EDITED
First let me put a link here: Keri
Before I said something that wasn't really true, that I prefer her prose to her poetry, where it's really just a mater of my mood.
Too many thoughts to try to parse them out coherently here... here are a couple of poems that hopefully do part of the job for me. They were written on the day that the US attacked Iraq.
Our Poetry, My Love, is Death
How today can I write to you
who know my mind without words?
In this jarring age, can I
express, with our shared
lexicon, the beauty I witness in you?
"Showdown in LoveTown!"
or perhaps
"Target: LOVE"
Simple words mask our
profound horrors,
Our poetry, my love, is death.
Words have become brutal instruments
of death.
Language no longer reveals or shares
it scabs festering lies and death.
In it's ennui it is death and
even in extremity it is banal:
How many who shit and fuck and bleed
can be erased with one callous
Euphemism: "collateral damage."
So hold me, and listen to my body.
My warmth against your skin.
Confesses one shared future together.
Share your lips, and share with me
what can never be made an act of
war.
Postlude to "Our Poetry:" a Pastoral Dance
In your eyes, my love I see death,
and on your lips I taste it.
And though your breath is sweet
my love, it's daggers to me and death.
And all about your smooth white skin
(which almost seems too white)
is wrapped a chain of skulls my dear
(a chain of endless night.)
And on your fine white clothing love
(which almost seems too fine)
are tiny hand prints, see them love--
much smaller than yours or mine?
I see them hold hands with death as they sew,
(hands with death as they sew!)
And we too hold tight their frail wrists
(as we sow and reap)
and 'round the world the chain goes...
1 comment:
I see you have edited...well it took me a while but I will take a stab at answering the dropped question.
First, let me start by saying that it's difficult to interpret others art. Everyone walks away with something different. I suppose as long as they come away with somthing the message was effective after all....even if it wasn't the one intended.
The are many differences I see between your two poems but the one I will share is "Accountability" in the first poem you and your "love" are outsiders... not accountable for the horrors of the outside world....in the second you take accountability that you too are responsible in ways for the horrors and death that is upon us.
Well that is what I have come away with...
Outside the technical side I love the second poem at the end... the visuals are simply divine.
"And on your fine white clothing love
(which almost seems too fine)
are tiny hand prints, see them love--
much smaller than yours or mine?
I see them hold hands with death as they sew,
(hands with death as they sew!)
And we too hold tight their frail wrists
(as we sow and reap)
and 'round the world the chain goes..."
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