my allusion to Gaiman's character read it as a pretty straight narrative; so if the difficulty of the language and form accomplished anything it's offering an interpreted ambiguity that I definitely wanted.

@Prince: Could you tell I just finished reading Paradise Lost when I wrote this. :D I Immediately jumped on the possibilities of an epic in blank verse and considering how, well, minor my offering is and what difficulty I had writing a mere 144 lines I gained an enormous respect for Milton's epic.

Hou is a reference to Hou Hsiao-hsien; a personal favorite director of mine. A Time to Live & Time to Die is his first masterpiece and "youthful red balloons in flight" is a reference to his latest masterpiece called "Flight of the Red Balloon". In juxtaposing Hou with Shakespeare I essentially used two artists in two different eras, cultures, languages, mediums, with two very different levels of notoriety in my attempt to span the greatest breadth of artistic creativity.

@Tailor: A sincere thanks for your appreciation. I'm glad the diction wasn't a barrier to at least some readers. I definitely wanted to give the piece a certain remoteness so I'm glad you picked up on that "timelessness".

I definitely had the "ask and you shall receive/be careful what you wish for" theme in mind when I wrote the lines you refer to. But there's also an element of learning to accept that things must take their time and course. Nobody just wakes up and finds they've become great at anything; it's a long process that requires as much hard work as natural talent. This could actually be a companion piece to my "On Milton's 7th" sonnet which is very much on the same theme.

[Bar22do]

Only now, as the weekend starts, could I take some time to focus on your (Gaimanian, Miltonian, Blake'ian... mainly yours) Dream... and it is such a good weekend's start, thank you.
I slid on your lines (almost effortlessly, to my surprise! tells how much I am at ease with the "archaic") as they took me into their spiral movement, and while on this to me marvelous journey, at times I could just shut my eyes and sort of continue from memory what was written, then catch up unmistaken... as if this could have been my own journey, or perhaps because it were. Compactness, for me, as I felt it here, added intensity and efficiency to the whole endeavour, inner and artistic. It is a greatly sculptured density. It could be Liszt, were it music.

[firefangled]

I don't get nearly as much time as I would like to read and comment on these boards. That said, with my Saturday morning first cup of coffee I read your poem and never felt a bump as you transported me back to dreams with your effortless rhythm and story.

I so enjoyed the references and word play. I am curious about the apparently deliberate times you broke consistency in lines 36 & 37 and lines 108 & 109.

The reference to the Mary Celeste left me with the same sense as when reading Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

This was very courageous and successful, Morpheus, both for its length and command of the language. You and Bar have it hands down on handling poetry with this tone.

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks sincerely to bar and fire. I'm very much appreciative to the comments, criticism, and analysis given to the piece since, as I said, I definitely worked very hard on it.

@firefangled: On lines 36-37 and 108-109, they both mark the halfway points of both halves of the piece; so essentially acting to quarter it (72 lines per half, 36th line ends the first quarter, 37 begins the second quarter). I played a rather elaborate structural game in the piece with time and put in little clues here and there alluding to it. You may also check out lines 71 and 72 for another clue on that point.

[blank|verse]

Just to say - congratulations on writing the thing; it was clearly a labour of love and it's some achievement that you managed to pull it off so successfully.

I'm afraid I'm still struggling to understand most of it though! Even the first few lines have me straining. And you know my views on archaic language.

But still - well done!

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks sincerely blnk vrz. Yes, as I read that opening sonnet I'm aware that while it makes perfect sense to me it is bound to be utterly confusing to anyone else. I alternate perspective at least 6 times in the first 25 lines and it really doesn't level out and sustain until about line 27 or so. Chalk it up to my own ambition; I wanted to mimic the confused and conflicted mind of the speaker, and the beginning is a bit like a "poem within a (narrative) poem", but the speaker can't really sustain it because s/he keeps getting pulled back into reality. Equally I'm establishing all of the motifs and metaphors that I exploit throughout the piece. It was an extreme juggling act; one I now feel I more or less failed at. But I am my own worst critic. :)

[~Sophia~]

Originally Posted by ~Sophia~
Litnet might do well to have a workshop area (forum) rather than on a poem forum where we post a poem we believe is done.


Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

But then what does the poetry forum just become? The way I see it now it's still less about workshopping and more about criticism. I don't think one should rest on the laurels of positive criticism any more than they should feel compelled to alter a piece because of negative criticism. More often I look at negative criticism as a way to say "look out for this in the future" (and, in fact, that's the way I take it about my works as well). So I don't know what would be different in a workshop forum. You'd still basically have people saying "I like it as is" or "I don't like this or that and would do that or this instead" which is pretty much the same as criticism which should be welcomed in this forum.

I thought I might bring this discussion here rather than highjacking ff's thread.

Again, this should be read as the opinion of only one person and in that regard, it's value measured accordingly:

I don't believe many of us here are qualified to say much more than we like it or we don't. I know I'm not. Perhaps, if I were the editor of a literary publication or a Lit Prof or even a recognized lit critic I might be qualified to give advice and or to critique someone's work. Other than that.. it really just comes down to whether I like it or not and, how I would have written it if it were mine. But, it's not mine and I always assume, the poet wrote it the way they intended.

When I come to the forums I very much think of it as going to Barnes & Noble, picking up a book or magazine and flipping the pages. I can appreciate what's written, I can like it or not, I might even discuss it with a friend but, I can't turn to the author and tell him/her what I think they should keep or what I think they should change.

A formal workshop would allow those who want help developing a poem (and those who want to offer help) a forum to do it in Otherwise, I think if a writer is confident their poem is "done" - says exactly what they want it to say - the I like it or I don't like it comments are enough.

I fully understand your point Morph, I just don't agree with it and that's perfectly fine. We can simply agree to disagree on this.

Cheers!

[blank|verse]

I'm with Morpheus on this one.


I don't believe many of us here are qualified to say much more than we like it or we don't.
This comes uncomfortably close to snobbery. I hope you don't mean it in that sense, but it does sound like you're saying you don't want or care for other people's opinions, because they're not good enough to comment on your poetry.

As Morpheus has said, writers can choose to accept or ignore comments, advice and criticism. I enjoy being able to play an active role in commenting on people's poems, and enjoy responses to my own, and wouldn't want that to be replaced by merely being passively spoon-fed poems.

What matters is how someone is able to justify comments they make, or authorial decisions they have taken with their writing. We can all learn from this in various ways, and I wouldn't want this to stop - it's exactly the reason I, and presumably many others, contribute to the site.

[~Sophia~]

I'm terribly sorry you read it that way. It was not my intention. I am as far from being a snob regarding poetry as any two year old can be.

I do however believe that the writers here put a great deal of thought and effort into their work and it should be respected as complete. If the writer asks for critiques/help when they post then of course, anyone wishing to give advice is perfectly within protocol to do so. Perhaps instead, I should have said, I would like to see a forum for work that has gone through the workshop stages, has been edited to the writer's satisfaction and they are presenting it much like a finished painting is unveiled. Would you ask an artist to change the color, tone, or composition of a painting they have worked on and now display as complete?

If I am wrong in all of this and the Litnet Personal Poetry Forum is in fact a workshop forum, please accept my humble apology.

[blank|verse]

Thank you for the response, Sophia; I'm glad to hear I was wrong in my interpretation of what you were saying.

I do sympathise with what you're saying in that I respect that people (myself included) go through various drafts before they consider poems ready to be posted, and it can be a bit galling if suddenly someone starts picking holes in your work.

From experience, I know I was far more touchy about this when I first started writing, but feel being open to criticism has improved me as a writer, because it forces me to consider very carefully everything I write, and whether I can justify the decisions I've taken. I think this goes some way to answer your question:

Would you ask an artist to change the color, tone, or composition of a painting they have worked on and now display as complete?
Well, yes I would, if I felt I could justify my comments or criticism. The artist's intentions and the viewer/reader's perceptions are two completely different things.

There's a quote which says "poems are never completed, they're just abandoned" which I know has been true in my case many times, and may also be true of other people's poems posted here.

On the whole though, I think this forum works very well and the level and tone of discussion is always well-mannered and adult. I think being questioned about our writing can only help us improve - by helping develop what we've written, or by ensuring we defend the artistic decisions we've taken to complete or abandon our work.