The Masquerade de Morte

[Greymure]

Every three seconds, or is it seven, I forget which
I think about death, Or is it sex
I always get the two confused after all this time

In fact
Even as I typed the preceding sentence,
I fantasize big Bozo dreams about my great demise
With endless tears, ropey scars left and torn by tendons
After all, I wanted to meet the man who first named the orgasm
“le petite morte” Or if you prefer Little Death

In my dreams
I am often found by strangers, stone drunk on cheap tequila whores,
Screaming naked alone under my brand new sheets bought on sale at Target last month

I did hope one day to share
The comfort of their crispness
Yet, as usual I wake up after a hard night blabbering to myself
Alone,
Sometimes in the morning
When
I awake in my living room bent over last night’s work
My forehead pressed to the keys of my keyboard which leaves
A mute indentation of

A S D F G H J K L : ” ENTER

I am aware of the endless stream of emission which drips out every night
With a stream of gibberish flowing across a fresh crisp white page
I wish
You could understand My stillborn impressions that
Were buried deep at the beginning from their conception
Where no one bothers to look

Even in my fantasies
I feel
I am ignored
My inane words as impotent as dead limp flesh
It would be laughable

In the inevitable reign of sadness
There are those men who came before me
Who’s path I try to follow though it travels to the grave
No wait That slipped out
That’s not at all true

However, It seems in my over eagerness to prove myself
I’ve said something’s maybe I do not mean at all


Please allow me a few moments to think

In the meantime, a mathematical equation proving
Beyond a doubt, the world will never Ever
Under any Republican circumstances, be dominated by sadness:


I mumble to myself a lot or so my friends tell me
I am not all that special
All people believe themselves to be unique

If I divulge some other flaw of mine,
You have reason to believe me or not
I am openhonest concerning my defects for instance
My selfishness,

I discovered relatives who helped those in the Holocaust
my great grandfather was a hero to the Kaiser
A medal for Valor at the Battle of the Somme

I felt that in my need to prove myself
I had found an excuse for my past, present, and future failures
Finally, I have personal ties to a tragedy
Finally, I had a claim to real suffering
though I touched the hand of a man who died at the Trade Center
there I gained a new understanding with the world

So I
Planned to get a tattoo, that would show you
Just as my Prince Albert once showed, I forgot her name now,

It could have been something to share by getting a tattoo
I could claim to the entire world I have a right to my suffering

When I try to use all five of my senses to do their work
My bi-polarized brain performs only the important task
Of discovering sensory data that relates to me With 97.6% confidence of being true

I know
You are the same way
Though I try to care less about you
I got a tattoo on my arm thick enough to cover my scar

I knew an old man who had a tattoo
It was, a smart black number along the thick vein of right forearm:
At first I thought it to be his old phone number
A-174278
I still remember it as if it were my own social security number
I would never support a man like Hitler
I can remember that very afternoon
When my father told me the fates of my relatives that dared to stay behind

You might declare me a monster if you knew
You could rant at injustice
You would rave about how something needs to done
immediately get caught up in how this or any nightly news might affect you
Just as you might delight in your own proud Your own mistaken humanity

In my easy superiority, I will wait
As you contemplate all my clever words
So that you might later say to acquaintances of yours
About the history of my strange tattoo

The one I didn’t dare get naked in front of you,
and may never have to show you at least it’s better than my scar

I had hoped that
You would follow with happy imaginings of how those self same friends
( See, you’ve all have been promoted from acquaintances)
After all it is all of you that read
My thoughts I so carelessly splattered on this stained page
Sometimes I react strongly
To the elaborate description of the action my relatives might have taken
Or the ones I’ve taken
When I’m finish my legs shake with pleasure I should wash my hands
Drowned in all the thoughts of solidarity

You would not think my suffering
Is that of an innocent
I am anything but
No one really is I guess
Nor has anyone truly touched my mind for that would be impossible
though, it’s what I want so desperately

Please note, now
Just how openly and honestly
I can discuss my true and so human selfishness

While discussing my selfishness
As a thought festering in the back of my mind
(the only region of my mind that’s worth a damn)
I’ve been thinking about something altogether different


It’s just another death-related fantasy
I think
I would like my girl to take me to my execution
(I said that death is equal to sex)
At least Larry Kramer thinks so
I would get moved to the top of the waiting list
To step before the guillotine
I find it ironic
I know somebody who knows somebody
In the death penalty crowd

The girl I’m with
Would stand up and say,
we are gathered here
In the presence of these witnesses to join this man and Death in holy matrimony, behold the head of a traitor

I would start breaking up
because of the seriousness of my situation
and the black hooded sweet killer
Would be misting over double-thick glasses Like bad breath

My sweet Kill would not go softly
He would have just liked to have killed a pregnant woman
And he screamed, since he knew this is a double sided-kindness.

