So, I organized a writing folder on my computer, and I was reading some of my poems from a few months ago. I don't really remember getting a satisfactory ending from the one poem that frustrated me so much, but I guess I did. Most of them aren't half bad. Better than the crap I've been able to come up with lately.
The feet move like little bells
Tinkling along their merry way
Endlessly, but visions lie
They stop for the painful light of day
For if it glints off shining bells
The light itself is sure to stay
You must brave the depths of night
To join our sacred dance
Each dark second is a majesty
Each minute, a romance
In early evening small white toes
By themselves begin to tingle
And as the sun sinks down so low
Then the toes, the toes intermingle
So the sweet little bells
Shed dew of melted ice
They step into the workroom
Pounding rhythms to entice
Flashing silver in the night
We pull you by a chain
Feet shuffling, you inch along
Your steps make freezing rain
Will you join, oh will you?
As dance forgets the pain
...The last thing I remember thinking about this poem was how much I hated it. I don't know, I kinda like it now. And then I wrote this one, I just think it's sort of cute.
Had I the smallest chance,
I would leave, you know.
Take my favorite pair of shoes, the dirty ones, and maybe a book or a pen or two.
And get the hell out of here.
I would build a boat out of sticks and twine I picked out of dusty gravel roads.
And sail away to Iceland.
Once in Iceland, I would live in a cave by a bubbling geyser
And watch my dirty shoes get even dirtier
As I danced in bars while pickpocketing drunken Icelandic men.
Then I would use the crumpled tens and fives and sticks of chewing gum,
Along with a generous amount of duct tape
To construct an underwater castle
and learn the language of the fish
Once I was completely fluent, I would kick my way to the surface
In a diving suit of coral
And maybe some duct tape
I would swim, swim for thousands of miles
Until I found land
Upon which I would walk for thousands of miles.
Until I was back.
Here.
I would proceed to tell you exactly what I thought of you using the most heinous words I knew in the language of the fish.
And then
I would really leave
I think I was at my cabin when I wrote it? Hmm... Don't know what I was pissy about. I think I wrote a sort of prose poem thing at the same time, let's see... Ah, yes, this one.
The deep indigo and lavender, transparent green and sweet pale blue fade into each other, great swathes in the sky. The eye blends them together in a mixture of tones that shine like shimmering diamonds along the clouds.
But soon enough the colors fade, replaced by what amounts to the pulp left in an orange, the tangy bright vitality sucked away, with only a mushy mess as a prickling reminder of better, more fruitful times.
Times where we lay in the tall grass, legs splayed, peeling oranges and watching the sky, appraising it like a piece of modern art at the museum. Arms linked, we would toss the peels and gobble the pieces whole, popping sunbursts in our mouths while we silently considered the heavens.
But now the colors fade, and the pulp is left in the orange, and the memories of us turn mushy with age, trodden on by thoughts that used to seem so important, but I can’t remember why, perhaps simply to come before the shimmering memories, so that the pain of you never surfaces again. I know now that even the pulp is better than nothing to a starving child, so like a starving child I hold on to the fading sky that is you, and all I thought of you.
...So, yeah, old poetry. My writing is confusing me right now. After reading so much Plath, I've tried for more simple, non rhyming metaphor, straightforward, right? Sort of artsy, moody, slightly pretentious? Sometimes I like it, but sometimes I want to go back to this stuff. Like, the bells one. Only, the bells one is meaningless to me. It just sounds pretty. My current poetry is personal, well, the most current stuff that I haven't shown anyone.
...But I'm whining. I'll shut up.
