| Giraffe Soup
|
Inuki
| "The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs."
- Cicero.
... it's like cloud watching
| she raised a crinkled hand to the sky | 1 |
letting those drops thin as air | 2 |
splash into her eyes | 3 |
as they cascaded down her cheeks and into my soup bowl | 4 |
i looked down | 5 |
across the top part of my submerged spoon | 6 |
noticing the way the pebbles of faint meat | 7 |
formed a four-legged animal | 8 |
in the creamy soup. | 9 |
| |
at a latitude of thirty degrees north | 10 |
those anarchistic droplets spilled in | 11 |
turning my soup cold and the creature upside-down; | 12 |
three charts of the northern hemisphere | 13 |
brittle with age, so that only the letters "kob" were visible, | 14 |
rested at the other end of the short wooden table | 15 |
purchased from Ikea. | 16 |
| |
the side of the bottle read: | 17 |
Kemble's | 18 |
Made in Canada, | 19 |
Expiry Date: 02/99 | 20 |
| |
we were three thousand nine hundred and twenty years apart, | 21 |
but at a magnitude of 4.03 she still couldn't see | 22 |
due to the loss of the drops. | 23 |
|
7 Dec 04 |
Rated 9 (9.5) by 3 users.
Active (3): 8, 9, 10
Inactive (1): 10
(define the words in this poem)
(184 more poems by this author)
(1 user considers this poem a favorite)
|
Add A Comment:
|
Comments:
Brilliant.
— unknown
comments:
-line 2 could use some punctuation
-so could 4
- long-necked animal maybe?
-'noticing' ought probably to be 'noticed'
-i don't like the repetition of 'soup' in 9; it falls flat for me.
-'cascading down cheeks' is pretty cliché. I know you'd like to keep the sparse alliteration carried from 1 to 4 to 9, which is nice, but another word might do better than cascaded.
-faint meat? faint how? in color? in form? in taste? pebbles also grates against the grain of the poem.
-try kob in quotes.
-perhaps line 23 in parens.
-Expiry date would most likely be abbreviated. They most always are (Feb 99 or 02/99). I can't know for sure. Perhaps yours is an anomaly.
You are very specific in parts and very vague in others. I'd take a second look and try to achieve more descriptive symmetry.
A good start.
Oh, and dump the intro. It isn't needed.
— noodleman
Four legged, cascaded, faint, and the intro are four of the most important references to understanding this piece. I'm not so sure that you understood this piece fully.
I have had far too many complaints that my poetry is "difficult to understand", so all these references are an attempt to make it easier for the reader.
I will consider revisions to punctuation, repetition, quotes, parenthesis, and abbreviations though, thanks for the thoughtful comments.
— Inuki
i understand the reference
to kemble's cascade
and 17 to 20 are very well done
but i'd hold firm that four legs
could refer to many a constellation
while long-necked
only to this one.
and i promise that faint isn't necessary
at every angle
and elevation
good show.
— dookie
i agree with
sir dookie
(or he agrees
with me)
but if i may
ask, sir
(sir dookie, that is)
why do you leave
thoughtful comments
here for inuki
and such nasty
comments on my
poem there
at the side?
i don't care a whit
about the four
but a real crit
would be nice.
what have i done
to inspire
your ire?
good day to you sir.
— noodleman
sorry inuki
to get sidetracked
with the gentleman above.
just one more thing:
milky soup, maybe?
or is that too pedestrian?
and a question:
i don't understand 21;
any hints for a
curious noodle?
thanks
— noodleman
3920 = 4100 - 180.
Hope that's enough of a hint for line 21, noodle.
Isn't "milky soup" giving too much away? ^^
— Inuki
I can understand one theme in this piece, but I imagine there's plenty I'm also not really grasping. My knowledge of astronomy is sadly lacking, so I feel like I'm missing a lot that has to do with the degrees and so on, but... well, there it is.
The overall theme I caught on to was human affairs being a kind of accidental byproduct of other, unrelated, even mundane activities. Hence the creamy soup (Milky Way Galaxy) and the meat forming an animal (the evolution of life) being caused by the eyedrops falling into the narrator's soup.
