Simple Things

[Supersonic]

A guitar is leaning against the white walls
(I've never seen it there before),
I could pick it up and play a two-finger chord.

But I've never been able to do anything simple before,
like smoke a cigarette or sip quietly on my tea.

There's a bit of sand left in my shoe,
from last August at the beach.
It's February now, and my toes are freezing.

We were playing that same guitar, weren't we?
We couldn't possibly have been playing it together.
Oh laugh at me, I could have held down the chord
while you did the strumming.

You have such a perfect thumb and that-first-finger,
and my finger tips have always been this calloused,
so I just thought we could have played it together.

No, I was writing while
the waves were making terrible noises,
like cats screeching.

There's something quite strange about that.
Well, I did try to make sense out of it
but I've never been able to understand anything.

So I went into the house and turned on the television
and saw that you were singing about death
and life.
You've always sung about the most simple things.

And that was when I saw
the guitar.

As your voice switches off, a woman walks onto the screen.
She tells me all about the lives lost:
Seven hundred and twenty two.

Her ability to reduce it to a number astounds me,
what marvellous simplicity!

[~Sophia~]

I really like this one as well but I've always been partial to confessional poetry! Just a couple of little things...


A guitar is leaning against the white walls
(I've never seen it there before),

then later on


We were playing that same guitar, weren't we?

then


And that was when I saw
the guitar.

I kept going back and checking sequence, timelines... it didn't all quite jive.


You've always sang about the most simple things.

and I think sang should be sung (grammatically), or the line changed to "You always sang..."

These are small small things. Overall the poem is just terrific. Look forward to more!

[Supersonic]

Changed it, thanks!

Well the time warp sort of thing was done on purpose :blush:
As the memory does not exist in the concrete world and time itself is quite abstract, there is no sense in trying to give it a logical place in time. February to August to February is the movement of the character's mind rather than the actual chronological order of the events described.

Thanks for the feedback!

[PrinceMyshkin]

A guitar is leaning against the white walls
(I've never seen it there before),
I could pick it up and play a two-finger chord.

But I've never been able to do anything simple before,
like smoke a cigarette or sip quietly on my tea.

There's a bit of sand left in my shoe,
from last August at the beach.
It's February now, and my toes are freezing.

We were playing that same guitar, weren't we?
We couldn't possibly have been playing it together.
Oh laugh at me, I could have held down the chord
while you did the strumming.

You have such a perfect thumb and that-first-finger,
and my finger tips have always been this calloused,
so I just thought we could have played it together.

No, I was writing while
the waves were making terrible noises,
like cats screeching.

There's something quite strange about that.
Well, I did try to make sense out of it
but I've never been able to understand anything.

So I went into the house and turned on the television
and saw that you were singing about death
and life.
You've always sung about the most simple things.

And that was when I saw
the guitar.

As your voice switches off, a woman walks onto the screen.
She tells me all about the lives lost:
Seven hundred and twenty two.

Her ability to reduce it to a number astounds me,
what marvellous simplicity!

I didn't get the point of those last two lines, which seem retrospectively to forgive the speaker for his inability to do the simplest thing, which strikes me as being at odds with the lovely procession of details that are presented like individual brush-strokes. I'd just as soon you left us with the three lines just before those - which would be a bit of a puzzle but an interesting one.

[~Sophia~]

February to August to February is the movement of the character's mind rather than the actual chronological order of the events described.

Thanks for the feedback!

Time warp. Perhaps that's why I gravitated to this poem. I had a February to August to November, so I can only calculated 629 lost lives but, a loss is a loss and I still think this is a very good poem.