| blue light bends like any other.
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varun
| a blue light flickering | 1 |
in a corner of this room | 2 |
might lead | 3 |
to your definitions, and reasons; closer still | 4 |
to what it means to be you. | 5 |
what then, when language does not speak | 6 |
for us? can we be still, muted, | 7 |
while our kens array? | 8 |
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i caught myself between | 9 |
catching glimpses of trees in | 10 |
puddles wrinkling with rain | 11 |
and staring at the sky- | 12 |
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ironed will to tear sight, arrest | 13 |
a symbol of what lies behind. | 14 |
spent screaming eons | 15 |
to regain balance | 16 |
in silence. | 17 |
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this | 18 |
dis-joint | 19 |
broken | 20 |
perception | 21 |
blur | 22 |
is the only place i feverishly spiral in sevens | 23 |
and lose control | 24 |
of belief | 25 |
lose faith | 26 |
in belief | 27 |
ease out the creases of any skin | 28 |
which resembles an experience | 29 |
or a desire: | 30 |
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re-emerge | 31 |
from within the shadows; | 32 |
they are tired of you hiding amongst them, you- | 33 |
restless, and a curse | 34 |
upon their calm. | 35 |
is it not time for us to sleep? i can hear | 36 |
breathing- this room | 37 |
warmer, heavier, | 38 |
the light bending | 39 |
to a swirling-dark corner now. | 40 |
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there are places, on the tips | 41 |
of your thumbs, | 42 |
they can grow deserts draped in blankets of dusk | 43 |
out of nothing if only | 44 |
you would put your fingers to them, stretch | 45 |
the nothingness between your palms | 46 |
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let us sleep, for once; not let | 47 |
this dark womb, expectant with a blue flicker | 48 |
keep us from dreams. | 49 |
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17 Aug 08 |
Rated 8.9 (8.9) by 11 users.
Active (11): 6, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10
Inactive (0): 1, 6, 10, 10, 10
(define the words in this poem)
(123 more poems by this author)
(3 users consider this poem a favorite)
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Comments:
the blue flicker of the flame and the shadows of what is not to be, dance on the wall like the slaves in old man socrates's cave.
yes, we both have written of sleep, and of the deserts and trees, of the earth and of the eves we love. and of time, immeasurable time that connects us all.
lines 1-12, excellent. not sure about line 8, but 9-12 very rich with imagery.
lines 13-26 were slightly bland with 19-21 probably the weakest in the whole poem.
i liked the hiding and re-emerging from the shadows and the deserts on the tips of their fingers.
i enjoyed this, apart from what i have already conveyed. :-)
— raskolniikov
this is exceptional. very daring, complicated write, and you haven't failed in any way.
— listen
thank you both kindly for the comments.
raskol, i agree with you about the weakness. good you pointed out and confirmed what i thought. thinking of some edits now...
listen, always good to have to come and read.
— varun
poor varun. i see no relief for you.
the elasticity of consciousness will save and torture you.
— unknown
i hope it's like that for you too; wonderous.
there is relief. the wait is a long one.
— varun
but i do wonder about your comment about consciousness on such a simple love poem.
— varun
it is way to late for the oldness in me. to late in the evening/night/morning to make a coherent and/or thoughtful crit. i can say i red it forwards(top to bottom) twice, and backwards(bottom to top) three times. it works really well both ways! g'nite!
— onklcrispy
thanks onkl.
— varun
you have a thing for wrinkles;) this is the second time you've used the word in a poem. i hate wrinkles and the word too. however, i love the play with 'ironed'...good one.
this, this, disjointedly and broken was good.
what was the point of 'within' in l31. i know there has to be one as you are most careful with your words. comma after shadows or semi-colon; maybe colon?
same as after 'thumbs' l41.
46-48 are worth stealing, and i might.
yep:)
— unknown
love the title and then -- wrinkles as tessellating patterns in fractal waves on the puddles reflecting all the world -- a wrinkle a periwinkle in time -- seems pressed in the next strophe -- so the metaphor works its way as weave in the creases of the next strophe -- l23-26 wake this strophe up to the ache -- then the obsession for the beloved makes its way to our eye and a heart sigh -- the end makes it clear, Love over fear
— AlchemiA
'within' works if the shadows are made solid, shifting shapes. like 'from within the crowd' ... ?
semi-colon it is. thank you for that.
alchemia, thanks for you comment.
and unknown, also, thanks for the rating. anything to say with that?
