as we circle the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Airport for reasons dark to me: once, twice, thrice.
Some of these networks congeal as streets, others coagulate into towns.
Bad neighborhoods, court districts, voting precincts are impossible to identify, looking down.
Twinklings hint of other systems, here arrayed in time: redlight, greenlight, traffic surges,
store hours, schedules, seasons, ways of moving, the clear as day but invisible causes of hidden wants, urges.
What I've come here for is the homes, those shells we each sculpt around our own life
to shut out the cold and to protect against the bone-grey trees, stunted balconies, satellites, sights
which root above, wrought iron and water tower, in sky-plots long ago
staked out for nobler purpose by our hearts.
5 comments:
Oh elsbeth
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
What I meant to say is something more real like: I love the sting of the lights and the way the color bleeds into listings of time. I like the stark in it, and the soft way it lands at the end with our high-thinking hearts. I like the beginning curve as if I'm sliding into the poem and brought from the curvature to the circle to the repetition (once twice thrice). The "congeal" and "coagulate" line is one of my favorites in the whole thing and I think its perfect the feeling you get from those gross words and the way you start the next with Bad neighborhoods and how everyone's obsessed with the elections and you stick it in there just a little. Twinklings is so good just before the lights.
I'm not in the mood to write coherently or critically, so you'll have to take that for now.
Today we walked in the park by our apartment (Butte Chaumont) at dusk and in a drizzle. It has caves with stalagmites and a sort of mountain-rock in the middle with a temple to sybil on top. You would have loved it, it was so beautifully gloomy and I thought of this poem when the traffic-street lights came in though the black trees and now I'm trying to write one of my own.
i like this poem, especially the orange circuitboard, the once, twice, thrice, and from bone-grey to the end. a few things:
shouldn't the twinklings hint AT other systems or otherwise be twinkling hints? this is picky, i know.
also, i think urges would carry more weight if wants weren't in the same line.
Thanks for your tinkerings, Elizabeth. This poem is still in the stage where some of the lines seem cumbersome/overly laden with words to me. Need to do a lot more editing.
I've been wondering what woodwork you've been hiding in lately.
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