Porcelain marred purple: where the healing stopped,
Will I forget you, iron ulcer?
The tendons and wild hair erase you,
Yours the last chest,

This imagery is bright and full of life,
Like sunset over sandstone,
Tree leaf reflected in the smell of rainfall,

And these ideas strike me when I stop for something,
I long for someone,
A grand orange crescendo- colours I've never seen,
Their movements and history and the paintings and clothes they will build,
Something like lilac and honey,
Not clay or cocoa or any earthy way of screaming brown,
Brighter,
Much more vivid,
The wavelength of the first taste,

Now we only imagine it,
Cocaine with caffeine,
The pound muted,
And the private smile born of this,

Steal one thousand tongues and explain,
Pin it to the diagram and bring the patrons,
Wash the ink that wrote this and run it over my hands and over the blood of my eviscerated, bared psyche for all to see
None to understand

Perhaps reappropriate a word for myself:
Clear.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

seems a little wordy to me. try paring down some of what you use, and brush up on the OED definitions of them... there're some minute differences between word definitions. I think if you read your poems aloud to yourself a couple of times you'd see where they get clunky.

Anonymous said...

This would be a far more constructive comment if you'd cite the ideas you're talking about. It's all well and good for your ego to criticise my knowledge of OED definitions- but it's not helpful if you don't actually SHOW me which ones you think wrong (because I can't see any errors in that respect)

Thanks for your comment


Ben

Anonymous said...

I also like the assumption you make that I don't read my poetry aloud to myself or even check it over! Very interesting.

Ben

Anonymous said...

Ben,

In my opinion, this was EXTREMELY well-written, and I look forward to reading more from you. Your use of metaphorical imagery gives this poem life.

-Kameron Tyler

Closet Door said...

The contrast between the 2nd and 3rd stanza and the 4th and 5th; elegance versus violence, is really remarkable. Never stop writing, although i'm sure you won't.

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