Eel in water.

[twoheadedboy]

It is coming closer: eel in water.



That wave of black across the blue

and across the bubbling and waning

water that’s turning into a wave;

It’s turning into you.




You told me not to love someone

whose hurts were buried into thorns

so deep into the bush outside my house

so even the foxes that look for food in there can’t get out,

But I loved you, didn’t I?



Where there are women there are snares

and snares do what their name implies so violent,

and trap even the smartest and cunning of men,

with the promise of a kiss or a touch to the forehead.







It is dark, I am at a lake, I am afraid that a huge eel is slithering across the lake at night,



It is terrifying really. In the silence I am exposed. Plants come to life and just stare at me while they wind. I am afraid the blue before me will rise up like an angry father who was woken up to the sound of laughter, and I am afraid he will disown me. I am a son of the sea, of salt, of light, of bearing the image of my family, which I hate. I am the boy who fell for a girl who fell into thinking that she had something the world wanted. And so someone took whatever it was and left her alone. Bearing a child and composing a life.





If this eel eats me, I would hope it would not eat this letter too.

[neilgee]

I like the original poem structure and the prose at the end, and these two lines seem to sum up so much of what the rest of the poem is feeling:

"You told me not to love someone
whose hurts were buried into thorns"

Yet at another level the hurt seems too raw to readily be expressed.

These are my impressions of the poem, hope they are of some use to you.

[hillwalker]

A very original piece both in style and content.

The third stanza about 'snares' I felt summed up the poem best, that once a man is lured by someone he loves he can do nothing but surrender. But this piece suggests the writer is afraid of submitting to something as primeval as love, or perhaps lust; afraid of being snagged by its thorns or consumed by it.


and trap even the smartest and cunning of our men

This line I believe would read better without 'our' which makes men sound like some nameless armed force, and also suggests it was written by a woman (when I assume the lovesick narrator is male)

H

[twoheadedboy]

neilgee, please go on about the hurt that is too raw.

That is interesting to me, have I layed the narrators heart too bare?

and H, I agree about the our part, I added that because I felt it needed it, but it seems foreign now.

Edited it.