Having read his lips
I’ve always wanted to repeat his words for the rest of the audience
Who might just be to deaf to truly hear them

I would knew it would be my Sweet Killer
Who like me was dead before the doctor could swing in to save the day
While the doctor would wait for a silent heart
I’d continue to watch the lips I’d see them part and go limp.

And that brings me to the crucial point which had eluded me
A brief moment
Or a few minutes ago:

No matter what occurs for the rest of my dwindling existence
I have come to final breath
I know I will be joined in honeyed blankness of eternity
I will be where I’ve always wanted sitting in my lonely room
While waiting for the pills to take effect
That is my faith what little there is of it

[MorpheusSandman]

If I were to be honest I don't know how kind I could be. Honestly, this piece is just too diffuse and rambling for my taste. There is some interesting stuff, but long-ish works like this really require focus and some sense of coherency and structure. While stream-of-consciousness has its uses it becomes wearisome when read as poetry. It works better in prose. But unless your name is James Joyce or William Faulkner I tend to recommend deploying it sparingly and, even then, mostly as practice and, even then, going back and editing it with an eye for what's essential and patterns that emerge from the chaos.

There is some interesting stuff here, but it's a bit like sifting through mud to find it. The association of sex and death is always an interesting topic but it seems to fade out of the piece much too quickly and then reappear arbitrarily. One fascinating thing about this is that "die" was an early Modern English pun for "orgasm" (don't know if you knew this or not). I think the best moments come when describing the "death" fantasies. That's really going down a dark and little explored road.

In general, though, it's best to start small and work your way up to longer poems like this. I'm not sure what your level of poetic experience is, but I don't think it's enough to handle a piece of this length. I mean, I once wrote a 144 line short-epic piece and it nearly destroyed me. This is well into the 200-line range. In general, I think the longer the work comes the more it begs for some kind of structure. Using free verse for that length becomes a bit too disorienting. It also helps to have some sense of rhythm either through some kind of vaguely regular meter or poetic devices like aliteration and its siblings.

Anyway, I admire the ambition but for someone who's only made 13 posts on a forum like this it's a good idea to start out small, earn the respect of the forum members and then request they invest some time reading a long work.

[Revolte]

I have to agree with Morph a bit. It's very long in content and that tends to make me start to read through it faster then I can to appreciate the work itself and lose focus all together. I would really love to see shorter pieces though, so please do write something shorter and share it. I also think there is alot of punctuation missing here, which doesn't always make the difference, but I think that with a piece as long as this it would really help to smooth out the reading.

[hillwalker]

I too felt unable to do justice to such a long piece - starting to scan the map in detail but then skipping side-roads in search of familiar territory.
A clever concept but perhaps better explored in smaller bites.

Wow - and I never knew I had such a short attention spa.....

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

You had my attention with


Every three seconds, or is it seven, I forget which
I think about death, Or is it sex
I always get the two confused after all this time


but lost it progressively as you seemed to wring variations on your whatever it was .By the end I was far from sure of what you were indicting yourself for. This would be a lot better if it had the crispness of those opening three lines.

[Greymure]

There is some interesting stuff here, but it's a bit like sifting through mud to find it. The association of sex and death is always an interesting topic but it seems to fade out of the piece much too quickly and then reappear arbitrarily. One fascinating thing about this is that "die" was an early Modern English pun for "orgasm" (don't know if you knew this or not). I think the best moments come when describing the "death" fantasies. That's really going down a dark and little explored road.

In general, though, it's best to start small and work your way up to longer poems like this. I'm not sure what your level of poetic experience is, but I don't think it's enough to handle a piece of this length. I mean, I once wrote a 144 line short-epic piece and it nearly destroyed me. This is well into the 200-line range. In general, I think the longer the work comes the more it begs for some kind of structure. Using free verse for that length becomes a bit too disorienting. It also helps to have some sense of rhythm either through some kind of vaguely regular meter or poetic devices like aliteration and its siblings.