— varun
'kens' for 'lens'? or 'kennen' for: what we are knowing now at this moment?
mike
this is a shuffling, over talky thing, but you've kept the line length short and it's less prosy than some other of your wisdom-piles and that's good. you've got a good ear, it's just that you're not fluent enough in english to be able to bend english without maybe feeling like you're making mistakes or showing ignorance. showing ignorance, for you, would be a good thing, since your philosophic isn't that sophisticated for anyone knowing about concept and evaluation. i suppose this is all supposed to be so smart and wise, and maybe it is for semi-literate readers -- people who haven't thought their own thoughts and read their own reads. maybe this reads jerky because you want to be guru of the un-guru'd or something. sometimes, it seems, when you get sick of yourself, you just write the drunken poem and it's sometimes well written. this one is ok but not great, and not poetry in english.
mike
— unknown
if that was your ten rating, you can have it back. or exchange it for a one. i damn care.
thanks again for another uselessly long, drab comment 'mike'!
— varun
i'm in love with lines 18 to 29 - these lines resonate like a true evolution of thought -and given a lot of thought which shows very much..
lines 36 to 38 - sensual and esoteric at the same time - wonderful
in fact there is something esoteric to all of this... a journey as it should be, form form to formless and back to form..
i've been reading this for a while, but as usual words seem inadequate often in reply to beauty and art...
good stuff !
— Mongrol
form form = from form
excuse fingers... ;)
— Mongrol
ey, varun.
the tone is well-maintained in this and such linebreaks, dude!
philomentalintel-savvy and woud've been a bit too long a journey
were it not for your shorties. seems to me you were in some frenzy
here or an scientific -- no -- philo[s]experiment of sorts. i appreciate
the beautiful lines really; quite a bit too much of poetry maybe but
very good nonetheless.
thanks for sharing as always.
: )
— fractalcore
i thought that drab was what you were going for in this poem -- you know, sort of hip but with dignity? it's a very square poem.
— unknown
thank you mongrol.
and mind those fingers. won't be no excusing the next time! and you will have to be my stenographer for all of eternity.
fractalcore - too much poetry? :} never had that one before. thanks.
— varun
'unknown' -
nothing to say to your one-way comment.
i worry if i say anything, you're going to either get your panties in a twist/go into a fit and write a million word essay trying very hard to deconstruct my thought process with your surface reading, or file a million forum topics. or both!
we don't want that now, do we.
in other words, i'm going to let a sleeping dog lie.
get it? lie/lie?
— varun
better
voice
clarity
than some
of your
past
works
I must
say.
...
— unknown
'panties in a twist' is pretty lamer -- but, i've always felt your vocabulary was acquired rather than absorbed out of any natural setting. sometimes you make your words friendly to each other, but not always. all of us have that problem, but not all of us post every nose-wipe and consider it so sensitive and pretty.
— unknown
you sound jealous unknown, that you can't produce any work of any quality ... let alone a piece that comes close to as good as this ...
if you can.. prove it... if you can't .. well... point proved... just another whinging whiner flapping their yap in green eyed bile...
— Mongrol
i'm really not jealous -- it's a kind of writing that i wrote when i was a kid and rejected as a style -- if you read it as poetry it's not a very good poem, even if it says to interesting and talks so casually obsessive. i don't know if you've not the experience that this poem's content implies but you ought to have some experience in life -- more than verun, say, and certainly verun can write better than this -- you've written better yourself... i don't know why it's so hard for people to understand that our only experience as writers is our writing -- it's not that we've had a life, because writing is so much the realization of our lives. but, sometimes these little flash poemy things come along like a batman movie and they seem so tactile and interesting, but if this is a poetry workshop, and we're looking at how to write and how we write, then this one should be pretty transparent. in fact, your comment is pretty transparent too, and i don't know quite why you say some of the things you say. verun is country-grown-up-in-the-burbs but you've sort of got an education.
looking at this piece, it's just prose with funny line breaks and some suggestive wiggles... whenever it gets close to entering the poem verun breaks away to let us know he's writing it -- maybe because he's afraid to go where the poem would take him if he let it. i'm not that easily distracted by the flash in this and i like that realm of pure poetry which a poem can create in my mind. verun can write poetry sometimes, but not everyday, but you notice how he's always going on about the number scores? -- izzit a 10?? iz not no 10!! you leave my poem alone!! -- he's still in it for his CV and he only writes good poetry when he realizes he's just faking it most of the time.
mike
— joey
welcome back to form, and just welcome back joey ;)
— Mongrol
Hi V! I would agree with Rask. I'd eliminate L's 19 & 20 and go right to "blur" in L21. Beautiful poetry, my friend wherever you are this month. Congrats on your #1 Top Rated piece. 10. :-)
— starr
starr, thanks for reading, and commenting.
i'm re-thinking on the lines of what raskolniikov and you have suggested.
