Walkin Round

[MorpheusSandman]

Walkin round, head down
Hands wrist-deep in denim jeans
Mind’s away, wandering loud
How time could ever forget me
Shuffling on these gravel roads
The here, the now, the present
Haranguing thoughts from chaos flow
Bloodying the dirt and pavement

If I could only murder this misery
I’d weep as it wiped you from memory
From the weather-worn tombs of lost desire
And burning bouquets of screaming flowers
I’d lay you to rest in the subsoil womb
I’m not religious, but I’d utter a prayer
But altars can’t alter, and exorcists can’t deliver
Me, or you, from the inexorable hour

Time’s a nasty parlor trick
Played by phantoms dressed in suits
Their ties are black and blue and slick
Their lies are red and white
They live between the space of thoughts
And die within our dreams
They suffer us because
We’re useless tools, left behind
By makers that no longer need
We’ll tick on like a cracked old clock
Just marking time
Just marking our time

Doing, because we can’t just be
Making, because creation is reassuring
Dying, because we’re made of stuff
As lasting as the passing clouds
We wait for our time
To form
To burst
To rain
But do we
Like drops on a surface
Evaporate
Translate to mere moisture
To form and be
Again?
Or do we sink into the soil
Transforming dirt to mud
Only to unearth worms
For birds?

[Jesterhead]

I really enjoyed this, great and deep wording, some serious questions about mankind. Are we just passing time on earth waiting to die, we are just here because our makers doesn't need us, is there life after death or do we become worm food?

I think it was a great poem.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I wonder about the omission of an apostrophe to mark the dropped "g" at the end of "walkin"?

Apart from that there is such a storm of feeling throughout this. I was especially taken by the lines:


I’m not religious, but I’d utter a prayer
But altars can’t alter, and exorcists can’t deliver
Me, or you, from the inexorable hour

Time’s a nasty parlor trick
Played by phantoms dressed in suits
Their ties are black and blue and slick
Their lies are red and white
They live between the space of thoughts
And die within our dreams

[Alexander III]

!!! wow this is beautiful, its a shift from your usual style yet, I believe this works incredibly.

The poem is great as in it captures that moment that everyman has felt within, and yet has never been able to translate it from the posy of mind to the crude language of communication. You have successfully translated it and that is why this piece has this resonance, as everyone understands, understand ?

[Hawkman]

I too like this, although for me the individual stanzas read llike separate poems. I am not convinced that they hang together convincingly as a single entity. Taken individually I think the verses are excellent.

Best H

[Bar22do]

Morpheus,

I do feel a powerful progression here from stanza to stanza (maybe through the affinity I have for this kind of reflection). From the particular to the general... The breaks between stanzas are more than ever salutary here as they allow the reader to survive your intensity, so beautifully expresse in what to me reads as intimate, faithful to your most inner self, to your very core...

I find this question-metaphor exquisite:

"But do we
Like drops on a surface
Evaporate
Translate to mere moisture
To form and be
Again?"

and the whole poem really fine and a great poetical experience indeed!

Thanks a lot! - Bar

[MorpheusSandman]

@Jester &Alex: Thanks kindly for your praise; I'm glad to hear someone got something out of my improvisational musings.

@Prince: If I'm to be honest, I really hate using apostrophes to signify obvious elisions when rendering idiomatic/colloquial language. To me it seems to almost defeat the entire purpose. There's almost something pretentious about it, like the writer wants to write how people talk, but they also have to acknowledge that the spelling is "incorrect". Considering everyone will know what "walkin" means, I really see no reason to use it.

@Hawk: I actually agree with you that the piece's main weakness is a lack of coherency. I guess I hoped that the central concept of "time", which is critical to all four stanzas, would be enough to glue it together. I've, in general, become more and more interested how to create abstract connections between stanzas/sections of poetry. It's something I greatly admire in Eastern art - especially their poetry, literature, and films - and that's how they can create works where the pieces are, ostensibly, so disconnected, but aesthetically and intuitively connect on very deep and subtle levels. I'm not saying I regularly achieve that, but it's just something I like to strive for.

@Bar: I'm glad to hear you felt a sense of connective pacing. As I told Hawk, that's one aspect I worried about with this piece because when I wrote it I felt as if I was (somewhat) composing four different poems.

[lallison]

I enjoyed reading this. It brought to mind the beat generation writers: wondering around, thinkin heavy thoughts, no one writer in particular, but the whole attitude. I liked the first stanza best, which seems the main drama here. The rest is really taking place internally, I think your description of the verses as musings seems to fit. I also agree with Hawk that they seem like separate poems, but I feel you achieve a connection in that they are your internal world as you continue your wondering. I always enjoy the existential. Nice poem!

[dizzydoll]

You've written an excellent poem even if its a bit sombre for my taste I can admire the work you've put in to it. Good job. :biggrin5:

[PrinceMyshkin]

@Prince: If I'm to be honest, I really hate using apostrophes to signify obvious elisions when rendering idiomatic/colloquial language. To me it seems to almost defeat the entire purpose. There's almost something pretentious about it, like the writer wants to write how people talk, but they also have to acknowledge that the spelling is "incorrect". Considering everyone will know what "walkin" means, I really see no reason to use it.



I understand and I believe in general that maintaining one's idiosyncrasies is sometimes more important than respecting all the rules, "Walkin" here is the only instance of a colloquial use of language, so the apostrophe might better signal that you are using in with full awareness of how it is properly written.

Besides, given some of the colourfully-named British villages, a non British reader might at first think this is the name of one of them. (I did Google it but no, there's no such place.)

[MorpheusSandman]

Thanks to lallison and dizzy.

@Prince: There's possibly two colloquialisms depending on if you want to read "round" as "around" (I wanted to be able to suggest both, since wandering "around" makes more sense, but wandering "round" represents the idea of a continuous circle). Besides, like I said, I'm pretty sure everyone knows I know how to spell "walking". ;)