I reach for you with hands
Shaped like fins
Nerveless I stroke your shoulder and
Attempt a sham show
Of affection but feel less than zero
Once my fingers sparked electricity
When they caressed the arc of your collar bone
Or stimulated your vulva
Now they are little more than
Ice formed by ice
My hoarfrost lips move across
Your mouth and breasts and soften
Your nipples with blunt
Splashes of novocaine drool
Antispetic to your latent fragrance
I paw at silken flesh,
Artless I search for lost brush strokes
Whilst your evocative scent
Evaporates beyond my
Mute, reconstructed nostrils
Sweet Christ when I stood in front of
Jacob’s savage spine
And uttered that vacuous
Cliche, I threw away my senses
Far below 28,000 feet
“Because it is there” I cried
Standing below its huge shadow
And it bade me on without contempt
Or pity and I embraced its cold
Indifferent torso
They found me later
A stalactite, and warmed what
Could be warmed
And brought me home to you
An icy breath on an angel's feather
Comments
john_silver | October 9, 2008 - 12:28
There's a good dramatic construction to this, though I think you occasionally overuse adjectives a little. For instance in the phrase "Your latent fragrance seeps from / Beneath the silken flesh I paw at," the adjectives steal attention from each other and one of them ends up losing power. Other times they just seem unnecessary ("delicate" is a bit predictable for "collar bone"). Nothing that can't be improved with some practice though.
Something else - the poem is composed of seven stanzas, four with five lines and three central ones with four lines. The fact that they're all so close to each other means that the change from five to four and back to five is a little jarring. I normally don't point these things out when it comes to free verse, but a poem like this is just begging to be given a more regular number of lines per stanza (either consistently five or consistently four). I wouldn't go out of my way to alter this specific piece (it's already complete), but for the future give a shot at keeping your stanzas consistent in size - either that, or go the other way round and use more variety in the number of lines, so that we're not led to expect regularity at the beginning only to find a change mid-way.
It's an evocative poem anyway, keep it up. Ciao!
tcook | October 10, 2008 - 11:44
I really liked the way it startde and then lost it - possibly because of the change in stanza length but also because it moved from the small and intimate to the vast and intimidating.
I think it's almost a very good poem indeed if that's not too much faint praise - I mean it though!
maudsy | October 10, 2008 - 22:38
Thanks for the comments. It starts intimate and goes outward deliberately because that's where the intimacy was thrown away - chasing something that appears more imprortant and losing what really was as a result.
As with all my stuff it remains a work in progress but it is so good to have this type of analysis - it's the only way to improve.
Many thanks John (for the technical advice) and TC as always.