Poem of the Month

Greater Love


Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care:
Till the fierce love they bear
Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear,
Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot
Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.


Wilfred Owen

Qualifier

Just as a way of explanation, the previous post, Erato, is a prose poem I wrote for workshopping in my creative writing class. It isn't a confessional in any way. I'm not a bad person. Duck Farts and Redheaded Sluts are alcoholic beverages--I know this from Open Mic Night at the bar in McCarthy, Alaska which serves as the community gathering place for all the 30 residents and 50 or so tourists. Also, Erato is the Greek Muse of lyric poetry.

Anyway, Erato wasn't the best of my poems that I submitted. I thought it was, but everybody seemed to like this one the best.

Wolves

There is a story here. Among the scattered bones and cloying stench of death. The mossy forest floor is a sick yellow underneath a newer carpet of loose hair and bits of decaying flesh. Several fist sized saplings in the area are snapped off, almost waist high. Their remains lie trampled into the moss. He died fighting, this one. A lower jaw bone and a hip socket lie close together. Evidence. A caribou, or a light colored moose. It’s hard to tell without the rest of the skull. There is no need to search for the killer. Just outside the swath of death lie numerous piles of hair-filled feces. Enough to show that a good sized pack of wolves gorged themselves for a day or so.
I wonder, if this was a man, would I stand here so calm among his rotting remains, piecing together the clues of his demise?


I actually didn't really like the way this one turned out.

For all of my readers out there, I am interested in your opinion. Both poems are still in rough draft form, so present me with your thoughts. Which do you like better? What do you like or dislike about these poems? And do you have any suggestions for improvement? Feel free to comment harshly if that is your desire. Thanks!

Erato

Once I had a muse. She lingered in my dreams and fed me lines and lies dipped in honey. Pages and pages I filled with foolish and empty rhetoric on love. I was in love. But once I treated her to a night in the city she vanished among the tangled streets. Without a word. I was left alone under the flashing neon lights, with the sound of sirens singing in my ears. Long nights since I have searched, and searched, for her, and found nothing. Once I thought I found her in a bar on 4th serving duck farts and redheaded sluts over the counter, but the gothic lipstick was wrong. The feeling was wrong. I was wrong. But I took her home anyway. When I woke in the morning blank pages met my eyes, and I could not fill them other than a few constipated and bitter lines. Of truth. Time passes, but I still wake at night tangled in blankets and sweat, clinging to cheap motel pillows, with the echo of her name ringing across the room. Whether a plea or a curse I cannot tell.

~Joseph Devenport

The Bald Soprano

Here is an excerpt from Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Sorprano. It's a poem.

The Fire

The polypoids were burning in the wood
A stone caught fire
The castle caught fire
The forest caught fire
The men caught fire
The women caught fire
The birds caught fire
The fish caught fire
The water caught fire
The sky caught fire
The ashes caught fire
The smoke caught fire
The fire caught fire
Everything caught fire
Caught fire, caught fire

MRS. MARTIN: That sent chills up my spine. . .
MR. MARTIN: And yet there's a certain warmth in those lines. . .
FIRE CHIEF: I thought it was marvelous.

You can't get writing better than that.

The Stream of My Conscious

I swear, I really don't like poetry. It's not my fault all the creative writing assignments in my British Literature class involve poetry. This one is a stream of consciousness that I wrote about dancing. Enjoy (hopefully).

Dancing and Self Revelation

Dancing. I search my mind
To find the words that convey
The sense of mental ease that it brings
Like idly strumming the strings of a guitar
Or shooting hoops in a darkened gym
With only the muted echo of the ball
Ringing on the hardwood
And the occasional squeak of a pair of Dadas
As they slide on a clean finish
Dancing heals
They use it in therapy
Usually stuff more like ballet
Or modern, contemporary if you insist
Because the body moves
As a reflection of the soul
When the soul is whole, so is the body,
But I don’t think it works the other way around
Ballroom is the best
A man and woman moving together
With a sense of ease and purpose
As music sings a steady waltz
Three beats to a measure
Lower on the one, rise on two through three
Lower again, maybe do a big top
Or a closed telemark or a tumble turn
It’s all the same,
Beautiful
I wish I could capture that grace, always
But Brent says I’m
“not a natural mover” and sometimes
He says I move “without passion”
He’s wrong, of course
The passion is there, inside
But I can’t release it at will
Usually it comes best when I’m alone
Plucking out a tune on a guitar or listening
To that magical swish as I bury the long trey
But I’m never quite alone when I dance
I always have someone in my arms
Which is what makes it so magical
Because everybody dances better
When they have someone to hold

In the manner of Keats, Shelley, and Byron. . .

I am not a fan of poetry; I hate most of it, in fact. Some of it however is good, but those poems are quite rare. With that said, I had to write a lyrical poem for my British Literature class. I thought it turned out badly--not quite living up to the master plan in my mind--but it was well recieved in my peer review group even though it has an extremely lose form. So, I will post it here for your reading pleasure. If you are a poetry critic, please be kind; I'm a little embarrassed.

Lamentation of Silence

Mute are the muses that guide me
in the presence of these sirens
that invade my reverie
haunting me always
with their melodies
that whisper
in the wind and down the byways
like something from a dream
remembered and forgotten.

I pray you, Speak! Feel my plight
ere this holy specter vanishes
from the pleasure of my sight
but not my soul
where her eternal absence
will wroth and roil
like a tangle of serpents
flailing and striking
until all is still.

Come muse, Speak!
Curse these words that choke
Curse this love that binds
my thoughts and words
to formless theory and bitter hope
Speak, and grant me sanity
let heart and mind end this violence
and come together
to end this
the utterance of my silence.

~Joseph Devenport