So Very Untitled

[epconey]

*This format is supposed to be centered and in a block. I can't figure out how to do this.



Ever since the bomb dropped the entire city has lost the ability to speak. People smile as they walk by, but that's as close as they will ever get. You spent last night in a bathtub full of ice-water and sea-urchins. You said you wanted to be reminded that life still has the ability to reach out and touch skin. It's been over a year since we've heard so much as a hum, but yesterday, we watched jaguars chase down field-mice. You squeezed my thigh as satellites fell from the sky. They say the church fire was an act of arson. They say that sound cannot exist within the vacuum of space. I remember who you are even when you forget. We may not know where this all came from, but we know where it stands today. And I will always be here to remind you, you haven't even thought about killing yourself in almost six full days.

[hillwalker]

I like the image of lying in a bath-tub with sea urchins in order to find Nature... but the parts about the bomb and the satellites and the burning church etc. (presumably signifying the fall of civilisation) seemed a bit too simplistic.

An interesting prose poem all the same, and it's an original take on 'interpersonal communication'.

H

PS - hated the title

[Jack of Hearts]

It's like toned down, refined WolfLarsen. And, for this reader, it almost works. Almost- this reader is not quite willing to say some elements of it aren't a bit too whacky. Hopefully you post here more.







J

[epconey]

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I appreciate the the insights; they definitely give me some things to think over. It just occurred to me that it might be beneficial to give you the concept behind this poem and the others I will soon be posting.

This poem comes from a chapbook of mine I self-published for my senior project at Southern Oregon University. In this chapbook, I borrowed Ron Spillman's--an importnat language poet--concepts regarding a new philosophy of poetry which he named The New Sentence.

To simply his theory, Spillman sought to explore the way sentences "integrate into higher units of meaning--" meaning that the preceding sentence in a chain of sentences, is quite literary independent from the one that follows. Yet together, the reader shapes them into a pseudo narrative. In my work, I have been trying to create a unified theme by linking arguably unrelated sentences into a general cohesive tone, which results in a feeling of mock narration.... I hope I am explaining it as well he does. Anyway, this is the affect I hope to achieve. Please, let me know how my work sits with you with this considered.

Also, none of the poems are titled. The title I wrote was just for fun, here on the site only.

Thanks again for all you thoughts. Here follows another poem from my series.

[epconey]

There are train tracks that run through our backyard which have not felt the weight of spinning wheels for a very long time. And sometimes, as the wind rises and whips across the sand dunes, the entire house swells with the sounds of haggling sea merchants, the patter of foot traffic along the boardwalk, and the roaring of sea lions playing beneath the docks. We stand in our kitchen and watch sails snapping in the wind. We dig holes in the garden and wait for our secrets to grow. People hate to be reminded of everything that they regret. But we like it here; the weather's nice. The whole world watches us as if we are crazy. But there are bodies behind the door, people lining up, waiting to die. Every morning we stumble out of bed and stagger sleepily into the front yard. We kneel down on a warm patch of grass, close our eyes, and wait to disappear.

Untitled III (this one's a little different from the rest of my collection)


We believe handshakes should be exchanged for handjobs. We continue to sing long after the music has been turned off. We read titles and fill in stories. We believe the moon burns brightest over a city on fire. We understand that a body at rest stays at rest. We know cold fusion is something two naked people do in bed together. We feel the best things in life aren't free; they are taken--preferably with violence, followed by prolonged, unsustainable celebration. We've come to terms with the fact that somwhere, someone is building a box identical to our body dimensions. We hold that it is better to be haunted than abandoned. We understand that seperate we are vulnerable but to together we are formidable. We believe that our inability to surprise one another is underrated. We are certain that our fathers have loved other than our mothers, and we are okay with that. We understand exactly how this all began, and precisely the way in which it will end, and we are doing everything in our power to get the word out.

[hillwalker]

An interesting concept - almost a case of 'non sequiturs rule'.

Of the 2 latest postings I probably preferred II (alhough it's a bot of a curate's egg - good in parts).
But there's tiresome repetition in III that undermines the pattern of a fragmented chain of sentences and it ends rather flatly.

H

[Jack of Hearts]

Honestly, this reader thinks you're onto something here. But you must go a little further with it.









J