Cast in exact duplicate, they edge the beach
in terse, diagonal regiment. Tin-nippled, sunk
and bolted into place, stern-etched
and strange against the skyline. All the world shrunk
to the metal gleam of their brooding.
How alien their order among the elements. How queer
their stolid calm. The beached fish bloat and stink, the gulls scream their feuding,
but the statues only breed slow rust, maintain their fixed frontier.
Author notes
Went to a beach at the weekend which featured an entire row of metal statues moulded from the artist's body. Eerie and strange...but they also kind of looked right there.
Title suggestions would be very welcome (I'm rubbish at titles). Also...I was wondering whether to change the 'fixed' in the last line to 'fabulous'...thoughts???
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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As I was reading this I had images in my mind of people standing stock still trying to pose and appear happy in photographs and only winding up to appear too posed and unreal. Anyway, I have missed your work. Your descriptions are tight. Untouched.
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Thank you...
...for your lovely comment.
I miss AP...or, more truthfully, I miss the communication with a handful of poets on here (and you are among that handful) who post actual, working poems,and who post actual, sensible, critiques of other people's poems.
We should talk more. I don't know why I don't grasp the poetic connections I have...always time to correct that, I suppose.
I hope that you are well. And I will be back to comment on your work soon (I do genuinely check in here quite frequently, I'm just a terribly infrequent commenter of late).
And thank you again X
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wonderful images. i like the idea of metal shaped from flesh, contemplative moderns like mastheads on at the bow of time, moving inexorably to a common horizon. well done. yes. -freshphish
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oh, and I like "fixed" better than "fabulous"
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ah, some totally great, original phrases here, how nice...a new and interstingly dark view of statues. I really enjoyed this!
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she speaks!
not that i have been around here much at all either, but it was a delight to read a poem from you, as always.
love the fresh eye of observation. i enjoy the last few lines particularly, the timelessness surrounded by the plight of time. i prefer fixed to fabulous.
perfect as always
hannah
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Hey you! Dumb old AP didn't tell me you'd messaged...just stopped by to maybe do some editing and saw your very lovely comment. (Aren't they always?)
I don't stop by here as much as I should any more. I do miss the old days...I miss writing in the old days, three poems a day etc!
How are you? How is school? Life?
Hope everything is going marvellously XXX
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I like this. Maybe a title would be seascape.
Leave the last line as is. fixed sounds just right.
IMO. lol
Joe
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nice job. well written. short and sweet and too the point. not much room for your mind to wonder.... maybe thats good maybe not so good. your the author. but... i liked it nontheless so nice job
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yes it nice and short and
describes your experience well .and well fixed sounds fine and faulous might give it a reaally good ending , thanks and keep writing little things like this. -
I would say "maintaining their fixed frontier" and call the poem "Fixed Frontier". This is very good, I enjoyed reading, thanks!
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