Forgive the Spanglish, if I got the Spanish wrong. It's been an interesting two days.
Anyhoo, this is something in process. Still toying with the metaphors and how the thing should progress, so PLEASE ADVISE! What do you think? Seriously, I WANT FEEDBACK!!!
(untitled as yet)
reaching out
reaching over
no hand in the darkness
no head on the other pillow
but still...
the ghost of your hand
lays neatly in mine
the ghost of your smile
glows a moonlit patch
leftover strains
haunting rhythms
echo in corridors
delineating
what cannot be there
OK, so maybe I wrote poetry bits today rather than one whole poem. Yeah. Anyway, here's another bit:
(untitled as yet)
one cannot live
on freeze-dried hopes
that crumble when
taken off the shelf
And another bit:
(yes, untitled)
i was looking for reasons
when reason had left me
alone and confused
bruised
by broken expectation's
hard, sharp corners
And yet another:
time keeps marchin' on
right through to the sea
and leavin' nothin' but
rubble behind
[Cheery, no?]
will light stepping
forward, side, back, side
find another light
that dances
a complementary pattern?
Well, that's it for today. Please do comment.
3 comments:
"time keeps marchin' on
right through to the sea
and leavin' nothin' but
rubble behind"
Pretty good poetic lines, Elena. But no, not cheery.
Do I catch a Southern historical memory in this expression? Sherman's March to the Sea could be thought of as leaving nothing but rubble behind. A river of time could also "march to the sea," inexorably, but usually isn't thought of as "leaving nothing but rubble behind." Unless your thinking of geological ages, and your other lines imply that you're not.
My own image of a similar thought comes from the back of a National Geographic magazize in my teacher's sixth grade classroom. It shows a picture of a broken classical Graeco-Roman building with only a few broken pillars and statues left with the epitaph underneath reading "Time Dissolves Everything." The "Ozymandias" thoughts were in that ad. It probably caught my eye and memory because I was already interested in history: reading, and thinking it.
History is usually thought of as standing at the end of time {today}, and looking back. As an academic study that is probably what it is, but that idea misses the substance of what or the things that are being studied. History is really the study of the Human Race or the story of the Human Race. That story in reality consists of what is past, is now, and what will be. From that perspective, everything that has been dissolved in the past is being crystalized today into everything that will be in the future.
If we look in one direction in time, things can naturally look like loss, with sadness, or nostalgia for the good that we miss. If we look in the other direction in time, it is easier to see gain, or hope, and create a kind of nostalgia for what may or could be.
So Elena, I see in your poem or bits of poetry a sort of awareness of being caught in the river of time with loss of what was or could have been, and a nostalgia for hopes for the future.
This is a common experience for us as human beings. If you can "exspire" these feelings and thoughts into words of a poem, it will be very valuable and well worth the effort. I hope you continue working on it and accomplish your goals in writing that poem or poems.
Thanks...I don't usually analyze my own poetry that deeply; your thoughts have encouraged me to do so. I guess I bent the rules on allusions, and I must have been mixing the metaphors of Sherman's march to the sea and of visions of ancient ruins.
Perhaps it shouldn't be that "time" marches on, but I'm not sure what is marching on. It's the idea that SOMETHING inexorable continues on, something you cannot stop, and it FEELS as if it leaves rubble behind. But you're right---it's not so much destruction that is left behind (or the leavings of destructive forces) but just things that are less than what was hoped for, such that in comparison to the hoped-for future...the present and also the recent past SEEM to be rubble of the hoped-for future. Does that make sense?
The images missing seem to be what the hoped-for future would have looked like, what the now actually IS (instead of just what it seems to be), and what the new vision of the future is (or at least a description of an attempt to recast the vision for the future from a more realistic view than idealistic). Which is exactly the goal of whatever it was I was feeling last week. I had all weekend to chew on all the surrounding issues, thoughts, and feelings. The corresponding images haven't "come to me" yet.
Do I know you? I know you posted anonymously...for whatever reason. But you seem familiar. A fellow Southerner?
Oh, and another thing. I don't do "cheery" very well. It's not much of an impetus for writing. When I'm cheery, I sing or bake or chatter with gal pals (or bounce up and down in my chair, which makes my co-workers think I'm insane). I don't write much poetry then. Blog entries, maybe. Anyhoo...Please feel free to comment on other poems posted here. I need a good sounding board.
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