The land of the dying without

[Silas Thorne]

The land of the 'dying without'
always has prospectors on it,
checking you out as you get on the bus,
wishing and hoping,
left thrown up by the dust of your passing-
the moment for mindcrimes is blessed.

Let it only come to this:
a full stop, with no comma.
Forever without end,
the land of the 'dying without' is.

[kevinthediltz]

I like the way it is written but it confused me.
What is this about exactly?

[Silas Thorne]

Where do you think the land might be, kevin?

[kevinthediltz]

Without someone?
Perhaps?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Eerily, I had recently been reading Jose Saramago's novel Death with Interruptions, which begins: "The following day, no one died..." and though I'd given up on it (smelling a parable!) that memory coloured my reading of your poem, about which I have to agree with one of the preceding posts, that it is cryptic, but I would add that it is marvellously lean.

[Silas Thorne]

at least 5 characters

[PrinceMyshkin]

The land of the dying without
always has prospectors on it,
checking you out as you get on the bus,
wishing and hoping,
left thrown up by the dust of your passing-
the moment for mindcrimes is blessed.

Let it only come to this:
a full stop, with no comma.
Forever without end,
the land of the dying without is.

"Out of our quarrels with others," Yeats wrote, "we make rhetoric; out of our quarrels with ourselves, we make poetry." (Quoting from memory.)

Sometimes, in these dialogues or quarrels between surface- and under-selves, readers are like passerbys who arrive late, missed the beginning and are unlikely to hear the resolution - if there is any.

As far as the mechanics of it go, it's a fine, fine poem.

[cristina21]

Nice one Silas Thorne....

Keep it up...

[PrinceMyshkin]

The land of the dying without
always has prospectors on it,
checking you out as you get on the bus,
wishing and hoping,
left thrown up by the dust of your passing-
the moment for mindcrimes is blessed.

Let it only come to this:
a full stop, with no comma.
Forever without end,
the land of the dying without is.

Oh, for heaven's sake, I'm so embarassed that I didn't see the apparent obvious: "The land of the dying without" is our habit of feeling/saying I'm dying without you, I'm dying without a Lexus C300... &c. &c.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Maybe if you hyphenated "dying without," more readers would get it? And in that case I would (or anyway, I do) withdraw my objection to the final "is".

[kevinthediltz]

A HA!
There it is.
I should've seen that too.

[a_little_wisp]

I dunno, I don't think you should have changed a thing! See how it made people think? It adds that much more gravity to the message of the poem when they're finally - "oh. Oh!" And then they read again and are going "I SEE!" It made my stomach clench. As Prince says - it's Lean. And good. Real good.