The water bottle’s transparency hides nothing and everything.
Don’t pretend you aren’t judging it already.
I know you see those little specks of somethings,
the ones that are floating around,
the ones that aren’t really anything special.
You see the imperfections of the water
because they appear magnified from
your perspective,
the outside of the water bottle.
—look, there!
Does that grain of sand look like a boulder?
Does that speck look like a planet?
Does that speck look like everything malevolent in the world?
(Or…
does that speck represent nothing and everything
that you don’t know or are afraid of?)
“SHH! Quilence!”
All you know is that
the larger they are, the greater the danger they are to you.
You want them gone,
clear, clean, free of calamity.
I can feel your hate, your need of determining their fates.
First, you try denting the mold of the bottle,
battering it with hostile words,
then, physically with punches and kicks,
and next, the ultimate persuasion:
loaded guns at the ready,
pointed at the bottle’s cap.
Dissagone?
No.
Why exile the specks that are the constituents
that define its distinctive stubbornness?
Wait.
What’s wrong with the specks?
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
Without an answer, you pull on a pair of gloves,
find tongs, open the bottle
and start pouring the water out
into a chemical waste disposal.
Try as hard as you want,
but you cannot rid the bottle of the
last few drops of water.
You fear
that the remaining water will contaminate
your mind,
and thus you twist the cap tightly.
As you move to throw it all way,
even the remnant memories of it in your mind,
the water bottle moves towards the light.
The water condenses because of the heat,
trying to escape,
to shine light on the truth,
and to tell you about itself.
You move it away from the light,
but it leaps up again and again.
You turn off the lights
and attempt to hide your fears in the darkness.
Why can’t you touch it?
It won’t shrink like an eyeball.
Why are you so petrified of something you haven’t given
a chance
to know?
Eventually,
a voice from the inside of the bottle shares,
“Hello, I am Jen.
Who are you?”
and so begins the conversation of a lifetime
told from the inside of a water bottle.
Author notes
inspired by Walt Whitman
3, glowsticks and pickle juice
A contest entry
- yep yep yep 1 winner no more no less(erotica now welcome){{more than 1 entry welcome}} by DogTagz-TheJalapeno.
302 points, ended December 11, 2007, 20 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
So...what is a watter bottle to you?
Comments
1 - 14 of 14
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niiice this was very good and i liked it.it was very discriptive and the imagery was awesome.good luck.
-kayla -
I can see what you are saying, the statement you are trying to make here, about judging a book by its cover and all that good stuff. I thought, however, the metaphor of the water bottle seemed so far out there and, I'll say it, even a wee bit juvenille. I don't necessarily mean that to be a bad thing at all, just that it's how I viewed the piece. There is an audience for every type of poem, every type of form, every type of style. To me, this reads a little socially preachy. You know, telling the reader to do or not do this and that, to be or not be this or that type of person. You are, basically, forcing your morals on the audience, instead of allowing us to take our own stance on the subject.
Again, I feel a little torn, because I do like the approach you are working with here, but it's the generalized social "you" that irks me. I don't feel there's anything personal about this, though, if someone has experienced this kind of thing on a big scale, they might be able to relate to it. At any rate, it wasn't a bad poem by any means, just not particularly to my tastes. I do appreciate you entering and thank you for listening to me nitpick. lol -
WOAH
THIS IS SO AWESOME!!!! I CaNT EVEN SAY WEWLL YOUR ON MY FAVORITES lmso
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Haha, thanks for your comment :]
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water bottle is a water bottle lol
wow! Very intimidating way of addressing the reader... Absolutely fantastic thoughts mined up in here. Very provocative near the end, when you have a conversation with the water bottle. Excellent choice of suject! Effective title... the song, which has nothing to do with a bottle, (saying this in a good way), of yourself, which suggests the reflection of the water thing is a great idea and original!
wow!
Lady anairO
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thank you so much! I'm glad you commented on the title. It was a project for English and based off of Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself"
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Cute, real cute. Only a fraction of what really happens, ne? I have alcohol talk to me too, It tells me to let things go.. Heh, Like i can do something like that...
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You can do what you want. You don't need alcohol to tell you anything at all.
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Very interesting poem! I went and got a water bottle and filled it and examined it...but unfortunately, I couldn't find any specks. Oh well. I remember watching 'Horton Hears a Who' on a tape, and I compared this poem to that story too! It was about an elephant with really big ears who hears a tiny who calling out from a dust speck. No one else could hear it or see it, so they all punished him for being crazy and talking to dust specks.
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I think you have to drink a bit or something because you know, stuff in your mouth gets into the water sometimes. :-p Thanks for the comment
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This was amusing. To be honest, I didn't go get a waterbottle and fill it. But I recalled from when I examined a half empty bottle before.
I like the words you made up like "quilence" (well, I think you made it up.)
This has an interesting perspective. The end kind of reminded me of "Horton Hears A Who" by Dr. Seuss. My school did Seussical the Musical last year, so that is pretty fresh in my mind.
Nice job.
Blessings, Skye -
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Yay for examining water bottles! Yes, I did make up two words. Thanks
Hmm...I can't quite remember "Horton Hears a Who." Refresh my memory?
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wow...all from a water bottle. I have to tell you that is a little intense coming from a bottle of water. I think your structure and thought are amazing. Good luck
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Thanks for the comment Yep, I'm an avid water drinker (it must be from cross country). Anyway, so I had a bunch of water bottles on my desk and decided to write about them for my English assignment.
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