i. silvermask
The hocks of a horse stood still.
Birch bent, silently,
rubbing against the sky;
string whispered.
There was a tin pluck,
the nylon hammer of a ghost's shutter blown in
by dusty drums.
A lullaby compassed in
crescent slept, silvering
in the ravaged clouds. The
sails of the wind fluttered.
ii. goldmask
The sun lowered her
nose shining into a flat white pond.
Rings on her toes glinted blindly
on flags as she tilted toward the
far end, wars are to be
won on horses before she
calls out without silence.
iii. candlemask
Oh love threadbare,
the singing grains
of me
gladly harry the rocks,
engage the heels of the
mountains.
life, masquerading
as death!
the walls are shouted down!
Pounding, the fat bloodberries
cloaked redly in simplicities
swim along the dirt which tries
furiously.
My cloaked one, turn loose your hawk.
I pull a little tooth of
jagged straw up
from my bared neck
and pray.
Oh don't let the sky fade back into blue -
a warm body
mugs the pale seacliff's eyelids.
Hard by, I keep looking
for the one who saved me
from finding my fingers.
Hobbits are biting the ankles of the
wars.
iv. blue
Immortality is not the lack
of epicals or great journeys. But
time is our shrine to them.
And mortality is a lack
of desire: not contentment
but the backwards of contentment.
A contest entry
- MASKS, METAPHOR OR OTHERWISE by Uniquely-Scarred.
675 points, ended December 4, 2008, 19 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
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MMM INTRESTING NICE LAYOUT BEST OF LUCK
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Thanks for reading!
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lol! thanks for reading, i'm so glad the printout worked. nylon hammer refers to a guitar 'hammer-on', used frequently in blues music etc.
well i was thinking about Heaven in the last stanza. life's not just a lack of death, perfection's not a lack of imperfection, love's not a lack of hate. Good's not a lack of evil - it's a living, different, indescribable thing linked closely to God. -
Rich in imagery, and mysterious. I like the use of, um, the printout.... As with anything abstract, the view is colored by the reader's experience. To me, 'nylon hammer' conjures up dual images: one, of the kind of hammer that drives nails, only made of nylon instead of steel; two, the kind of hammer that strikes the strings in a piano, made of nylon instead of felt. Also, while nylon was first known to me as a textile, it is also a solid plastic from which a noisy ghost's shutter could be made. If a textile, the shutter would make no noise. But there are elements which are more clear. I'm still pondering the last stanza, but, then, isn't that what we should do with deep poetry? The lowercase Roman-numbered subtitles enhance the overall effect of meditation and the arcane, and the lack of the word 'mask' in the final one will snap one's mind out of a given train of thought.
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