— varun
The author is clearly proficient in creation. There are parts that glimmer like wrinkled puddles. But some of the language is overly affected, betraying the immaturity of a developing MFA student. Also the story is convoluted; as such I don’t believe that what I’m told is true.
— unknown
>>There are parts that glimmer like wrinkled puddles. But some of the language >>is overly affected...
hahaha....tell me that was a joke, mr. joey-wannabe.
— unknown
Um, what's funny? I gave an honest assessment of the above poem. Is that not what I'm supposed to do here?
— unknown
yep, sure is.
how much does joey charge for teaching how to give lame critiques?
— unknown
Are you the author or merely a sycophant? And why lame? Because I did not give specifics? If you are the author, I trusted that you would know what points are disingenuous. If you are the sycophant, I was not writing to you.
I came to this site because of its name. I naturally looked at the top rated poem. If you (whoever you are) are typical of this site, it would seem that the name means nothing. I’d prefer to leave you, if not yet this site, to your mediocrity.
— unknown
i have noticed that most folk want easy to read poetry and justify their ignorance with 'doesn't ring true' or something to that nature.
this is a workshop and that means commenting on poems as well as comments made by others.
— unknown
Your last retort implies, without coming right out with denial, that you are not the author. OK then, I will write to you as if you were just an (extremely) interested bystander.
Like most other endeavors, at higher levels, a poet’s improvement becomes more and more subtle. I am not saying that this poet is not skilled. I am saying that this poem is missing the polish necessary to move up to the next tier. Judging the author by the relative strength of this poem, I perhaps wrongly assumed that details were not needed. Most obviously, these details are needed by his ardent supporter:
This poem may well be a Poetry 101 A; though the punctuation could use a little work, it has a lot of craft, and is not overtly telling or abstract. With all of this going for it, one would think that a publisher would be knocking on the author’s door. Why not?
You touched on it yourself. Most people want an easy-to-read poem. That is very true. Must art be complex? If you held up a double thickness of gauze in front of you and asked someone to complement what you are wearing, only a long suffering (and/or foolish) friend would oblige. Most readers (and publishers are the best of them) have lives to lead and so many poems to read. So that is the number one reason that I don’t think this poem is very good. There are others.
While or kens array: Are you kidding?
Sky-ironed will to tear sight: Oh my, very dramatic
The tips-of-the-thumbs thing sounds interesting, but the discerning reader is going to suspect that the author is bs-ing. At the very least, it adds yet another layer of glitz and gauze.
My favorite is the screaming eons. Gotta love the assonance there, but screaming? I can almost hear the teacher mumbling “Oh, that’s clever!”
Look, I love salt, but too much spoils the soup. And of course you may disagree. Looking above this comment I see that many here claim to have enjoyed this poem. Great! In my ignorance, I don’t, and now I have told you why, in a reasonable tone. Oh, and I’ve also discovered who Joey is. Theoretically, I approve of the comparison. Thanks.
— unknown
oh please. who let mojo in^? well, as long as he's here pour him a stiff drink and sit him with joey. they can compare pretensions.
— unknown
so, the deal is that anyone who doesn't critique for hugs is the enemy of fart-art and needs to be attacked politically -- of the joey party -- when, really, this critic is defining in his own terms according to his own poetry consciousness what he's thinking about this poem -- things which aren't my way of thinking at all -- and he's being independent and trying to work with the poet. is the idea here that we're supposed to just post-a-note and have it succinctly absorbed by the reader so that they're remember to bring home hugs to us? writers like warren and startle have some good poetry intuitions, and it's nice to watch them write themselves out of dr. seuss and jim morrison style, but, really, they both need to read poets who they find 'difficult' and learn how to read poetry. it would help their writing and it would help them understand what conscious poets are talking about in their crits.
