Your name falls from the page,
a scrap of memory pulled from time,
nearly distorted with displacement
but not so old yet as to be forgotten.
Every curve and pull of letter
etched along sand-grain lines,
both faded with the care of tentative pen
or embossed in heavy fervor:
They reveal such
tightly boxed thoughts which
pour out like smoke and fog.
They boil into something more concrete –
tears heavy with salt,
or blood coagulated cold and thick
and darker than the ink which holds my thoughts.
Think I'm still using too many cliches in my writing and as always a crap juvenile ending.
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Art is that thing having to do only with itself - the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no examples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt, and compose. Is this foolish of us?
I think that this is a good poem, for a few reasons. It does speak to the falling away of a concept of a person in our minds... That peculiar deconstruction that happens so stealthily over years or by circumstance... Cliches? There are parts that could be - ironically, given the phrase "they boil into..." - concrete; by this I mean more example. A prof of mine once said "show, don't tell." I think that your language does give a show, rather than a tell. But I do wonder what the images are that flitter through your head as you try to write. The image of tears could be a cliche, had you not written that they were "heavy with salt." That's something I haven't heard before. The "curve and pull" of letters, that whole stanza - good images. I would pick and say it might be better to use a word other than "both" to pair with the "or." Perhaps "lines -" and leave out "both" entirely. It makes it more stark.
ReplyDeleteAs for the ending, I don't think it's a crap ending, no. Neither juvenile. What is more serious than blood and ink? Leeches, man. Leeches. Maybe a more impacting image for you is what you mean. Something that, when you as the author read it, speaks truth. What is that for you? I'm not sure. Maybe something - forgive me for the image - like the blood as it relates to this. Was there blood? Was it on a floor? Maybe a parallel to the ink on the paper. "blood coagulated cold and thick (on the floor beside you? something) and blacker, then, than this ink that holds my thoughts." I think you get what I am getting at. Those knifeprick images are what brings it from the general hint to the true image that you might want to feel when you read over your own work. That last stab.