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Open Poetry #8
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brian madden
Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374
ireland

0 posted 2000-07-08 06:05 AM


First of all I would really like to thank Doreen for agreeing to do this challenge with me. We had great fun and I even learned a thing or two about poetry.
===========================================
Alternatives--

And when he said,
Words spill from the cavern of my throat,
limp vocabulary, void of emotion,
vomits upon your fragile state, any tactic I can deploy
to disarm your feeble beauty.
Where did it all go wrong? Where
did the chaos ensue and my world end?
Such nonsense you mumble to my anger.
I am screaming, nobody can hear the words!
I continue for it's all I can do.
Language without context, demands
for answers without questions.
It is a pathetic game, insanity for its own sake.
I am the Mad Hatter seducing Alice,
twisting her with grasp
and yet
she resists in her sharpened clarity.
A revelation dawns upon my foulness,
Is there not an alternative?

How could there be?,
she answered.
You are my alternative.
You are the very depth of transparency.
I am not Alice falling down or growing, shrinking,
lost to find the gloves!
There is no need to seduce.
Please don't trade my dignity for invisible questions!
And you --
you are not simply empty words on a page
swept up by the maid!
It would have been too simple to
simply pick you up like paper
and stick you in a grocery bag
for recycling!
No!
The sun
is an alternative to clouds
swept up by treasures in the mist
of dreams.
And yes, your moon is my alternative
gravity and I am the sea
being pulled in tides
I can't control.
What, no alternatives?
Better for the fly to wallow
on some paper sticky with a lie
than for you to dismiss the dawn.
My beauty -- feeble, you say?
You are simply caught in a void
of a mirror, not seeing me.
I am your starlight.
I am shining on your face.

I dismiss the dawn for I am, he said,
a corrosion that would taint its splendour.
By the same token I should never taste your pleasure,
see my darling while you
progress to divinity
I am still the burden of a beast.
In love I fail to comprehend intricate bliss.
Worthy only of recycling, mould me
to your desire as parched clay crumbling
in the sculptor's hands.
You will never carve David out of me.
I could never honour your grace, envy torches.
I would rather tear you apart,
limb
from
limb
… than have others dissect
your flesh. What alternatives have I than that?
You are my dementia
pulling me deeper into the rabbit hole.
I fear what will become of me.

And her answer came like
a final sigh, breathed deep from
a ripped chest.
Well, then, there are no alternatives.
I never made claim on divinity!
How dare you scoff!
Your ears have closed up.
They are stuck with glue.
I speak your worth and you decline it,
ridiculing your own honor with
words encrusted with blame,
teetering on dichotomies,
parlaying my desire into a pit,
treating me like a queen, then pawn,
then queen again,
only to adhere yourself to some
revelry of self pity.
You are the fly paper trapping yourself
and your feet stick because you
chose to walk on yourself!
In a torrent, you throw
arrows from your quill
and blame me with your ruse;
your threats to tear my body in two
are not idle.
I am torn. And I decline it.
There are no alternatives.
I wish you had not poked out
your eyes.
Mad Hatter?
Yes, perhaps.
Yes.

Alice, you are privy to my insanity,
I turned to you for humanity
to that seductive smile and nurturing whisper
it slits my throat you, two headed viper.
"My eyes poked out?" maybe blindness will give me sight
instead of acidic blizzards in dead of night
No wonder the Queen shouts off with her head, make her dead.
If I had arrows I would slay thy the Jabberwocky of Cupidity
Yet I am too drained to raise fist to face, you leech. Pity
me I am only a stiff grey mule kicking, no loving kiss
nor tear of dress or sweetness will bless my lips.
We argued with knives. We built up arsenals all our lives.
With all alternatives exhausted, dead on my knees
Crush me or nurse which ever you please.

But by the time he spoke, she'd vanished,
melting fast into pavement,
blending with the oil from motor cars
into yesterday's rain --
alternatives not heard
by Alice now gone Mad.
Alternatives absurd by
poisoned phrase.
Two hearts entwined with selfish words
missed all that could be had.
With cyanide speech, they banished love
and changed it from a haze
into exhaust.

Oh, what a cost tongues pay
with failed constraint of what they say!