— joey
neither of you
the ''kens array - are you kidding me' i'll write a big essay! unknown'', or joey,
have offered anything constructive.
all you have done is tried to down-talk this piece of writing. you haven't told me what you think is wrong with it. you've just said 'it doesn't work' or 'are you kidding me'.
which implies that you think you're (a) better writer(s) than me. i would have to say, in my experience, people who are not threatened and/or are talented, offer excellent advice. something which both of you have not been able to do.
when you consider writing a 'critique', for next time, please also consider that critique is not slamming something because you don't like it, or you disapprove.
yours is not a template for all human thought processes.
please also consider that constructive does not mean citing examples of historical or century old names, or saying ''...teacher saying 'oh, that's clever''.
when you next consider typing a critique for one of my poems, please say something constructive. by which i do not mean comparing it to some abstractions which only you understand. or making jokes about the author being an mfa student. how do these help in any way?
being abstract is my job, as a writer, if i wish.
being able to understand and spending your time in doing so, is yours. if you wish. before you offer a critique.
if you did understand the piece, then make references to it. no need for outside references. my world is a small place.
unknown-
'the discerning reader' ? who are you and what the fuck are you doing here? are you the reader which does not 'discern'? stop fucking around, and talk in first person.
joey-
'learn how to read poetry' ?
when was the last time you wrote something on this site under a poem and didn't allude it to your 'intelligence' while referring to something totally unrelated?
both of you, give me a fucking break.
if you were half interested in this piece and its betterment, you'd have given me something to work with. something like -
'line 18/19 - do you really need the repetition since you already mention 'dis-joint' there...
or
'what is the meaning of 'sevens' in line 22?'
or that
'creases' and 'resembles' jars a little in 27/28.
or maybe discuss the narrative of the poem as a whole -
perhaps talk about the references to black holes in respect to sleep. or maybe even the place of 'growing deserts' in a poem like this.
personally, i think that reference is completely out of place.
fuck, i can do a better critique of my own poem that you two idiots.
all the both of you have said to me in those big little essays is 'i don't like it'.
nothing else.
— varun
Oh the rage of an author (who feels) slighted. I've read your responses to all who dare to say why they don't like your poems. There's a pattern. You don't believe that you have anything to learn.
I did not attack you. I questioned your poem. Now I can't help but question the poet. But in the future, as far as your writing goes, I'll keep my idiotic ideas to myself.
— unknown
yes, you should, it's important to love yourself too.. y'know ;)
— unknown
Oh, please submit this to an established journal. Submit early and often.
— unknown
i'm here for advice.
you haven't advised me constructively. it's that simple.
i'm not here to learn.
seems you have a preconception of some kind. good luck with that.
— varun
Like it or not, better writing requires learning. My preconception is that everyone wants to be better. I’ve been proven wrong on that account before; it seems I’m the one who’ll never learn.
Some of my advice was constructive—addressing the simplicity factor and the overuse of device—but you, apparently, are not ready to hear it. Using poetic device, without a firm foundation, does not make for good poetry.
I am sorry (really) that my destructive criticism hurt your feelings, but, in the name of progress, sometimes old ideas need to be torn down.
— unknown
yes, not wanting to learn is to say you're not a poet, since we're always astonished at the world and never know how to say what it is until we write it out. verun's a missionary but his message is fuck you, in the missionary position -- and privately and personally he's sometimes butt-fucked by the poetry gods and writes a decent poem, but mostly they ignore him i guess, and what we get is readers digest interludes and the wit and wisdom of verun under attack. it's ok, he's got lots of hugs here.
— joey
not good. really not good. i always never liked poems like this hahahaha
— unknown
unknown -
i have to repeat myself with you. it's tiring -
you are not here to teach me. don't give yourself so much credit.
if i am to learn from you, that being my discretion, you will have to be much more convincing in your critique.
so far, i have nothing to use from all the babble you have left here, that too unsigned.
next time, leave a name. let's see what you have that might teach me something.
— varun
I don't remember a job offer, contract or salary being mentioned.
— unknown
Put your money where your mouth is. I'm not a qualified teacher, I'd have to be a mind reader to simply know what your status has allowed you to be spoon fed. Anyway, it's not cool to behave like a teacher if you're not one. Why don't you join the police academy, nazi.
— unknown
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