lost standing lost falling
grey skyscrapers ripple in rock pools
made of yellow string.
encircling and now whirling
the end beneath
the tears of dwelling skin.
and on a hill
stands a fat man
doing some sort of dance,
bludgering his chest with his arms
i read all your poems getting faster and faster until the last line of leaf by niggle. I liked the part of the Green Splurge where you suggest that we should use pens rather than computers. After writing my 4 paragraph 'comment' on this poem on Friday, I failed to submit properly and lost it. I wished I had taken you advice sooner. I think a dangerous thing about computers is that you have to signal everything. Its like getting an email saying, I wrote you an email but it deleted itself (it is never the user's fault). I'm trying to find a novel way of saying just that. I can loose a piece of paper, but it rarely disappears just because I turned the page. Beware of buttons that say Post Comment.
ReplyDeletemy favourite parts of this poem is the expression 'dwelling skin' and the word 'bludgering', both very unusual
The juxtaposition of nature and urban is something I often tap. I see cities in the sea, I see skycrapers in grey pixels. I wonder if we struggle to appreciate nature without seeing the urban in the reflection?
haha I like that you dont know (or care) which dance the fat man does. Perhaps it is the ancient dance of la macerana?! Maybe his tears are for a real reflection of skyscrapers, rather than an imagined one.
...Behind the hill reach towerblocks, bent in the ripples of the rock pool. I think it is crucial that he is not on the beach, but the hill (it seems the only place for him). This division is tied via the 'yellow string', this is a mystical reference to urine - the giant on the hill pisses down onto the beach, filling the pools, creating evil mirrors. He roars. He beats himself, remembering the time when he merely imagined the skyscraper's reflection in the rockpools and dreamed of pure nature. Now the landscape is polluted by lived dreams and excrement.
The extra line and omission of a fullstop in the final stanza is a powerful device in this poem. It imparts the continued and lengthy process the fat man has undertaken. This is not simply a matter of reading one line, but a frenzied and consuming attack on the self, undertaken without thought of end or (full)stopping. Whatismore, it is concievable that this is also the downfall of the fat (controlling) man; the reason he stands in his position in the first place - he cannot help but self-destruct, attack himself, and by extension, his environment.
the hunched skyscrapers themselves are lost. like a group of people who dont know where to go, they huddle and pretend they are in the right place at the right time
they mighta said the right thing, but it must have been the wrong line