---
Written by Doreen Peri & Brian Madden



"All my life what I mistook for friendly pats on the back Were really the hands that pushed me further and further down The more I struggle, the less I achieve" Domnic Chad"



[This message has been edited by brian madden (edited 07-08-2000).]

© Copyright 2000 brian madden - All Rights Reserved
Janet Marie
Member Laureate
since 2000-01-22
Posts 18554

1 posted 2000-07-08 07:32 AM


ahh...so many metaphors, so little time  
excellent guys...
love the conversation theme
and will you look at that...
Bri rhymed a whole verse  
loved the impact of the last 2 lines
later-square-dance-gators
jm

brian madden
Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374
ireland
2 posted 2000-07-08 08:03 AM


Hi Jan thanks for your response. Is my style that obvious? yep I did rhyme a whole verse, see you are starting to have an influence over me already. LOL   Thanks very much for reading.   Break out the tylenol

"Death makes angels of us all and put wings where we once had shoulders, smooth as raven's wings. Jim Morrison

doreen peri
Member Elite
since 1999-05-25
Posts 3812
Virginia
3 posted 2000-07-08 10:51 AM


Brian.

I just wanted to add a couple things about this poem and about writing it with you. It was truly a rewarding experience working with you on this- you opened the poem with a style I have never explored and I learned a lot writing this with you.

The other thing I want to say is that it was almost an emotional experience. That might sound strange....especially coming from a NUT like me LOL... but it's true. Several factors added to that, I think: the waiting for the next verse from you to see where it was going, the tone of the words you wrote and the levels of meaning...

By the time I was into writing my second "her" stanza, my words took off... it almost wrote itself... the angry tone of two lovers arguing took over and the metaphors you created took over my pen. By the end, it almost had me in tears. Literally. ROFL... well, just call me an overly emotional poet or whatever...

Again, thank you Brian, for a wonderful writing experience. I hope we can do it again some time. You are a fine writer and have opened my eyes to a new style and sparked my Muse.... so now I think i'll go write some more.  

-doreen



Lost Dreamer
Member Elite
since 1999-06-20
Posts 2464
Somewhere near the Rainbow
4 posted 2000-07-08 02:18 PM


Brian & Doreen, I knew you would both compliment each other with such class. What excellent writing both of you, if not for it being stated, I would not know which of you was which. You both blended divinely, and the intensity of this poem is fabulous. I applaud both of you for your abilities to take the written word and run with it, it really does amaze me.  
Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612
Hurricane Alley
5 posted 2000-07-08 03:59 PM


A wonderful collaboration! I'm so glad it worked. This is great - and you never would have thought to do it before..we definitely need to see more from the two of you and let's see more matchups!  
Nan
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-20
Posts 21191
Cape Cod Massachusetts USA
6 posted 2000-07-08 08:52 PM


What a wonderful team you two make - Nicely done indeed... You've practically written an epic here - and I enjoyed every line of it - Feel free to do more work together, ya hear?
brian madden
Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374
ireland
7 posted 2000-07-09 06:58 AM


Thanks LD, PDV, and NAN, for your wonderful comments and support. I had a load of fun doing this and was waiting with baited breath to read Doreen's verses. I would like to Thank Doreen again for agreeing to do this challenge and for allowing me to see a great poet at work. I learned alot. As for another collaboration, I am game if Doreen is. Thanks again.  


"The stars will explode in the sky O but they don't, do they? Stars have their moment and then they die" Nick Cave


Poertree
Senior Member
since 1999-11-05
Posts 1359
UK
8 posted 2000-10-26 05:01 PM


You will never carve David out of me.
"I could never honour your grace, envy torches.
I would rather tear you apart,
limb
from
limb
… than have others dissect
your flesh. What alternatives have I than that?"

very nice writing this, loved specially the use of form and line breaks at this point to slow things up, never mind the language which was terrific.  the whole poem is worthy of a few pages of analysis ...lol.. but not here     just wanted to say i read it carefully several times and you both did a truly amazing job - definitely an instance where it could be said that the "whole exceeds the individual parts" .....

well worthy of a second or third or fourth percolation through the seething activity of the Open forum - no?

thanks

Philip

PS except it won't because it's been archived of course .......silly me .....LOL  oh well it's the thought that counts ......


[This message has been edited by Poertree (edited 10-26-2000).]

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