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Open Poetry #8
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with Doreen. PDV Square Dance Challenge
| Open Poetry #8 |
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with Doreen. PDV Square Dance Challenge |
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brian madden Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374ireland 
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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).] |
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Janet Marie Member Laureate
since 2000-01-22
Posts 18554 |
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 |
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brian madden Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374ireland |
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 |
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doreen peri Member Elite
since 1999-05-25
Posts 3812Virginia |
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 |
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Lost Dreamer Member Elite
since 1999-06-20
Posts 2464Somewhere near the Rainbow |
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. |
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Poet deVine
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-26
Posts 22612Hurricane Alley |
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!  |
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Nan
Administrator
Member Seraphic
since 1999-05-20
Posts 21191Cape Cod Massachusetts USA |
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? |
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brian madden Member Elite
since 2000-05-06
Posts 4374ireland |
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 |
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Poertree Senior Member
since 1999-11-05
Posts 1359UK |
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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