my mind wanders
frigid paper cracks under dry skin; soft
pencil taints a gridded page, and
my mind wanders to artistry:
the austere hiss of charcoal -
I scratch another word to savour sound.
behind me dance the frosted spectres of forgotten
days when people rested on that smooth wall.
ice now teethes its way around their silhouettes.
these vestiges of bygone times remind me and
my mind wanders.
what other poets once graced these hapless thrones?
I shift.
a sigh escapes my lips.
nothing but a breath -
but it sparks a thought.
my mind wanders.
what other men and women breathed this night?
I entertain expensive thoughts of knights, Ladies,
pirates, hunters, children, lovers, fighters, rogues and gods, and
my mind wanders to
a vivid yesterday.
castles, ships and slaves -
the passion of a hopeless love -
honour -
and I smile as I write as an announcer might.
rubber footprints tear me from adventure
and I let escape another breath of longing.
the whining of a bus
storms my mind,
and ousts so many tall tales.
what woefulness embodies their defeat;
I am a legless wanderer,
tethered from my fantasies, imagining my memories.
Author notes
Something I rattled off at the bus stop/on the bus on my way to kung-fu the other night. Lemme know what you think; been a while since I've written anything and I feel like I'm being pretty cheap with the freeverse o.O Should think about a villanelle or a shanty soon, methinks.
Comments
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So, you were sitting at the bus stop, writing about....sitting at the bus stop. BRILLIANT!! More seriously, there are some great turns of phrase here: "pencil taints a gridded page," "austere hiss of charcoal," "Ice teethes its way" and "expensive thoughts of..." -- I love using new ways to describe something mundane, and if you nail it, your reader goes "yeah, it's EXACTLY like that, why doesn't I think of that?" I do admit that I don't see how the finishing couplet goes with the rest of the piece -- it seems out of place to me, it flows differently -- the poem flows as la-la-la-la-laaaa...followed by ba-dump-bump of the couplet. Or so it seems to me.
"My Mind Wanders" might be a title, as that line seems to repeat itself a bit.
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Tres possible that I have to add more. Truthfully, I don't think I was finished, but I got to the second-last line and had to get off the bus. So... I shall have to think of some better way to finish it.
Thanks much for the commentry!
/jannin
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