Sunday, February 27, 2005

Not A Poem Yet 

Something a bit unusual, even for me, since the library is having this poetry contest (theme: change), and I don't know if I want to write something new or submit something already filed and finished.

So: The following isn't even a draft yet, just some garbled poemnotes, the product of less than five minutes tinkering and a half an epiphany outside while smoking the day's penultimate cigarette. It probably needs a third image, and a form; maybe a big idea, more clear than clarity, anyway.

But in the absence of a writer's group, I'm looking for some critique and commentary, anything from "this might work" to "I like this line especially" to "this isn't a poem, but maybe you could find a place for this image in a poem about something else."

I'll give public props to the authors of any usable commentary. Heck, if you're a poet, I'll link to your work, too. Fair enough? Okay, then. Here's the stuff:


Things used to be so much clearer.
Like the moon which was once the thing that rose
bigger on the horizon than it was over the trees.
The thing that followed me home.

Until the psych professor made it malleable
by pointing out how it got smaller again
when you stood out on a cold night
and looked at it upsidedown, so the horizon
became the sky, and no one knew why.

Or stealing. It used to be
that if you said "you stole my heart" you meant
you have it, and I want it back,
but maybe with you around it.

Now we don't steal hearts so much
as download them illegally. The pictures I take
of the moon with my new digital camera
come out blurry. Neither you nor the moon
fit in my window, my heart, my pocket.

posted by boyhowdy | 11:27 PM |

---

Comments:

It's a harsh transition between the natural world of the moon and trees to the psych professor... and then back to the horizon. And then jarring when I got to "download", which completely changed the mood. I take it that it should be jarring, this dissonance, and that the harsh transitions reflect the nature of change?

# posted by  B2 : 2:30 PM, February 28, 2005

 

Post a Comment