Coffee Induced Stuff

[EugenistLee]

To Terence

We do not dream of sanity
but we peer towards its
icy depths, its pools of
partied, encrockeried
fish, upturned, gaping towards that
emblazened sun, which
scorches us, duneless nomads.

I danced on the glass ceiling,
or the paved underground
but the taxies in their sliding
smiles, unthreaded, unwoundable,
would reverberate like plaintive
echoes into the glass ceiling
that cracks from above in
impossible hope, hopeless and
happiest where
there lay no hope but in the present.

So the Brooklyn tread,
or the Coventry constable,
would line in pillored graveyards,
to the ragged tunes of nursery
rhymes, pealing from the bells,
like music, tolling between our lives
to still the truths of silence.


In the Hostel

What loneliness, how it breeches!
The ear freezes from
this counterfactual screaming,
but the ear
listens, and cries.

See how it pokes this
Decoy, voyeurish, unmanly
heart. Vanishing in this hearth
Of words, like firewood licked
Away by time, by words.

Deeper and deeper you
Dream away poverty.
For there attains the greatest
Purity, wealth, truth.

[Delta40]

I like the streams of images in Coffee Induced Stuff - a great title. Too much 'hope' in S2. Think the last stanza is wonderful.

I rather like the line 'How it breeches' although others find this sort of expression cheesy, I think it echoes the depth of what the person is feeling - in this case loneliness.
When I've drank too much coffee, both of your poems mean something and everything!

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's rare, I think, so quickly to establish an unmistakable voice, as you do here, one that is always intelligent without ever preening, a pleasant voice, a companionable one.

[MorpheusSandman]

There is some vivid imagery here, but I'm not sure it all comes together to form a whole that's more than the sum. Each stanza has a different agent and tense, and about the only similarity are the line lengths and multitude of sub-clauses and add-ons. Perhaps the first would work better if S2 and S3 preceded S1, because the former two locate the poem spatially while S1 is more abstract and feels like a summation rather than a prelude. I think the second one is more successful as it does maintain a strong sense of cohesion, although there should be a comma rather than period after "heart".