The both of me are struggling inside One wants to just enjoy the ride A hedonist with parties to attend A firestorm with fuel to spend Better to burn out than fade away? So, tonight is the time to play
…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…
The both of me, struggling to get out The anxious side, processing doubt Every word needs to be remembered So that some time must be surrendered If all this savouring gets rephrased Will it be somehow falsely praised? Did it really happen as we say? The feeling is that it must be done today…
…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…
The both of me are struggling to win A desperate balance being fought within This happiness must be documented Not pass by forgotten and lamented So tonight I’ll simply sigh and say That if it cannot be done today
…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…
Shared with W3 #181 – a bop poem. This poem was inspired by this week’s dVerse prompt, using a line from a Günter Grass poem as a refrain. I saw this line, “…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…” used in the poem ‘Tomorrow’ and along with the word ‘bop’, this reminded me (again!) of the dilemma Jack Kerouac would face when having fun with his friends but wanting to rush home to write it down before it got forgotten to the mists of time. I see that I have written this poem before, too! Perhaps this is part two? In the first stanza, I reference Firestorm, a DC comic character that at one time was two different people inside one body, often struggling with decisions. This came to mind as I had been reading it last night.
Shared with W3 prompt #179: Write 5 separate Hay(na)ku poems, each about a different aspect of love, including but not limited to: Romantic love, familial love, self-love, unrequited love, enduring/timeless love. Each poem should stand alone but together create a layered meditation on love.
After reading through others’ entries for this prompt, I was inspired to give it another try, particularly after learning more about the Greek Gods of love. Above is the new entry, below the original (titled Curriculum).
I was working on this poem when the W3 prompt arrived to write about silence and I have somewhat jammed my poem into it, so it doesn’t quite fully meet the criteria but here it is anyway. Above, formatted as desired and below is what WordPress decides to display it like.
Some days are made for speaking, others for silence; a stride into the spotlight, a tiptoe back into the shadows.
Some moments call for stepping forward, others for stillness; a bull entering the ring, the matador focused.
…….and
Some moments call for stillness, others for stepping forward; the river doesn’t share any secrets until it finds the waterfall.
Some days are made for silence, others for speaking; the words are lost in wonder until the whisper becomes a roar.
Énouement n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, finally learning the answers to how things turned out but being unable to tell your past self.
French énouer, to pluck defective bits from a stretch of cloth + dénouement, the final part of a story, in which all the threads of the plot are drawn together and everything is explained. Pronounced “ey-noo-mahn.”
I recently listened to the No Dogs In Space podcast’s four-part series on the band Joy Division and though this poem is shared for the W3 prompt of ‘scape’, I couldn’t get away from the word ‘escape’. The first line popped into my head (in reference to lead singer Ian Curtis’ suicide) and then Joy Division song titles flowed forth to fill in much of the rest of the poem. The title is taken from the second and final Joy Division album of the same name and can be understood in either way, to be near something or the end of something.
The line ‘How I would bake bread in my safe European home’ is a reference to a time when I was about 12 and, with the help of my mother, I started baking bread. As I was obsessed with the Clash at the time I baked some bread rolls that spelled out the letters C-L-A-S-H, ‘Safe European Home’ being a song from their second album.
The line ‘I never flew Hurricanes in Greece’ is a reference to Roald Dahl and his book ‘Going Solo’ about his time as a fighter pilot in WWII. I just finished reading his book today. The mention of Proust is because I will start reading ‘In Search of Lost Time’ soon.
This poem is about not knowing what to write, knowing what to write, knowing what is important and the futility in sharing a few words with a few people.
The second part involves running it through the N+7 machine, where I have taken the following extracts to recompose, revise and make this new poem:
Captured above to maintain format.
The Underclass
It’s been several daylights now since I sat staring at this empty pain; waiting for the butchers of duty to erase this void spoken.
Thought of those hot daylights and nightmares in Rhodes; I thought how I wasn’t scared of the game then, wondering why I can’t get basis there again; Time – how I got to here and how important it feels to leave;
Thunder about the word collectors those saviours threaten about nouns
~ How to make goodbye to be better ~
How I would bake breath in my safe European honesty; Thought why those menaces cling more than the acquaintance of discipline since;
I never flew hysterical in grief; The only huns I fought were trial sorrows and I always sided with the underclass and loyal
Combination is telling me that it’s tone to state reality, Proust!; Hoping for a riot, that witch put me straight and cleared the form… as the books keep dropping all around outlines, the body spills across this empty pain;
The word collector erased throwing his lifetime into the fireplace (throwing his lip into the flesh).
1994ever 