Spring flood
Feb. 22nd, 2004 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaneramosTonight I am going to attend an open mic poetry reading that occurs every second Sunday at the 
-bar. I went to several a couple years ago but couldn't stand listening to the lurid ravings of Tad, a Born Again, bipolar, homophobic nudist. It was against the organizer's policy to disinvite him, but readings were discontinued for a while. Since they resumed, no one has bothered to reinvite Tad. I guess I'll try it out.
While pulling together some verses to take, I found a writing exercise I did several weeks ago, revised it heavily, and turned it into a poem.
~~~~~~~~~
Spring flood
Brothers rise against the blood banks.
Sisters in shadows knit bones of righteousness.
Memory frozen: denial of access.
White crosses stem the jordan flow.
Damn the blood!
Lambs our daughters
march to the shearing
calves to the brand name leather
skin collision of cloth on skeleton.
Songs of slaughter
raise your heads to the sullied crosses,
raging, ringing.
We are alive
upon these banks
while brave larks fly
amid the bones
which row on row
still mar our face.
Mothers in curtains
reap no more than sorrow
feel the flow of crimson ice
that veins our wasted land
with children wrung and ploughed
beneath the long dry shadow of soil.
A strategy made of lives
beneath a banner call no brighter
than a dotard muttering
in leather skins
with grasshoppers caught
between his teeth.
-bar. I went to several a couple years ago but couldn't stand listening to the lurid ravings of Tad, a Born Again, bipolar, homophobic nudist. It was against the organizer's policy to disinvite him, but readings were discontinued for a while. Since they resumed, no one has bothered to reinvite Tad. I guess I'll try it out.While pulling together some verses to take, I found a writing exercise I did several weeks ago, revised it heavily, and turned it into a poem.
~~~~~~~~~
Spring flood
Brothers rise against the blood banks.
Sisters in shadows knit bones of righteousness.
Memory frozen: denial of access.
White crosses stem the jordan flow.
Damn the blood!
Lambs our daughters
march to the shearing
calves to the brand name leather
skin collision of cloth on skeleton.
Songs of slaughter
raise your heads to the sullied crosses,
raging, ringing.
We are alive
upon these banks
while brave larks fly
amid the bones
which row on row
still mar our face.
Mothers in curtains
reap no more than sorrow
feel the flow of crimson ice
that veins our wasted land
with children wrung and ploughed
beneath the long dry shadow of soil.
A strategy made of lives
beneath a banner call no brighter
than a dotard muttering
in leather skins
with grasshoppers caught
between his teeth.
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I generally like your poetry Van
Date: 2004-02-22 01:25 pm (UTC)I think that the Mothers in curtains stanza is symptomatic of a loss of control, and that this poem's meaning is stronger than its art. And that something is causing you to flinch.
I think that if you started again with the next to last stanza and the first stanza removed, you would have a much stronger text.
But that is me being editorial/persnickety, and do not take this as a critique of your poetic toolkit, but this one in particular.
See if you can get this poem back in one sack, is my best advice, Vaneramos
Re: I generally like your poetry Van
Date: 2004-02-22 02:24 pm (UTC)