still staring

[amuse]

“it’s not your fault;
it's very simple,
like being born or
being died,”
she looked at him
with huge
wet eyes
he thought in that
moment her
dry face
would kill him
its tears that
he’d never
catch again
never
heal or taste or
save.

he stared at her as
he turned away
he stared at her while
he walked away
he moved away
found a new
town
raised a new life -
a family, a
garden, dogs,
with plans
for a glorious
afterlife

he retired
with his wife
they take the
grandchildren on trips
he can't
see them
though, can't
even try.
he just goes
and keeps
going
keeps looking
keeps staring
a human stalactite,
he's never stopped staring.

[Koa]

wow. *sits speechless*

the first 2 stanzas, well especially the second almost moved me to tears...the last one gets a bit...i don't know, the grandparents image is like 'oh no please'...but i know amuse well enough to be sure there was going to be something else in the end...and it was there. Great.



raised a new life -
a family, a
garden, dogs,
with plans


LOL I'm sure it's me but for a second it felt like the dogs had plans... :D

[amuse]

:D whoops!

maybe i should add...when T-- left yesterday, he looked back into the glass pane inset into the door. and he never ever ever looks back. we have never made the sort of eye contact we made yesterday. the kind of stare that lasts forever. that, really, is what the poem was about, Koa. and the ungrammatical phrase that i uttered afterward which made me think to write it all down. i'm glad you liked it.

[mono]

Ugh, amuse, your poetry never ceases to amaze me with its originality and casual outlook that mysteriously progresses to still pierce the heart of the reader. I cannot entirely explain my reasoning, but this subject reminds me of something William Stafford would write (do you remember him, from a previous thread . . . http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3154);
like you in much of your poetry, but especially this one, there seems so much power behind the smallest and seemingly simple conversations - hence the quote from the beginning of this work:

“it’s not your fault;
it's very simple,
like being born or
being died,”
Continuing beyond the words makes more communication - more symbolic, abstract, and too often misunderstood body language.
Very impressive. :thumbs_up

[SwiftSleigh7]

I get a sense of inchoate paralysis from the powerful imagery and the terrific verbal juxtapositions you've woven together so dextrously in this piece. Moving and eloquent without being at all smarmy. Something I strive for and fail at all the time! I'm learning... s-l-o-w-l-y... lol. You have a true gift.

[Koa]

I'd add that whenever I read amuse's stuff and within a few days I happen to try and write something, it always comes out so full of run-on-lines. Which is absolutely lovely but it makes me feel like I stole it from amuse cos it's not in my own nature, as I'm sure that my verbosity would loften ead to long long sentences... :( I don't want to be a copy...ok it can be just influence but where is the border...?

[amuse]

you know, our campus library showcases new books; recently i had the good fortune to read Flood Stage and Rising (http://unp.unl.edu/bookinfo/4720.html) by Jane Varley; she showcased Stafford's poems at the beginning of a few chapters and i thought of you, mono.

it's about the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota. highly, highly recommend it.

and thanks for the complement.
you as well, SwiftSleigh7.
Koa, oh no. well, maybe it's sort of like dreams, you know, when you can't remember if the thing you are contemplating happened out here (awake world) or in there (sleeping state), when life reveals itself to be the fluid thing we don't always let itself be?

btw, Varley's book - even more than On The Road (lol) made me want to travel again. i haven't had a good long trip in years. my brother was describing montana - it's one of the three western states i've not visited - and said it was an indescribable blue - much, much more than i could imagine. and i wondered what it was like to have a sky bigger than a land (from Varley's description of N. Dakota) and thought it must feel like you have to hold on with your feet so you don't fall up into the lake of the sky - "is that what it's like, J?" and my brother laughed and said sort of.

i so want to go to montana so i can experience that and write an authentic poem about holding on with dear life so that i don't fall up and drown in the sky...

[Bandini]

I like it a lot, Amuse. Good and honest.