| the most striking thing
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mikkirat
| You've made no mistake. | 1 |
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You're quite right, | 2 |
for it is clearly tattooed on your forehead, | 3 |
and blue ink | 4 |
reads silently. | 5 |
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Over the years, you've concluded that | 6 |
mirrors lie; | 7 |
and similarly, photographs | 8 |
are only slightly more honest than that, | 9 |
but so much these days seems blurry | 10 |
and obscure, | 11 |
you have trouble trusting, | 12 |
or believing circumstantial evidence. | 13 |
It is obvious when you walk downtown. | 14 |
Your latest lover sees it when you sleep. | 15 |
Your mother always knew it was there, | 16 |
but said nothing. | 17 |
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You've tried to erase it with clenched fists, | 18 |
but oftentimes, it is | 19 |
the most striking thing about you, | 20 |
the thing | 21 |
which people remember forever. | 22 |
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Elsewhere, the latest murder remains unsolved. | 23 |
Someone sees Jesus in a bakery window. | 24 |
An old man dies in his bedclothes. | 25 |
Two lovers have tired of each other on the train to Trieste, | 26 |
and here, for that mark on your forehead, | 27 |
you cannot sleep. | 28 |
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26 Oct 05 |
Rated 10 (9.5) by 2 users.
Active (2): 10, 10
Inactive (2): 6, 9
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Comments:
It is still more wonderful to read in the morning waiting for the world's other "unknown" to rise in the sky. Thanks for the taste and the unidentifiable spice.
— slancho
You're welcome, my dear.
I made some substantial revisions over coffee this morning, and hopefully it captures some of that blank staring frost-on-the-bathroom-window sense of early nightfalls after unfulfilling summers. Hope you like it still.
— mikkirat
This is fabulous Mikkirat, especially the last stanza, which is breathtaking.
— kitkat
For some reason, I liked the original more, it read tighter to me and said more with less. I suppose I don't want to be told as much as pointed in a direction ... Hmm, what am I trying to say really ... maybe simply that I hope that that "blank staring frost-on-the-bathroom-wondow sense" remembers to look forward to fulfilling winters. Lines 10-13 make me shudder ...
m
— slancho
Thank you both. slancho my dear, I do hope the new uncertain element of lines 10-13 makes up for the more plain-spoken first stanza, and kitkat, thanks as well: for as easy as the last stanza reads, it took an astonishingly long time to write. I'm glad you like it.
— mikkirat
This is so wonderful. The cadence is superior. utterly fabulous
— madderhatter
Yes, it reads better because of the plain-spoken first stanza
maria
— slancho
i love this, especially lines 8-12. line 21 seems strange to me though, i might have just said "this". i do understand the repetition of "thing", and you know, keep it as you like it.
— moonrise
madderhatter, thanks; I am always glad to see you.
moonrise, thanks for your comment. While I probably will keep line 21 as is, it is always a risk to balance so much of a poem on a single word, or repetition. I may merge it with the line which follows for the final edit. I'm also glad you found lines 8-12 remarkable; one of the most difficult aspects of writing a poem like this is softening the poetic voice to where the reader "accepts" the relationship with the voice. It is easy, as a writer, to go horribly wrong in this fashion, to tell the reader who he/she "is," and "what they are like"; it is easy to offend the reader, so the fact that you like these lines is immensely gratifying.
Thanks,
— mikkirat
re-reading this on a gloomy morning, coffee cold long ago ... the most striking thing about this poem - swift, energetic and with a dash of intensity at the end, always. Images arrive in quanta ...
thank you
Maria
— slancho
DROOLS absolutely amazing.
— shadowskiss
Mickey, it's nice to be able to read your stuff again. My main problem with this is the almost erractic behaviour of your line breaks. I know that you're pretty damn meticulous with your work, which is why I hesitate to question your line breaks. But they really let this down, in my opinion. Any chance of tidying them a little?
— wendz
Wendy, thank you; it is good to see you again as well, if even for a short visit.
I might be able to merge some lines in stanzas 2 & 3, but I speak (and recite) rather slowly, and this pace is as close as I can get to how I would verbalize it. Be a dear and let me know which ones seem most egregious to you, and I'll reevaluate them.
Thanks bunches,
— mikkirat
this is exceptionally powerful and vivid, mikki. i've always thought
that --despite how mainstream and common they've become--
tattoos are striking physical symbols. they can be used metaphorically
or literally when used in conjecture with writing or painting or drawing.
i think that when tattoos are framed effectively, there isn't much else
that could go wrong with a piece of writing. this one is no exception.
i love it.
best of luck,
midare.
ps: i was looking through the list of your poems! did you delete one? i think
it had to do with a mechanically-inclined girl and a guy who wrote in "supermarket
scriptures" if my mind isn't completely failing me. it was one of my favorites!
pps: if you actually didn't write that one, i swear i'm not crazy.
— midare
Thanks, midare. I wish I could say my tattoos have held up to the passing years, but alas, they have not.
And no, you're not going crazy; the poem you recall is "the charge (a.k.a. rough physics)." It ended up getting published in "The Other Side of Sorrow: Poets Speak Out about Conflict, War, and Peace" by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire Press. As internet "publishing" is still a murky legal ground, and I'd rather not have any publishing, ownership or copyright issues, I removed it. I'd be happy to e-mail you a copy if you'd like.
You've got quite a collection posted; have you been farming those out to journals as well?
— mikkirat
I'd suggest changing for it is simply to 'it's.'
— stateofmind
I'll consider that for line 3, stateofmind, but probably not for line 19. The voice is meant to be a bit stentorian, a questionable authority, or maybe a nighttime phantasmic voice, both of which would be a bit more haughty and trying to impress with diction instead of using more natural and converstional "it's." Still, I'll consider it for line 3.
Thanks,
— mikkirat
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