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Allysa

Senior Member

since 1999-11-09

Posts 1952
In an upside-down garden

0 posted 2008-05-10 12:14 PM

My senses deceived me-

feet touching concrete,
the city smelled familiar
a mix, rainwater and garbage
and plastic cups, beads
if they have a smell

nostalgia
and hands touching walls
of buildings far away
watching streets
never filled with water

they glance as my eyes close
he looks, concerned
furrowed brow and takes me
pulls me by the hand,
drags me down the street

they don't see the ghosts I see

I'm not sure even I do
anymore it's something
just over my shoulder,
out of reach, and
far enough away to quiet

the muttering,
talking, mistaking city blocks
for something else I saw once
he watches my eyes search
not knowing what I'm looking for

every city is the same

and it isn't,
except when you close your eyes
to see the jazz parade,
the rain of days,
it doesn't matter where you are

it finds you.

Brian James
Member

since 2005-06-26

Posts 147
Winnipeg

1 posted 2008-06-14 11:28 PM

There was a time when I was highly skeptical of what I called "choppy line-breaky poetry," but my opinion of it is occasionally redeemed by examples of good poems written in that strain.  Such as this one.

The landscape of the poem is so thematically similar to the flow of ideas.  I really admire that.  Every stanza is like a turn on a street corner, to a new avenue, the same but completely different.  The ultimate effect is a wandering, unanticipated and unanticipatable futurelessness and uncertainty.

Your most isolated lines are also, appropriately, the most intimate and personal parts of the poem.  It works out really, really well.

Ahh, "Poetic Haven" is awesome.  Come, and let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.

Nice to have seen you around, Allysa.

"To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form."
~Robert Frost

Allysa

Senior Member

since 1999-11-09

Posts 1952
In an upside-down garden

2 posted 2008-07-12 11:38 PM

Thanks.

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