I remember seeing Marionettes
hung limp on torn tendons of cow meat
still thick with blood-
When the shuddering tugs of flashbacks
circled like squawking buzzards
over our sanity streched so thinly.
I could follow them
to a place where we had never lived,
existed or dared to dream;
You and I lived like poets and dancers,
whores and fishmongers,
slicing fillets of cold flesh
and half a pound of crazy to go with.
Do you remember when
the sun crashed down in fury?
When famine ate the mothy wings of angels
and the Vatican crumbled at our feet?
The people lost their faith in God, in me,
and in the pallor of your Judas skin.
That day,
when the sun suffered her mortal demise,
ashes enveloped the breadth of your Valkyrie cry.
The fallen danced like marionettes
grabbing back your pretty little head
parting your lips like Moses' sea
and drawing forth one last cackle
at that drowning moment.
Fall and weep beneath depths of sea.
Nobody will see tears;
water blends right in,
scales up the length of thigh
and teases out screams
with its cold wet fingers.
Scream and sour mother’s milk
sticky over trembling stomach.
Watch as silent foetus is held
to the heartbeat call of footsteps
pounding thunder to the grave.
Author notes
Gah. I've already spent hours revising this and I STILL haven't got anywhere with it. Most of me want to just delete this... the stubborn shred in me wants to keep working at it because I like its essence. Grrrrr.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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Interesting
Your first paragraph:-
"I remember seeing Marionettes
hung limp on torn tendons of cow meat
still thick with blood-
When the shuddering tugs of flashbacks
circled like squawking buzzards
over our sanity streched so thinly"
is very reminiscent of an experimental macabre David Bowie concept music album ( together with pictures within the album set) from the mid 1990's that was banned from sale to those under 18. I threw my copy in the bin having been sent a copy as a Christmas present by a relative.The album was geared around an imaginery thriller type film story that David may have thought could have been actually made in the American style "shock movie" genre. It may still be made yet. But it is sick!The film concept revolved around a street artist who had moved away from street graffiti to the creation of artistic pictures and images using freshly slaughtered human body parts. Some would say that this is a natural progression from graffiti , taken to it's extreme, as does David who is ( as you know) a citizen of New York in the USA these days.
As to the title "Ode to my Muse". Muses are always a very interesting feature of history. There are 9 of them , they are all female, and their combined name of "Muse" went on to lead to the English word museum. Originally a museum was not supposed to be a stuffy place full of out dated items , of history, covered in dust. It was supposed to be a place for the purposes of amusement which is why the word "Muse" leads to the latter day "Museum" within English modern day language rules.
The 9 Muses are the Greek goddesses of the liberal arts.They were daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne ( I seem to remember giving a presentation at the Univeristy of Birmingham in 1992 that included a discussion of the origins of the "Greek Muses" and their relationship to the modern English word "museum") They are by name:-
1) Cal-liope of epic poetry
2) Clio of History
3) Erato of love poetry
4) Euterpe of music and lyric poetry
5) Melpomene of tragedy
6) Polyhymnia of comedy
7) Terpsichore of dancing
8) Thalia of comedy
9) Urania of astronomy
Thank goodness I am a Mesopotamian Sumer Phoenician descendant of the original British Albion country ( 2000 to 2500 years ago by surname caste origin) and not one of these Greek chaps...that is all that I know!
There was a coming together in history between Greek Hellenistic culture and Mesoptamian/Phoenicians, (including British as descendants of the military of Helen of Troy came to British Albion as well in prehistory- a matter that the band called Genesis expressed an interest in within the song called "blood on the rooftops" a few decades ago) but not at the time that we originated from there. Mesoptamia ....the cradle of civilisation situated next to an area that modern historians are now 65% certain was Eden to the south.The land of the hanging gadens of Babylon and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers!
Andrew Siddle
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Indara Siddle
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I think that you got Polyhymnia all wrong. She's of sacred song, not comedy?!? Or am I wrong?
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hello there, nice thing you got. some how this piece reminded me of the paintings on sistine chapel roof, don't know why... maybe because it explodes with images. i would love to make more comments but i can't right now. i won't promise to, because i have made more promises to my favorites than i can keep. but i will surely be back, i just don't know when
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I like its essence too.