Anyway, I admire the ambition but for someone who's only made 13 posts on a forum like this it's a good idea to start out small, earn the respect of the forum members and then request they invest some time reading a long work.


To MorpheusSandman

I thank you for your input however I have to disagree with you on several points. Poetry flows whither it be a rhythmic verse or free verse. To me poetry is an experimental Artform and there fore no rules can seriously be applied to it. Walt Whitman was a firm believer in free form poetry. For my taste I find short poems not really worth the effort to read because unless the poem concise and crisp it reflects very little imagination. I use my poetry in the same way that abstract painters use paint. It isn't for everybody.

As for my experience writing poetry I have been writing for over 25 yrs. I have been published , and have released a collection of poetry of my own which includes short stories etc. I have also won several awards for poetry including The Walt Whitman Poetry Award in 1997.

My poetry as well as my short stories aren't for everyone, they require thought and concentration to get through. Maybe with a little more practice you could get through a 144 line poem without "nearly killing yourself".
Greymure

[Lumiere]

I call this "poetry unhinged".

On one level, it's refreshing and honest - how thoughts naturally take shape in words for some artists. In that way, I appreciate it; I relate with those places in between thought and feeling just before dawn: that hyper-awareness of self in all it's mocking contradictions.

On another level, it is a lot to trudge through - but whoever said these things had to be brief and laced up?
The best way to write is your own way, so if this is your own way - keep on, keep on.

[MorpheusSandman]

I thank you for your input however I have to disagree with you on several points. Poetry flows whither it be a rhythmic verse or free verse. To me poetry is an experimental Artform and there fore no rules can seriously be applied to it. Walt Whitman was a firm believer in free form poetry. For my taste I find short poems not really worth the effort to read because unless the poem concise and crisp it reflects very little imagination. I use my poetry in the same way that abstract painters use paint. It isn't for everybody.Well, poetry doesn't flow on its own accord, it certainly needs someone to guide it. Concepts like meter and alliteration are simply devices which capitalize on natural linguistic patterns to aid in that flow. In general, free verse forsakes fixed form for a richer realm of many possible variations. I find that in free verse, punctuation and line breaks become much, much more important than in formal/metric poetry and therefor it behooves a poet to put some thought into how they use these things. I just don't see much thought behind how you use them in this piece.

I also wouldn't say poetry is an inherently experimental art-form. To be experimental in the first place there has to be standards and guidelines by which to experiment with. It's really possible to say any art-form provides room for experimentation.

As for short poetry I'd also somewhat disagree. I mean, many of art's greatest accomplishments are done on a small scale. In literature, one might consider the sonnets of Shakespeare, many of which are incredibly rich despite the fact they're composed in a mere 14 lines. The form itself provides such a fertile ground for expressive possibilities. So I'd argue it's not really in the length of a piece, it's all in how that space is used. With shorter pieces it's about the art of saying more with less. Concepts like economy, brevity, and capturing microcosmic elements are the goal. With larger pieces it's about the art of saying more with more. More space certainly provides more room for all kinds of elaborate development and structural experimentation, etc. There are certainly works like Paradise Lost that could only work on a "large scale". But, sticking with Milton, Lycidas and L'allegro & Il Penseroso work equally well on a "medium" scale and his "On Time" or "Song on May Morning" are like perfectly crafted gems on a small scale.


As for my experience writing poetry I have been writing for over 25 yrs. I have been published , and have released a collection of poetry of my own which includes short stories etc. I have also won several awards for poetry including The Walt Whitman Poetry Award in 1997.

My poetry as well as my short stories aren't for everyone, they require thought and concentration to get through. Maybe with a little more practice you could get through a 144 line poem without "nearly killing yourself".
GreymureWell, I must say that your resume is quite impressive. My own certainly couldn't match your achievements, so I'll simply retract that part of my criticism and add a sincere apology. However, I don't think I lacked "thought and concentration" when getting through your piece, I think the piece lacked a sense of coherency and flow. Likewise, my "killing myself" over my 144 line poem reflected how much work I put into each line since I carefully composed and constructed it over a 3.5 month period. It's not about practice, it's about making each line, each word, each syllable count. I'm always reminded of Ken Rockwell's theory of photography that applies just as much to poetry in that if any element in the frame (just like any word, line, or concept in a piece of poetry) isn't adding to the composition then it's detracting from it.