On Turning 19

[IceM]

In Tibet

They say the soul
is like a pond
shrouded in fog

and death,

a ripple.


McLean Hospital

Somewhere,
the succor of life still grows,
dangling like a plum in the wind.

Perhaps, in the gnashing of gravel
and the numbing coarseness of earth,
I dropped it. Or,
after the skies of screaming lead,
it flowed away in the sanguine streams
of Joseph's unintended sacrifice,
trapped in the mud.

So I began to dig:
digging with shovels,
digging with my hands,
digging until the youthful pink of my flesh
died away in the opaque puss of blisters:
until the sprawling beams of the city's towers
rose to meet their parents,
only to fall away from the decay of time:
digging until the cool of a river
and the meat of a peach
were coarse to the touch.

Somewhere,
the succor of life still grows,
dangling like a plum in the wind.
And the wheat fields shine amber
under the final rays of the raw-eyed sun.

And still I reside in this hole,
clothed in dust,
digging deeper into the pits of memory,
trying to find a fruit with enough juice
to hopefully quench my thirst.

[Hawkman]

Nice to see your offerings gracing these boards Ice. Really enjoyed In Tibet. wouldn't change a thing.

McLean Hospital is powerfully written but is marred by a couple of over used cliches and too many "of somethings", like: "of gravel, of blisters of time, of a river, of a peach, of the raw eyed sun, of memory. etc." There are also too many diggings, which detract from and diminsish the rhetorical effect of, the first three in S3. a little judicious pruning of articles and rephrasing of the of lines would be easily accomplished and give the piece the polish it deserves.

A good read, despite it's minor flaws.

Live and be well - H

[AuntShecky]

Congratulations on turning 19. ( I can't begin to tell you how many Presidential administrations have come and gone since yours fooly turned 19.) I can understand how one might view that age as a milestone calling for a poetic response, but I'm sorry to say I don't see a direct connection between that umbrella title and the two verses thus presented.

The first, "In Tibet, " is sparse and pithy and evokes a hint of the philosophy originating in that part of the world.

The second one, about the hospital, is harder (for yours fooly) to get a handle on. "Succor" --taken to mean solace and personal attention as might be provided by a caretaker or a "hands on"- medical provider --is a service one would naturally expect to receive within a hospital. Where the conceit breaks down, methinks, is the how succor can be presented almost as a quantity that can be measured or "grown" as a plum tree. In my ever-increasingly humble opinion, I have come to believe that metaphors are useful only in the extent that they are plausible. That the metaphysical poets, of whom Donne is the leading example, were masters at the skill of combining two seemingly "disparate" (Eliot's word) items in a equivalence relationship.

There are also some minor errors in diction and usage. For example. the pronoun "it" in line 6 doesn't really have a clear antecedent. Try to use the appropriate part of speech, (nouns and adjectives): the "coolness" rather than the "cool" of the river. Tthe closing line is a split infinitive. If your dictionary includes usage notes, look up what percentage of the panel finds your use of "hopefully" as acceptable.

You're on the right track, though. Keep reading a variety of poems from several centuries, especially the last century and the (still-young!) current one. Study as much as you can about the craft of verse writing. Continue to write and post right here.


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