PDA

View Full Version : Two Poems



gruntingslime
07-01-2010, 03:08 PM
Fall is in the distance
Lying at the foot of a tree,
Pumpkins in my head,
My head between the roots.

I walk along and my legs swing and wag and sag
And I walk along, I push forward
Toward the simple trees with orange leaves
And there’s nothing else but grass and sky and me
And dirt and dust and clouds
And distance, and in the distance a world of chaos.
And I walk on a belt pulled backwards, so that I never come any nearer to the trees
So that I may complete my thought.

And I move on to a rubber mask, sitting within a barn
Atop a table scattered with hay,
Because I’ve left no option for progression.
I want to pick up the mask and become a green faced monster
But my hands are caught in a mould of plastic at the elbows,
And it tickles in me where I try to move
Because I know I’m blocking my movement.

I’m walking with children down the dark Halloween street.
They break off to run up to the houses and trick or treat
And I try to placate myself, with a saw toothed face
And winkled forehead, and sweaty brow and nervous eyes,
You can’t blame me for growing older.
So I lift my arms to the sky
And when I wanted to scream I see only bats
Against a red moon and smoke
Rising out of me and me disappearing.

Now I’m out on the lake lying on a leaky dock,
Spiders and dirt creeping out of the water and down the back of my shirt,
And the raft sways
Until I’m lying up facing the borderland of autumn trees
And I feel the heavy essence of a shattered house
Behind me with shadow planks and pitch black air.


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Before I accept, these are some words
My humor does not transmit—
I am rolling dice in a cup untossed,
It is my tumbling madness
I tense against accepting
The result of my tested luck I’ve chosen
To see as a vomit
And so call it.

I conjure up images
Without beginning or end, they are just scenes
In life— meaning is imposed or rejected

There are people half realized;
No one without their own consciousness.
So they are just dolls
And my work is just play.
Why am I a sad child?

I have not come to accept that
I am a person for others.
I try to play alone
But I keep slinking back
With a mess down my shirt
Wishing for praise—
My game is getting you messy.

PrinceMyshkin
07-01-2010, 04:04 PM
You can’t blame me for growing older.

is the sort of line that seems to have been written a very long time ago, or ought to have been! The sort of seemingly so obvious truth that it need not be said but, once it has been said, will forever be remembered.

The only complaint I might have is that the authority and conviction of the first poem overshadowed what followed, so that I couldn't give the rest of the post the mesmerized attention I gave to the first part.

Since I think this may have been your first post in this forum, I extend a very hearty welcome.

gruntingslime
07-03-2010, 03:35 AM
I sat down to think of what I could do with myself.
I opened all the doors of possibility,
But found them empty.
My mind was a chasm.

So I dropped it, and decided
I would not do anything except live and act
In the moment. I looked at beautiful
Papers and pens and the multi-textural table.
I looked
At the stove,
Without a thought of what it was.
What is this consciousness without thought?
It needs not an answer.

A greater goal can be false
To some, a path for now you will create even if you try
Not to, and maybe, in that case,
You will realize that it is
By your trying that
You have created it.

I know a sick and depraved story
Featuring clicking cockroaches,
And I know it is wise for it is the movements
Of our bones beneath our flesh.

I was wrong to try to create a story and to lose sight of my characters
In one place. Rowan is sitting.
She's breathing.
Her feet hang under the desk,
But she is without a face. She does not even have features of a back,
Just a misty outline,
A flash of blue sweater or dark hair
And no chosen length. Now she has a nose, thin and long and pointed at the end,
And big round eyes.

Love,
The feeling of love coursing through her,
Not directed except on the path through her body.

My fingers feel the grooves
On my paper created by my pen,
I'm sorry Rowan I cannot feel you.

PrinceMyshkin
07-03-2010, 08:25 AM
Remarkable poem in which we are made, as it were, to be the co-authors. These lines in particular:


A greater goal can be false
To some, a path for now you will create even if you try
Not to, and maybe, in that case,
You will realize that it is
By your trying that
You have created it.


stood out for me.