Sleepless Musing, Tireless Fussing, Laughing Wind

[Sarah Yesterday]

This will be my first time posting poetry. I like personal poetry, and I love how it flows and sounds. But I'm weary of the idea of my friends reading it. I'd appreciate any thoughts on it, since even though it isn't edited I still think it speaks of the author. That said, I apologize for the sporadic delivery of these poems- they are in no way grouped or herded, just written freely over this long, long night.

Insomnia, Insomnia
Peaches and cream over wet dreams
Drunk and tardy win the race, intoxication to combat malnutrition; disfiguration; daylight saving and pride.

Lusty, huffy, crying, smiling.
What a crazy body- oceans, sea, body of water and waves; translucent blue and clear, makes no sense but ignites no fear, the stronger the tide the richer the clean.

Morning dew on the air, drafting through all the open windows of the house, and they are all boldly open despite overcast skies and undercast eyes, caressing lonesome and bare toes of legs that dangle fair.

My eyes cross in and out, pulse with undreamt dreams- denied melodies, denied false realities, denied words I can't remember as my eyes cross in and out
People and places I choose not to care
That are easier easier lost then kept
Not forced out but dropped
Dropped like a pebble onto a pond
With a ripple of repression a shiver of temptation and a tickle of nausea
Airy indifference; I am the elements
I am all there is I am every atom that really truly exists

Existing consisting of nothing
I am an awful god
A despicable mother
A dormant father
My bloodline runs cold and mournful from ear to nose, out of nose, to knees and toes, to stain my socks in small ringlets to be discarded

Core, form, imaginary and real
Oh Plato the beast guarding the mouth of his cave
Let me in oh beastly man to kiss that mouth and embrace that tongue and to let it engulf me
To eat me
To eat me in
To eat me out
To suffocate all breath, to fulfill all needs and necessities with overpowering pungency, to create such a daze there is no sense

Happy creation, mystification- Happiness drawn on insomnia's knees?
Sleepless mind, stumbling body, quaking body- oh wow, I am high
But how can you enjoy what you know is fleeting?

How I crave recognition, reconciliation
A home team
A coach
A bat
A mitt
One life is too much for one person
If only someone else lived in here with me

I always feel the ants
Coaxing over my skin
I rub them away but they're never there
Do I rub them in?

[hillwalker]

You say these are sporadic - presumably not meant to be read as one entire poem.

Well, the first three long-lined poems are by far your best (apart from the rather awkward pair of words opening verse 2 ('lusty,huffy' UGH).

I actually think there is so much more you can do with these particular three - it's almost as if you came up with a brilliant sequence of phrases or linked words and decided to cut-and-paste them into these 3 blocks.
They deserve to take centre stage in a much more involving piece rather than to be almost included as throwaway lines which is how I currently see them.

And the penultimate poem..... it's a little gem.

Good effort,

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I agree with Hillwalker about the puzzle of whether to read these as variations on a theme, a long loose poem or a series of untitled but separate poems; and they'd probably do best as the latter.

I wasn't fond of your occasional interior/end-line rhymes: they felt as if you were trying to fulfill some programmatic notion you had.

I did in several of these like every much the implied freedom and indifference to form in the alternation of regulation-size lines with long, looping ones.

I was struck by "One life is too much for one person," not only because it is an arresting thought on its own but because it reminded me of openings I've used twice in poems of my own:


Sometimes life is all we've got.
Sometimes it's too much...

A hearty welcome and I trust we'll be hearing more from you.

[J.D. Sparks]

Well, there are definitely some interesting ideas and imagery presented in your post, Sarah Yesterday. And they are very poetic lines, but I don't know if I'd yet consider them finished poems. As you mentioned they are unedited, and that much is evident from reading them. They kind of remind me of the draft notes I like to make before I write my poems out in their fully-developed form.

As a reader, it's unclear to me how the lines go together. They lack coherence. I think you might get that coherence from simply returning to your pockets of poetry and try to figure out how each works and what you want it to do. In this process you may keep some ideas, omit others, combine ideas from some of the different draft-poems you have here, give them titles, etc.

I guess that what I'm mainly saying is that these feel like the skeletons of poems. They need muscle, skin, blood, organs. They need, as Emily Dickinson might say, the materials that will allow them to "breathe".

[MorpheusSandman]

Right now these are, to use a cliched metaphor, diamonds in the rough. You just need to squeeze them and shine them until all of the superfluity is gone and develop them into something grand. That said, you have a lot of great material here that shows the heart and natural talent of a real poet. I also think the longer-lined pieces are probably the best with that penultimate one being a "gem" to echo Hill.