today, your face looks like
the empty seashell murmur of tires on pavement
muffled sirens in hot rubber
like the bark of elms
coarse and impossible to penetrate when tender
fingers explore
though just right for the clips of skittering squirrels
whose claws course not so sensitive
have you gone?
now the meaty weight of this dead arm on waking
to a million singing stings
beyond control
and let's not forget the white light;
the cinematic compilation
of all I've never seen
In a list
A contest entry
- white by Cat.
2200 points, ended December 9, 2008, 23 entries
Gold trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 24 of 24
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Very deserving of the gold. Awesome job here. Thanks so much for the great share. Best wishes. Keep penning.
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I had to let go... your words became addictive after the fourth journey or so.
"have you gone?"
Nope! Still here with mouth slightly twisted. Love the last stanza. It melts right into the finale line.
Your title, the visuals, sensations, sounds, scents, and well... sensory perception, it's all there!
~Sigh
CONGRATS ON EARNING THE GOLD CHALICE!
Much Love & Happy Holidays & New Year ♥
Renee
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Congratulations, a much deserved gold.
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this is quite a poem with bringing an indulge of images that surround the theme without overkill on any level.
congrats on the gold.
Kim
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the muffled scream that causes
every head to turn and think
there but for the grace of god go i... the stink of rubber
does not perturb the squirrel
who climbs the wires overhead
and lands exactly where he chooses- laughs at the upside down funnel meant to deter
and the light
that doesn't dawn soon enough.. yeah, this has it all
m
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This has all the murmurings of someone blinded not from birth but one who is still in that stuttered sense of not really able to explain what things are under feel and taste, a rebirthing perhaps of how it's going to be whether they like it or not and then perhaps the things that suddenly you did know and now find are not the same. I dunno maybe I am just rambling and not getting it at all but it's my two cents worth and there you have it. C
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Heavy poem, written well. The first stanza seems intently ambiguous. Sounds and shapes are two different things. When you combine the two in one sentence there is confusion. Of course, without punctuation who is to dispute the clarity of a sentence that may not exist to begin with. Does the author wish to be clear? Maybe not. Maybe the author wishes the reader to read clear. But as a reader one must clarify. There is no choice.
I like the last stanza. To me the white light is a dark nightmare.
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a finger can reach
what sight hardly breach
aka the back of your own head (maybe)
and i'm sure i don't mean soul
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I cain't say a bunch'a profound shit like them smart ones did, but I was impressed enough to read this, like nine times. Challenging me as a reader is whatdoes so as a poet as well. This is one of those, where, I , if writing it, would have been intimidated by the piece at the end; how to finish it so well as to fulfill the promise of the body?
You make it look easy...
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I agree with that Nursey about the Antony and the Johnsons comparison lots - this poem shares the near chimerical,haunting beauty of their lyrics. The way the poem deals with its subject by enhancing the 'other' senses - it tastes, touches, hears and smells its way around the imagination rather than just visualising everything, which one of poetry's bad habits right?
Have you ever read Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark? A man's blinded in a car accident. His girlfriend's lover moves into his house - she pretend he's mad and just hearing strangely whenever he notices stuff and thinks it's isn't just him and her.
Normally your poetry has a painterly quality. This one is more like sculpture, just impossibly sensual.
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I have not read that, but I will if you recommend. Is that the one from The Police song?
I think I may have forgotten about smell in this one, thanks for pointing that out. I should smell and taste. -
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You never did - it smells of hot rubber.
Ohhh the most pretentious lyric ever ever right. I don't know - I thought that song was banging on about Humbert Humbert in Lolita but who knows - Nabokov's writing's just drenched with dirty old men. The guy in Laughter in the Dark, before his accident he spots this girl in the cinema and goes back to the same film over and over just to see her. I think the novel's kind of seen as this templatey-precusory thing to Lolita anyway so maybe they're kind of the same character anyway. My favourite of his old dirty men is this guy called Hermann in Despair who kills a tramp he thinks is his double in order to fake his own death but actually the bloke looks nothing like him at all. It's wonderful. He loves parasitic things. I don't know though - I never studied the Police lyrics too well
I'm disgustingly obsessed with Nabokov at the moment though. And I saw in your comments how someone sees this element of synaesthesia in your poem and that's so true. And Nabokov was a synaesthete and so was his wife and there's this lovely story - I mean I don't how true it is - but say Nabokov saw a word as red and his wife saw it as yellow - then there child saw it as orange as if the two mixed together. I think that's probably utter bullshit but I love it.
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I really like the synaesthesia of the first stanza, reminds me of disorientation on waking. 'have you gone' - immediate reaching out for contact, reassurance. the 'meaty arm' stanza took me to waking once, being tapped on the face by a strange hand, and the panic until I realised it was my own, numb from sleeping on it.
I like the 'all I've never seen' being white light, which contains all colours, and the neat loop back to the start of the poem.
I like this poem, enigmatic enough to tantalise, like the sound in a seashell, not quite forming a known pattern.
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reminds me of Antony and the Johnsons - Cripple and the Starfish song.. I will grow back
a thousand stinging moments never to be seen or felt
white noise in my ears irritates the shit outta me
nice work Ed
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With the sound of light
you deafened her voice, sang her praises and spit her shining white body deep into the very core of my soul.
