The Contest!
Today is Wednesday, 1 October 2008.
Herewith, another new pome. The Contest: How should it be titled??
[Your Title Here?]
The heart is a thicket beset.
We seek a path to exit the burning forest.
Beside a river whose floods
Deposit silts of guilt
In the estuary of our lives:
Worn tires
Drown-ed dogs
Foolish harsh words said to you
A doll’s plastic head:
Yesterday’s flotsam and jetsam.
The moment of birth.
The moment you walked out the door.
That bowling trophy from 8th grade.
The crisp dawn sunshine streaking across sand where he lay dying.
Buddhist monks burning in Saigon streets.
A child abandoned.
Polar bears drowning on melting ice.
The heart is a thicket beset.
A path to exit the burning forest is what we seek.
Herewith, another new pome. The Contest: How should it be titled??
[Your Title Here?]
The heart is a thicket beset.
We seek a path to exit the burning forest.
Beside a river whose floods
Deposit silts of guilt
In the estuary of our lives:
Worn tires
Drown-ed dogs
Foolish harsh words said to you
A doll’s plastic head:
Yesterday’s flotsam and jetsam.
The moment of birth.
The moment you walked out the door.
That bowling trophy from 8th grade.
The crisp dawn sunshine streaking across sand where he lay dying.
Buddhist monks burning in Saigon streets.
A child abandoned.
Polar bears drowning on melting ice.
The heart is a thicket beset.
A path to exit the burning forest is what we seek.
posted by HH at 4:10 AM
3 Comments:
This is well-written and rather beautiful, but it makes me feel like I've experienced one of those Alfred Hitchcock/Salvador Dali dreams. Still, I doubt that "Surreal Nightmare" is what you had in mind for a title.
I would go with the first line of the poem.
I vote for "Path to Exit."
If you want something even simpler:
"Heart."
And the English lit class discusses exactly what kind of exit you had in mind... I choose to think it is a search for life, not the escape of death. Would the author care to weigh in?
Jumpin' G-Hosaphat!
Seriously.
This is why poets need readers.
The image of a burning forest leapt into my brain ... then sounds piled on sounds(i hear what i write)meaning and sound are very connected for me when i write poetry, don't ask me to explain ... and all of a sudden the EngLit/Hitchcock/Dali folks illuminate the meaning for me.
[i think of myself as a minor league Rod Serling.]
as Stephen Spender once said to me, "I don't write poetry; poetry writes me. The gift is to be astonished and grateful".
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