Wednesday 18 November 2009

ship-wrecked

I put on the absurd flip-flip
I am having to do this
there is a ladder.
hanging obscenely

I go down-.
the oxygen immerses me
my flip-flops cripple me,
I crawl like an insect

I am blacking out and yet
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

the thing I came for:
the ribs of the accident
curving their assertion
among the loyal hunters.

this is the place.
and I am here,
amongst the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course

the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
speak of a love
which is now gone forever

17 comments:

  1. Not senseless, but sing-song. I like the way this flows.

    Crash

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  2. Melancholy but handled perfectly.

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  3. Gloomy images stir. Deeply moving.

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  4. Not senseless at all.

    I feel directionless, compassless, rudderless with my crippling flip flops and with my love gone forever.

    I like the way that you rely solely on connotations, eschewing denotations.

    Your technique provides a murkiness to the actions in the poem, but feelings and ideas slip out, coiling and unwinding in the darkness, like thin streams of oil from a ruptured drum, colliding and elliding, then thinning out as my fingers skim through them, searching for meaning and, maybe for purpose, and gaining some, too.

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  5. ooh!

    A second visit, via the train!

    And I still like what I hear 'twixt my ears.

    Tschuess,
    Chris

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  6. 'I am blacking out and yet
    I have to learn alone'

    Feels like my mid-NaNo despair...

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  7. It is like abandoning oneself to a surreal adventure. The third stanza, I like that image –or better the images I can image reading it. thanks. Ana

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  8. Kicking and screaming into the deep blue. Well written, as always.

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  9. Speaking of love, which is now gone forever. That said a lot

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  10. I like the quiet sense of exploration here, the sense of timelessness and metaphor.

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  11. Certainly not senseless! Perhaps the beginning struggled a bit, but then, so did the diver! :) Like someone else pointed out, perhaps your style unknowingly mirrored what you were writing about? :)

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  12. As always, you paint very affecting images. Very nice.

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  13. Very sad imagery. But it's very beautifully sad. :)

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  14. felt the feeling and in flipflops underneath the waters... cannot help but to think of the titanic...the pictures from so long ago

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  15. Another one that makes me drown..and appeals to me, simultaneously...who are you...x

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  16. Very nicely put Tami. I love the way it flows like a river.

    love,Melanie

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