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Are you sure it was your soul?
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I actually have been hung up on that sound - the empty shell murmur and rubber on pavement since I read this the first time the other day. I had a hard time moving beyond that cause I kept hearing the two sounds competing in some sort of same instrument symphony. I listen to empty shells all the time -- have my whole life being somewhat of a beach/sea shell fanatic. Never have I tied it to urban sounds and now I don't know if I'll ever be able to NOT hear that urban sound.
You are King of that Shit. I bow down in gratitude and envy.
I didn't want muffled sirens to come so quickly (I mean I know it HAS to) but it seemed like I could get hung up on that first sound image forever. And the second so close pissed me off - well not pissed me off but bothered me. Which is good, poems should bother I think.
This about shooting heroin? That's sort of what I feel like it might be about. Braille being the needle marks and the dead arm and the stings? Course it might be pins and needles and I'm making up all the other images in my head which I tend to do.
Probably all wrong but that is what I thought of just now. I've read it about 10 times but it is just this moment that I picture it about heroin.
I like the "have you gone?" there in the middle. I had some trouble with the line breaks in Stanza 2 but I also like that I had trouble with them -- the poem disorients me -- maybe it is about waking up. I dunno. I don't need to understand it to feel and hear the things you've created.
It reminds me of Lou Reed. I love it. But probably more I think I love you and therefore I have trouble being objective about anything you post because I find your poems to be amazingly fucking fantastic.
Hope that all doesn't embarrass you too much.
Write more. Today. Soon. I need it. My arms are itching...
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Everything is either about masturbation or booting smack. This one is, oddly enough, about blindness, mostly figurative. "have you gone?" because I wouldn't know, now that you are further away from me than the end of my extremities, blindman that I am.
I love you too, and it doesnt embarass me at all. I like to hear positive things occasionally, even more than i like to gush. Squirt. -
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I've always wondered if blind people *see* white or black.
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today, your face looks like
the empty seashell murmur of tires on pavement
muffled sirens in hot rubber
(((the abstractness of this opening section got me really thinking....Your title is what made me 'get it' and i will get to how i loved it tied neatly at the end later--- I sat and thought of the current braille standards... how they use eight dots per cell, where a cell is a glyph-space two dots across by four dots high; most glyphs use only the top six dots and upon looking at it quickly its totally confusing to me- so i close my eyes and I am still lost- until i am trained... until the system as abstract as it is - makes sense
and that is where i went with the composed mix of empty seashell murmur of hot tires on pavement muffled sirens in hot rubber....
how upon a simple glance it makes no fucking sense but dig deeper, take the time like a blind person and feel it absorb it without fear- even though for some reason i felt the underlayer of fear.. maybe its hearing sirens, even if muffled, that take me there- nothing good comes from a siren... I smelled my own meaning, I heard it faintly through the conch-- if that makes any sense?)))
like the bark of elms
coarse and impossible to penetrate when tender
fingers explore
though just right for the clips of skittering squirrels
whose claws course not so sensitive
have you gone?
(((the opposite use here coarse and tender - so interesting - i had to stay there and think of what it meant to me. I think of myself when tender and almost vulnerable like- fingers outline a shape, an element and yet still the fullness is unknown...
i sit in my own lost vision here and think of other senses in me that rise up and try to compensate- and then i lead myself further into myself and think of all that i compensate for within...though the blind may never fully see the shell-- they will always feel and know what is inside. eh just where my own senile self went- do forgive.)))
now the meaty weight of this dead arm on waking
to a million singing stings
beyond control
and let's not forget the white light;
the cinematic compilation
of all I've never seen
(((oh i hate it when my foot is in an awkward position and falls asleep.... and i have to then walk on pins and fucking needles-- so much in life is like that.... and never at a time of our choosing either...
and i cannot help but feel a sarcastic moment in 'lets not forget'- though maybe that is just me. I used to know someone, when they would say that it was always leading into something sarcastic....almost murphys lawish moments
and then your title is wrapped in the end
cinematic compilation--- did it take you long to choose this combination here?
I ask because it seems really thought out- it wraps up the entire piece to me.
I really liked this. I hope i havent totally insulted you with all my crazy thoughts and where you took me within myself. Sometimes i need to know when to shut the heck up but I dont think i ever will LOL
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Thank you for taking the time to enter this in our contest. Your take on the prompt was incredibly clever.
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I went back and forth on the "cinematic compilation" line many times, finally giving up and throwing the shit out there. This one has been in the works for a while, which is unusual for me. I think it ultimately fails in that it is overly cryptic.
Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't.
The worst is when it requires a herculean effort just to roll over OFF the arm which you can't move. I find myself flailing about the mattress or couch or whatever like a fish or a woodworm. How awful it must be to lack extremities.
Being unable to see and being able to see 20/20 with a large white card in front of one's face are mostly the same thing, lack of sensory input or the lack of ability to interpret it, etc. bla bla
See. Fail. -
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this worked and i am greatful that you threw your shit out here
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brilliant
i like "have you gone?".
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oh my...This is some brilliant poetry you have written. I love the imagery and metaphor.It's masterfully crafted.Simply put Breath taking
Thanks for sharing your gift for poetry.
Best of wishes to you and all you do.
Tony
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