My Nietzschean Signature

Someone looked out of their window
And said to me: the world looks
So beautiful, that I praise God
Each day for this wonderful life,
This landscape of happy creatures
And rolling fields of growth and form.
He obviously had not read Tennyson
And he wasn’t an ecologist,
For he had no firm idea of how
Ecosystems sustain themselves.

There are no beautiful surfaces
Without a terrible depth.

You said you loved me.
And I wondered what that could mean.

Beneath this pure beautiful skin
Lie the channels of life
That are busy with the rush
Of fluids.

My blood flowing through my veins
Like an Underground train.
The pus, the urine, the semen, the bile,
The phlegm, the lachrymose fluid
That pulses and dances and moves
Through the bodyscape of my life.
The rivulets, the ravines, the canals
And the streams and the pathways
That carry it all in circumnavigation.

There are no beautiful surfaces
Without a terrible depth.

When I was a child
I cut deeply into my finger
And pulled back the flesh
To reveal something beyond
The bloody face of incision
A whiteness, a solidness beneath
That upheld the façade.

And then when I ran through
Those French windows
And raised my arm
At the last moment
To deflect the blow
Of glacier-like glass
That carved through my youthful arm-skin
Instead of my adolescent face.

I walked in a daze
Back to my room
And lay on my bed
Fascinated with this flap
That felt like some discarded seaweed
Useless and static.
There was little blood, just the fatness
Of meat and muscle.
Even the pain seemed absent
Without any kind of leave.

There are no beautiful surfaces
Without a terrible depth.

And do you love all this, I wonder?
The bacteria in the ecosystem
Of my gut, my anus?

I once lay down
In the middle of an evening
All alone in my room,
And imagined my body dead.
The dissolution of substance
The lubricants of life
Dessicating, like moist soil
Drying out under a relentless sun
And then I imagined the worms
Feasting on my flesh
Helping it decay
Providing the earth with some nutrition.
And at first I was scared,
But then, as a child,
I would read scary stories
Until they lost their effect
And so I continued my meditation
Until the feeling was one of detachment.

There are no beautiful surfaces
Without a terrible depth

And do you love all this?
All this that is my body
And all this that will be my destiny?

Have you ever imagined?

We carry our thoughts around
In a goldfish bowl
Like a cauliflower
Or a mega-walnut
A damp sponge in a layer of fluidity.
We carry this around
Like an astronaut’s space helmet.
And this too will dry out
And fade away.
And when you say you love me,
Do you mean, what you see me do?
What you hear me say?
And the history that you have
Constructed of me in your brain?

There are no beautiful surfaces
Without a terrible depth

Maybe you meant
What I meant when I said
I loved you.

Maybe we should never excavate
Maybe we are not archaeologists.
Maybe there is beauty in these terrible depths.

I really like this poem;like the choice of words, the flow and visual imagery you use... Without any pretension, so strong with the openness of your feelings...
Enjoying it more each time I read it. :nod:

Thank you Scherherazade. I am glad you like it.

I had been thinking quite a lot about the body, and how we forget what it means and what it does. And also how much our feeling of who we are, and indeed our emotive experiences, are wrapped up in physical textures.

AP

That is true, but , unfortunately, it seems like we are getting more and more carried away with 'skin deep beauty'. I really like the quote: "There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth." and it sounds more and more true each day when we look around. I always thought that is mainly for nature in general but seems like as applicable for people as well...

Great lines.. and how you put the ideas into them..
(though i maynot agree with all your ideas)
I haven't read the whole poem as it is long, I will
read it part by part (am a slow eater, i like to enjoy eating ;) )
Usually I don't go for long poems, but here you have
done well to keep it strong throughout,, and as Schez
says, you are not pretentious in your lines and your thoughts
flow as it is.. cheers Padma

Took a bit to read this over and it may just be because I happen to ascribe to the basic narrated message in the poem, but I really enjoyed it. The rhyme flowed quite nicely throughout and the imagery on the bodyscape was wonderful.

I particularly liked the FLA--STA sound that came out when reading the line below, as it felt like internal rhyme that made it fun to keep reading.
Fascinated with this FLAp
That felt like some discarded seaweed
Useless and STAtic.

Dyrwen,

Welcome back. And thank you so much for your appreciation. I am glad you enjoyed it. :)



AP

Oh and thank you Rocksea too. I do appreciate your comments. Especially as you do not agree with me. That makes your comments the more rewarding.

Thank you.

AP

AP, why there's no beautiful surface without terrible depth?


And oh, reading this makes me remember the times when i just lied down and listened to Pink Floyd.

Well, of course the terrible depth/beautiful surface thing is Nietzsche not me, but my interpretation is that beauty is the top of a pyramid or iceberg, the majority of which is considered by most to be either mundane, ugly or mostly valueless. My point is that maybe this depth is still beautiful, that it is connected, necessary, an extension of the complexity of beauty. Beneath all material processes is an emptiness. And maybe that emptiness is itself beautiful.

AP