and suddenly i saw
polka dots
broken open by exhaustion
lost in time and fashion
slipping through one or another hand
making a racket of clapping
in the empty air
our language sleeps
next to life itself
in my song
i saw a single kiss
standing between us
maybe i love the deep silence
of solitude best
that labyrinth in the moon's forehead
that echoes in the earth
not just one
flower
wave fire in the air or
liquor
devoured by victory
but fidelity you blood red rose
of when and how
tropical bouquet of
drenched beasts with
weapons of rain and aromatic incence
wearing an aura of terrible nonsense
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7 comments:
OK. I feel like analyzing this one...wanna try/play that?
I want to cut it up and talk about it. Let me know if that sounds like fun...
as merwin said: bring integrity as a gift, something which i had lost and you found on the way, i will lay it beside us, the old knife, while we reach our conclusions....
also~ i am recording poetry on saturday for a new disc: Word Painting... and if you come up with a good version, perhaps i will record it!
thanks. a.
It's been a long time since I've tried to write about a poem. But this poem is so damn fine that I want to try at least a little. It's the best whack at polka dots and language I think I've ever read. Polka dots and relationships... or something like that. Of course, my talking about this poem is just derivative, but I just want to tell you WHY I like it SO much.
Polka dots are magic. Who knows why, but it just happened again: I was at a birthday party this week where there was a mound of bright presents and I looked at all the packages but the polka dot one just jumped out at me--why do I like them so much? And this poem tackles it: relationship. But you've got them being how they are after you've lost the initial allure (which--is that the perfect symmetry) and we get tired of that perfection. (Please, you gotta let me just ramble sort of, because organizing my thoughts just kills them.) When you're watching polka dot fabric, it does fold on itself in the random ways that fabric moves, and yet every time, with their regular 2d spacing, the dots DO clap together. And the eyes get tired of it after the initial excitement and then the loudness of the visual structure is like a racket. Like, could you just go take that dress off now?
And your lines
"our language sleeps
next to life itself," well that just deepens the juxtaposition. The automation of polka dots is like the automation of our constant symbol making.
I dunno. The first part of this poem is just so deep for me. I go a little crazy about it. This is the best part of poetry (I think,) is when it defines the insanity--because the moment you draw up a true picture of insanity (little or big) then it's no longer isolated. I just LOVE glimpsing at other people's true pictures of it. (Gush.) (Gush some more.) Truly, I think these first 9 lines are some of the best I've ever read, by anybody.
Tell me if you want to hear more.
amy~ thank you very much. i thought, ~ and remember i have been sleep deprived for months now!~ that you were going to cut~up and rearrange my poem... which i have had people do before... but this is really amazing to hear...
i read the first 9 lines in isolation... and i am "hearing" it as a whole... now that you pointed it out...
i am interested in anything you have to say.
well.. spare me talk about the Mariners... but aside from that! anything goes.
most of this poem i wrote based on sounds... especially line endings and their sounds being echoed by the next line... which is one way to keep my mind OFF the meaning... and so it gets written without too much semantic analysis...
it is a kind of game... to trick myself into writing from a place that is fresh.
this is one of the "word paintings" i will be recording on saturday. maybe i should break it up into shorter fragments? now you have me thinking! thanks.
Well, to me, this poem has three pieces. The second piece (I think) are lines 10-16 or 17. At 16 or 17 I think it starts to do something else entirely. So, if it's okay to talk about it this way, I would call 10-16/17 the middle.
I like the middle because I think it describes the landscape of a certain part of relating. (Again, my words about it are stupid compared to your actual words of it. But how else can we have dialog? It's a reflection anyway, even if it's dull.) It's the part of relating that's the quiet distance. (Spaces between the dots?) The "labyrinth in the moon's forehead/that echoes in the earth" has got to be the exact feeling I have. Very quiet, private connection with the cosmos (inner and outer) that comes through getting a little lost, as if by some multidimensional design--because a labyrinth has kind of a connotation of something that's created and maintained for the sport of finding. This is kind of how I feel about God and the way it seems like S/he can know my thoughts more than I can, as if watching me grope through the labyrinth. It could be that you meant the visual patterns of greys on the moon's surface, also. And whatever else it was you meant or it means. I would love to hear what others think about the middle!!!
The end (I think the rest of the poem) is a little trickier to talk about. Maybe you could guide me with your questions. Do you ever have questions you want to ask your audience???
amy~ i agree with you about the "breaks" in the poem... i think a long time ago... rather than breaking off at a natural ending... i just pushed on... thinking i could edit later... just to see what would happen... but i ended up "feeling" that the parts, the fairly autonomous parts... were on some level connected to each other...
the line "in my song" can be both a last line and a first line... and i think this is intentional to a greater than lesser degree.
in other words, i am aware of this dual function as i write it rather than finding it out after i write it... which occurs for other "stuff".
"i saw a single kiss>>>" this line is the beginning of a new vision...
and that is all i was conscious of... i didn't think: oh this links up with the first bit, or it means such and such...
i just "see" something...
sometimes it is like seeing what Isn't there... with one friend i keep seeing what is missing... like... bitterness... i think, whew, after such a life... or relationship history... i would be bitter... or why isn't this person bitter? although it is more visual... like seeing the Absence of bitterness...
and this section which doesn't really end... it merges and transforms, i think, into the last part...
this is about relationship... just a typical question about whether or not one prefers solitude to coupling.
and it morphs into the everpresent awareness of being already in relationship to the earth, or the cosmos... and yet distant like the moon... the moon came from the earth... like a child... and like a child... it is of the mother but is also autonomous and distant.
the implied many echoes of the earth set off a raphsodic mini~chant!
which ends with a more abstract "avoidance" (of silence?)
"blood red rose of when and how"
sometimes i push into abstraction just to see what comes of it.
i end with a typical conclusive vision of humanity... drenched beasts... "tropical... weapons" ...
and end with the absudist view that inheres (to my feeble mind) in a perfect rhyme: incense/nonsense...
where i explicitly say: this is our aura: terrible nonsense....
something like that.
it is, to my mind another poem that is far from complete or perfect... but since i am not trying to out do my imperfections! let it stand!
ha!
thanks for giving me the opp for an early morning jag... i just woke up so it is early morning for me!
Yes, I think the three parts coil like a snake, especially (to my mind) when I anthropomorphize the images in the last "part." As if the poet is addressing fidelity itself, whom he loves.
flower liquor devour victory--lovely rhythm and sound flourish
Thank you, too. I love this sport. I hope more people come to play!!!
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