As I say, I don't understand it all and I think your use of allusions actually detracts from understanding rather than aiding, but that's my opinion. Interesting work.
— dandy
By the way, other people please comment on this. Inuki needs more insightful comments.
— dandy
the 100 i get but
i can't figure out
where the 55.2
parsecs come from.
i hate math
which is why
i write poems.
— noodleman
4100 that is.
— noodleman
I like this take on the gods with its cool laconic feel and its mixture of the profound and ordinary
— larrylark
A note to all avid readers: Larry's comment gives a pretty good clue to the intended direction of this poet, which may help to guide you.
A guide of another kind is the spoon. ^_-
— Inuki
I'd like to hit you across the head with the spoon. Well this is certainly interesting. I like it a lot. Still googling like crazy. I'll definitely be back, and smarter than dandy, noodleman and larrylark. ^_-
-wendz
— unknown
Okay. I'm about halfway through. Man, how can you put so much crap into a poem about STARS?!?! You deserve half of a medal and then a kick in the head. Snap your bloody spoon in half. >_<"
-wendz
— unknown
"kob" needs a kick in the head too. ^_^
-wendz
— unknown
Okily. Here we go. i promised you a crit, so here it is. I'm afraid that I haven't done enough justice in the research side of this, but I'm sure you can kick me along until I figure out more than 80% of what is written about here.
As a first impression, I'd thought that this was loosely about two lovers, or former lovers. About how she couldn't see him, and he didn't even really realise that she couldn't see him, only that she didn't. I'm not sure if that totally made sense. Well anyway, after many, many hints and I think almost two hours of discussion, I've unravelled perhaps a little piece of this one.
You know that I know that this concerns many things, the Giraffe, Newton, artificial vs. superficial, stars, ABGs, etc., but it's STILL HARD AS HELL TO FIGURE OUT. Pity, because the aethetic elements of this appeals to me incredibly much, and I'd love to understand what the allusions and references do to enhance this. This, by the way, is the best you've written with your allusion fetish.
One reading, guided by Cicero's quote as the main piece is that both of the figures in the poem are mere mortals. However, I think that's debatable. Are the Gods/celestial beings mortal? Without their believers and worshippers, do they cease to exist? I digress. =P Anyhow, my one reading is that the woman cannot see the man, and the man (or other person, I use man as functional term) understands this because he has been reading the heavens--in his soup bowl, and he understands that it is hard to see things sometimes, as even he could only see the "faint meat". Keep in mind that everything I write here, I am also referring to as the "true" meanings behind the terms, the ones that we have discussed. I haven't had the chance to do further research. You'll need to guide me for that.
So basically, he was in the literal sky observing the happenings of the woman's drops falling into his soup bowl, and understood when she couldn't see him, realised that it was because she had had the drops fallen away from her.
Hell, I think there can be work done to this to clarify the meaning(s), but I need more help. Tell me where to connect this wealth of information. Tell me where "kob" comes into it. Tell me if "i" am a man, if "she" is Rebecca or any specific woman. Tell me if they are gods. Tell me if 3920 years apart means anything. Light years? Physical years? Different meaning allocated to the numbers? Tell!
will be back, never you fear my dearest.
— wendz
magnifincerdibombastacle wonderfun i bestow upon ye the "@!" and now i return to my asteroid to water my rose
— onklcrispy
Yes, apparently you can number me among those who do not understand your poem very well. Is it like.. when a butterfly flaps its wings in India it causes a storm on the other side of the world type of thing? Except some girls ..sweat? makes your soup.. old?
— Cloudless
wow i like ita lot!!
10
betwee...do you speak hebrew?
— baby_gurl
that's intense, that's all I got
— Notecompsure
What's the point in writing a poem that no one seems to understand? I know that you probably understand it, that's because you happened to write it. If NO one seems to understand it, that could probably mean that there is a defect in the poet himself and not with the reader. At least 25 percent of your readers should have the faintest idea about what you could possibly be implying and not simply saying that it sounds interesting but they haven't the foggiest idea what it all means. With all the suspense following the december 7 2004 publication, don't you think it's about time that you lift the veil of mystery and bestow upon us your endless wisdom.
— unknown
|
|
|