It’s your childhood home with the power out;
a high-school dance alone.
It’s one vacant, fading power-line,
a head in a corn-field
mouthing
“fuck it,
fuck it all.”
So put Winter on a platter already,
choke us all with snow.
For elderly don’t watch the dead leaves fall
they died themselves mere months ago
let them go
let them go
let them go.
“Smile more,”
she says, in a tongue well cursed
so I spit in the dust, where should be snow.
And fading leaves rustle amber
in a grey-toned world
but they've buried Tagore,
he's lost the throne.
It sits empty now,
weeping.
Comments
I went...
and looked up Tagore and found that he was a poet that wrote over three hundred short poems about birds. I have yet to read any of them, but will in the next couple of days. I would have liked it if you had made some mention of Tagor in your last few words, so that those of us who have no idea who he was, had some idea. Good work. ~ Geezer.
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I went...
and looked up Tagor and found that he wrote over three hundred short poems about birds. I would have liked it if you had mentioned this in your last words or made some other reference to him in the poem. However, it does make sense now that it is known who he was. Nice work. ~ Geezer.
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I went
and also checked out Tagore. Not sure how I missed him all my life, especially as he won a Nobel Prize and all the books he wrote...I reviewed a few dozen of the 216 poems on PoemHunter, none of which was about birds, so I guess there are hundreds more output from him! An interesting voice, somewhere a mix of Kahlil Gibran and Krishnamurti. He certainly had a great use of imagery !
I do like your poetry a lot, but in truth I find it, compared to, say, Tagore, (who is very immediately accessible on may levels) often a bit to abstract to feel the inner meaning. I get a lot of different feelings from each stanza, but can't connect them: I don't understand the image of the high school dance, love the image of the corn speaking, I don't understand that the elderly died mere months ago, I don;t know who "she" is, but I love the image of spitting in the dust where should be snow..
Then I really think this is a great few lines
And fading leaves rustle amber
in a grey-toned world
but they've buried Tagore,
he's lost the throne.
I wish i could connect the dots in this poem better. Right now I'm reading John Ashbery, a very abstract poet and trying to learn from his abstractionism. But in the final analysis, the poetry that sticks around allows a wide audience to be taken by its poetic logic. I think that's the case with the poets you call favorites... they are also mine, but I might have to ad Tagore to my list.
Thanks so much Eumolpus.
I'm aware of this facet of my poetry, and seem to be in a pivotal period at the moment with where my voice is heading. Any advice you can offer? Poets to read, styles to observe. I just feel like there's something missing from my work, and I don't know how to resolve that... Perhaps it will come with time.
Thanks once again,
Nicholas.