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My Immense Darkness
by Steven Hunley
My immense darkness was not the Thames,
But only the dregs of the Los Angles River,
Narrow and slow-moving,
Diminished by three million parched fame-seeking souls,
Their tears of rejection could never hope to replenish its grandeur,
Even as they ran in torrents down narrow gutters,
To a pacific but uncaring sea.
Hi Steven. I can't help wondering why you mention the Thames. It's irrelevant, so you might as well just cut to the chase about the LA river. You need a full stop at the end of line 4 or to change the first word of the next line to whose. I prefer the full stop though. I'm not keen on the last line either. It doesn't read well - "to the uncaring Pacific" would be better.
I liked the imagery though.
Live and be well - H
I like the reference to the Thames river in the first line. I might add some distinguishing adjectives to show how the two rivers symbolically, figuratively differentiate. In the last couple of lines, I wish there was more literal movement, flow. Your doubts, fears are flooding into a deep reservoir(Pacific ocean). Briny, fall-off tears flood the face(land), then drain into the cold, uncaring, deep Pacific ocean. The residual ducts (drainage ditches/your face) are laced with the remaining silts.
A quality poem you have penned! You could develop a bit more or not. I enjoyed commiserating with you. The emotive strain was palpable.
I have a poem along a similar topic I will share with you. I hope you like end rhyme, because others on this site do not.
Heart Streams Intersect Then Diverge
Sum of two, percolating hearts
Two forks merge Love's current to kickstart
Love's seminal streams nutrients cart
Naively, through winding conduits dart
Each mind's eye the vital signs chart
Through coronary arteries, blithe goals, hopes jump-start
Strains increase, blood pressure tearing conjunctive cells apart
Gritty plaque dams; communication channels thwart
From heart's door, through silted veins, corroding dreams depart
Alter egos swell; each inflammatory argument has counterpart
A professional, therepeutic stent does bypass lane impart
Until acute thrombosis does stagnant minds compart
Divergent heart streams then dissected on Love's flowchart
I took the reference to the Thames as referring to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where at the beginning the Thames is compared to the Congo snaking into the heart of darkest Africa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by breathtest
That's exactly where it came from, the last line I wrote in Jet Blue to Heart of Darkness. So happy someone picked up on it. It was from Marlow waiting for the tide to change and start upon his journey, where I was ending my trip to L.A. ( a reverse heart of darkness but just as black)
This one is short and sweet, Steven. Doesn't try to do too much; catches the frustration of the hopeful kids in La La land.
Now that you mention the Conrad allusion, I get it, especially with your title, but I missed it at first. Yer ol Auntie isn't always quick on the draw. You can't go wrong with river metaphors; look what they did for the great Langston Hughes.
A great short novel it is too. And I like this poem. Understated as AuntShecky said, but also very significant, encompassing so much of a disappointed humanity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Hunley
Hi, Steven.
Hmmm. I'm still not sure that your justification for mentioning the Thames is entirely convincing. Certainly, Marlowe says, "...and this, too, has been one of the dark places of the earth..." But this is hardly a comparison with the Congo, as breathtest suggests. Marlow is talking about the Thames in the distant past, in pre-Roman and Roman times, when it would have been surrounded by pestilential swamps. Your poem seems firmly rooted in the present, so the link is tenuous at best and rather obscure. When I think of the Thames today, I don't think of it as, "one of the dark places of the earth..." Neither do I think that way about the LA river, if it comes to that, but your poem does create a link to an immense darkness of a spiritual kind with regard to this one. However, this is not the case in the first line. I still maintain that mentioning the Thames is irrelevant, at least without some sort of contextual exposition.
Live and be well - H