Wednesday, September 23, 2009

coupling (2009)


who's impersonating who
here / who's mindblowing who

she too is edgy / &
interior

late night
drip / crack

half-pout / making
eyes at no-one

/ he's so hard
to open

back turned / to
the landscape

what a couple / part
business part unfinished

i.e. there's no word / for this
& that buys you

/ future ammunition
(it rides within / your system)

14 comments:

  1. Ha! Two great poems. Both intriguing and smiley and visual and with surprising depth in so few but so carefully chosen phrases.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks to you both.

    Although Paul, I'm not sure I would choose the word 'smiley' to describe this poem, but the reader knows best. ;) I'm intrigued as to you what you might mean by 'smiley' in this case though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The opening couplet, like all good poetry, is memorable. I thought it and muttered it over and over while shaving this morning.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gee, I don't know Stu. I feel like an idiot putting all this attention and effort into your work and not getting any back. Smiley as in made me smile.

    ReplyDelete
  5. David: lines often come to me while shaving. Maybe if I shaved every day I'd pop out more lines?

    Paul: I was genuinely interested in what you meant.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Time is the only commodity on the internet, Stu. That is the last idea I am giving away. I have put considerable time and effort into reading these two poems. And I could write you a long detailed comment but to what avail?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm sure I'd get something out of it if you wrote a long, detailed comment, and perhaps other people would read it and get something out of it too. Aside from that, though, I think 'to what avail?' is a question only you can answer. I'm thankful for your comments on these and other poems.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Stu,

    Well, I guess "smiley" might fit this... if one were Venusian.

    Amor may vincit omnia as the theory once had it, but then too sometimes she just winks at us from the door of the bedchamber (beyond which the discreet reader/outsider may not go, any more than others may enter one's soul) and says: All right buster, so you think you're smart, here's one you don't know.

    Such instructions are not easy to write about let alone follow. Respect is owed the poet for having this brave go at it.

    ("Maybe it's just me," Stu, but--and forgive me if I'm wrong-- somehow this one feels like you've parked your cutup/appropriation bus well down the block and out of sight of the action for once, if only just to recharge the batteries? Because all the electricity you need and perhaps more than you need is right there "in the house" this time?)

    ReplyDelete
  9. A Venusian in furs?

    Tom, this one was assembled from fragments, but I was reaching back to the narrative/character-drive of 'cafe date', a poem from a couple of months back.

    A case of gathering foreign materials for a nest. Hadn't considered the full (un)heimlich implications of that until you pointed it out, though...

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm a huge fan of the "small" poem.

    I can't help but feel that the fewer the words, the more time it took to gel.

    Found you through gingatao. Thanks for sharing your work.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hi Patrice,

    Thanks for dropping by and having a read. :)

    To paraphrase Pascal: I'll have to write you a long letter, because I don't have time to write you a short one.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great poem stu, I see you are exploring the same kind of line, I enjoy this more than the others, I just did who knows?
    IT has a great opening line, it is simpler that the other ones, less cryptical, but still difficult enough and keeps you great great style.

    Bye

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks Mariana. Glad you liked it. And yeah, I have been adopting this kind of form recently: short stanzas with a bit of enjambment and lines sometimes broken up by a solidus.

    ReplyDelete