But I do think it needs work. It's sort of like a pastiche of ideas and words, but it doesn't seem too hang together like a poem. Perhaps it's just me, but that's how it seems.
However, I think if you keep at it, you'll achieve something significant. (At least one can hope so.)
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"I remember seeing Marionettes
hung limp on torn tendons of cow meat
still thick with blood-
When the shuddering tugs of flashbacks
circled like squawking buzzards
over our sanity streched so thinly."I think, overall, your poem is very creative and does well with what it presents, but in some parts, weakens, do to jumbling of imagery and word use. Such as the stanza above. While it is very diverse, it's almost too varied for it's own good. Skipping from one image to the next, which isn't necessarily needed. I think you could definitely work on making this segment more precise merely by breaking it down into a more organized fashion, as you have done with the rest of the poem for the most part.
"I could follow them
to a place where we had never lived,
existed or dared to dream;
You and I lived like poets and dancers,
whores and fishmongers,
slicing fillets of cold flesh
and half a pound of crazy to go with.
Do you remember when
the sun crashed down in fury?
When famine ate the mothy wings of angels
and the Vatican crumbled at our feet?
The people lost their faith in God, in me,
and in the pallor of your Judas skin."In these two stanzas, there is much improvement, a more exacting vision of what you are trying to say, with the exception of two things, the question marks, which aren't really necessary in such a large amount or at all and this line:
"and half a pound of crazy to go with."
Which abrubtly stops the stanza and then starts up again in the next stanza, cutting off the ability of the poem to flow naturally off the tongue. Everything else, for the most part, in those two stanzas is very good.
"The fallen danced like marionettes
grabbing back your pretty little head
parting your lips like Moses' sea
and drawing forth one last cackle
at that drowning moment.
Fall and weep beneath depths of sea.
Nobody will see tears;
water blends right in,
scales up the length of thigh
and teases out screams
with its cold wet fingers."For the above stanzas as well, I have two complaints. Words ending in "s" and words ending in "ing". It seems you went on a bit of a binge, cause they're everywhere! Thankfully though, it's a problem that's very easy to fix and with a tiny bit of creativity, which you have plenty of, you can find a way to remedy an overuse of "ing" and "s", helping to create a much more powerful and professional poetry experience.
My other complaint is how you used "sea" twice, very close together in the same context, something that also damages the flow to some extent. But again, all it takes to create a truly inventive piece of poetry without repeating yourself too often, is to learn how to say the same thing with different words. Taking one idea, something you may express again later and changing it around to reflect the same image, without the same words. Very easy and very fulfilling to accomplish.
"Scream and sour mother’s milk
sticky over trembling stomach.
Watch as silent foetus is held
to the heartbeat call of footsteps
pounding thunder to the grave."As for the last stanza, I think it's your weakest, because the wording and imagery are so infinitely twisted. But it's not something I haven't seen before. I have critically commented on a lot of poetry and the one thing I've noticed through all of that, is that the two places in a poem where most people start to fumble is either the first stanza or the last. In this case it is your last, because it doesn't give the reader any closure. The poem merely ends in an abrupt explosion of langauge and is done.
Out of the entire piece, I think this is where you should focus the most work, because the ending is one of the most important parts of a poem. Because as a poet, you aren't writing a novel, you don't have three hundred pages to make up for one mistake ten chapters back. You must be exact in your vision and make sure every rhythm is struck down correctly, cause without good legs no one can stand and therefore without a good ending a poem can't hold it's own weight, regardless of how amazing it is everywhere else.
Hope I have been of some help to you and if you would like me to comment further I will. Make sure to keep me posted on any new revisions.
Outside of some flaws, this piece was very well done. I especially enjoyed the religious theme.
- James :)
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This is a little rough. You stated that you were makeing changes. Consider punctuation. That is a thing with me. Words are great but they need to have breaks here and there.
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Thanks. Punctuation's always last to go in... else I find that I restrict myself from making changes.
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interesting...thought dump, true, but there is a very clear sense (at least to me) that whoever this is written for is someone that is/was loved but is also a betrayer, someone who turned his(or her) back on the memories of promises to something that seemed better...." could follow them
to a place where we never lived
existed or dared to dream
you and I lived like poets and dancers " neat image here, and here "fall and weep beneath depths of sea
nobody will see tears
water blends right in
scales up the length of thigh
and teases out screams
with its cold wet fingers"
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