rocks don't care
all stubble and stones
a difficult geometry
so if they don't fit
they are hammered
and
crushed to rubble
jammed together to make virile walls
and if stabbed with swords
care not about
torn bellies and broken necks
soaking them crimson rust
or drowned nautilus
beneath the sea
humans
have futility in common with rocks
except that everything
girds and gnaws
at their belligerent sensitivity
all clouded soft towers
bi-pedal mortal spires
with tender flesh
beaten into place
lacerated
truncated amputees
to fit the outer life
of status and statues
a scandal to the inner coves of self
I'm envious of rocks
except for moments of
shifting watery kisses
clamorous for love
we remain
disfigured terrains
hunters of souls balmy unguents
while
fluctious immolating moons
unravel in a hidden grieving
oh countenance of apathy
only to be more like you
a wilderness of stumps
and
dead rocks
and our aspiration
indifference
our exit
the path of the renunciate
a penitence
feasting only on futility
and the vagaries of spirit
Comments
I see that...
you DO have some other things in your bag of tricks!
You lost me a time or two in a few of the more complex lines; but over all, a rather nice comparison of people and rocks! It will be interesting to see how you do in the contests! ~ Geezer.
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TWO BRAINS
Well I have 2 brains and sometimes they play together and sometimes they don't
The one located in the crown loves to go downstairs often and do lascivious things , mainly because he's not suppose to, I guess
Thank you Geezer. love your great comment ;)
"and a rock feels no pain"
a nice flow, especially how you draw the reader in.
I really enjoyed the pacing and basketball dribbling of ideas.
A few issues came back to me after a few reads.
humans
have futility in common with rocks
I don't see where the rocks have "futility" of the rocks, feeling no pain. I better like the use of the word repeated in the next to last line.
Kamikaze moons...it sounds good but the connection is for me too historical, too topical a word if trying to express "suicide moons" ( if there is a distraction to me I always mention it, as it is like an off note or brush stroke out of place, and offer that for discussion with the other commenters. Some might agree or not, but that feedback is what I love about live workshops- a group of poets are engaged with your work..so I hope some others would add their opinion!)
My favorite stanza is
I'm envious of rocks
except for moments of
shifting watery kisses
clamorous for love
Great sound and pace of words and imagery and a poetic self-contained truth.
::
YES!
A good review, Ill ponder it, re read it, and assimilate as I am able
For the moment I'm not sure I have the sensitivity and fixed situational awareness to bake it in, but there is something to it and I have to internalize.... For example while I agree that rocks have in and of themselves no sense of futility, can they not personify it? Their deadness is an infusion of futility and are a constant message of death to the living. Moons too are rocks and may smash into one another ie. kamikaze and I guess I simply didn't see them as topical. My experience doesnt support this, Why does it support yours, Am I missing something? An after thought to your point in a way, kamikaze implies aggression and so does suicide, both intentionally self destructive but planets are blind forces, more like "smashing thunderous immolations".... changed to "fluctious immolating moons"
I published an intellectual history of poetry here. Does history, which I view as a continuum of thesis and anti thesis, action and reaction present a certain complexity to effective critique. It seems a criticism is contextual as it relates to the variations of intent and use of language. Would one critique intellectualism, an approach that is essentially cerebral say juxtaposed to the disjuncture of symbolist poetry in the same way You indicated that you don't think its enough to fulfill ones logic through a piece as per your view that music, sound, image, rhyme, remain an essential necessity to make a poem ie a rational train of thought no matter how elegant in poetic form and innovative is still not a poem?
Perhaps one might think of it as a poetic un-poem ;)
I've also read poetry where meaning gets down right abstruse. Artful ambiguity is appreciated among some focusing in on asymmetries textures and sounds or the way words look on a page as in experimentalist visual poems.
Andy Warhol was fond of saying "If you understand it it's not art"
I very much appreciate your comments I hope you don't mind mine :)
Many Thanks Z