The Fallen

[iPenguin]

When you live with the underbelly as long as I have
The scent of gin and sex and stale tobacco
Become like the embrace of a plate of warm cookies
Your crinkled, chapped skin and suicide eyes
They are shards of shimmering aquamarine to me,
I lounge in them languidly
As on the shores of the Caribbean
And let you pour the gravel of your voice
Into my ears
Thinking instead I hear the mellifluous lilt
Of some sort of nymph or something

Not that you would understand any of that
You who think de Tocqueville
Is some sort of haven for potheads

I wasn't always this way
I once belched forth songs of exuberance
Instead of belching the stench of beer and vomit
There was a girl with red hair...
I thought I might stop and leave all this behind
Just last week it was
That was before you told me about the baby
Yes, red hair, but there were streaks of gold, auburn, umber
That was my favorite part...
Is it even mine?

This is where you belong
You've always lived upon pins and needles
But mostly needles.

It fell with the grace of a veil, cascading and flowing
The long distance from roots to shoulder blades
Your hair is short and straggly, it grows in patches
An ugly dirt brown that looks beautiful
Only in comparison to its surroundings
And when I'm really drunk.
She and I once sang songs of ourselves
We pondered the wisdom of the universe
And consent of the governed
And other bull**** like that.

The other day I laughed when you told me
That you thought the poem was invented by Poe
I lost a part of myself that day.

I've stopped giving a **** about what-ifs
Like what if I hadn't learned the word "addiction"
Or what if I hadn't let you teach me
Or what if I had parents to warn me about the "wrong crowd"
Or what if the girl with red hair had come back that day
To laugh and loaf and sing that song again
Shaking the embers from her face as the melody of her voice
Soothed my restless spirit?
But I did. And she didn't. And you did.
So what's the point?
That kid doesn't stand a chance
He's trapped, like you, like me
Before he even has the chance to sing.

Today I think I saw her
She, shepherding her tiny russet-haired miniature
In a wide arc around me, whispering words of caution.

She didn't recognize me.

Her hair spills over me one last time
As blood.

[iPenguin]

An effervescent bass hums in my mind
It looms in my periphery, daunting my demeanor.
Entombed in a fitful sleep, I tried to capitulate
I burned the tarnished regrets
In a pile of sulphur-spun shambles
Together with the ingress of impressionistic
Euphoria, filled with the wisdom of bees;
And in a cloud of reason, I found
The untouchable rightness of simplicity
Burnished by the element of surprise.

I longed for the tender meeting of a frosty holiday
But I ascended that hill in icy terror.
I listened to the old familial melodies
And reclined in static crackling imagination
Huddled by the warmth of misinterpretation
And passing hours of missed opportunities
Annual dreams ebbing with the tide of snow.

Hovering above my spirit, I saw from afar
No longer myself, subsumed in the singular rhythm;
Feeling the drifting complacency of swan-dreams,
He told her of lilting shadow-speech
And she packed up and ran
To the still-ringing chord of dissonance
A haunting sonata played out on the distance
From soul to soul.

It still hums, I feel it deep in my consciousness
The crystallized notes and deep pedals remain
Blotting out a dancing harmony with the ease of time
And the brilliance of pain.
Will they part the refuse of twenty years?
I made strides against the transgressor
Shifting, shedding crinkled fabric tears
Caressing, grafting dust motes onto eyes of passion,
But now the beat is getting faster
And I cannot keep up.

[hillwalker]

The Fallen - a poem rich in detail and with some memorable imagery :

how I love the line

Shaking the embers from her face......

I'm not convinced by the 'embrace of a plate of warm cookies'

It seemed out of place in such a powerful poem that is courageous enough to explore the self-analysis of regret and failure.

Alberti Bass - was a little to self-absorbed.

The reader feels excluded, not least by some of the word-play (particularly in the first verse) which suggests you wrote for your own enjoyment as much as the reader's.

But I for one shall look forward to reading more of your poems

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I agree in general with the distinction Hill makes between the two poems. "The Fallen" was a far more gripping experience to me - to be fair, when I clicked on the thread and the "Alberti Bass" came up first, I glanced at the first half dozen lines, skimmed a bit and gave up and but for Hill's comment on "The Fallen" I might not have read that either, which would have been a pity. Yes, the plate of warm cookies line doesn't sit all that well among so much vivid description of addiction, self-abuse and degradation, but there many, many other images that are apropos and strong.

[iPenguin]

Alberti Bass - was a little to self-absorbed.

The reader feels excluded, not least by some of the word-play (particularly in the first verse) which suggests you wrote for your own enjoyment as much as the reader's.
H

Not to shrug off your comment by any means, but isn't this true for any poet? If you're not into what you're writing, how will the reader be and how will he/she believe you? I don't write poems I don't enjoy writing, and almost any good writer will tell you they write for themselves first as well as that they write what they would like to read.

I do see your point though, which is why I also write poems like The Fallen and a few others like it, but I tend to like writers like Joyce and Eliot who make their readers work through several layers of meaning and whose poems are equally about the language as the meaning.

To each his own though! And I'll take your comments into consideration for the future as well.