After the Fall
Sometimes these tongueless hours bring you close
breath to hanging breath, a laugh your key
to the deadbolt of ambivalent remorse
a remembered violated electricity.
Other times the soulless house contracts,
the shadow falls, the long-awaited night
clings to me, a
flower to its bracts;
god clears the clinkered eye-mote from his sight.
He kicks the wormy apple from paradise
to roll the long descent to cidered hell
square-ended in a box of no replies,
and stops the mouth of the pixelated well.
A chiaroscuro grief, saint's agony
is Lucifer's anaphasic mutiny.
~February 2013
dVerse Poets
© Black Wildflowers blog 2013
All rights reserved.
16 comments:
the soulless house contracts..square-ended in a box of no replies...some really cool images...and i'm glad he opened another door for us as well..smiles..oh and love the chiaroscuro grief...
This has a beautiful sound and tangible shadows, and even those words I had to look up--like bracts - are somehow words that are related enough to similar sounding words that they allowed some kind of visualization before I was certain of their meanings.
The different falls are so interesting to me here - the first one of the title - which to me was the most important fall from grace, and then the subsequent ones, when (in my reading) God remembers to enforce the punishment and the fallee becomes a bit less ambivalent - It feels to me sort of like an experience of the enforcement of original sin - where the knowledge of good and evil isn't necessarily so bad at times, until one goes down into that later descent of isolation/no replies and stark differences between light and shadow, and the two sides of the cell. Better I guess to be a wormy apple in paradise than a square boxed one, seemingly refused even by the cider press.
Anyway, the descent is palpable and expressed with great and eloquent intensity--and now, for the commentary of mine that regulars at dVerse have come to find really annoying - I wonder at some of your punctuation choices - in that you sometimes have it, and sometimes don't, and the place I wonder about it most is at some of the line ends, for example, after contracts, which I assume is meant to be followed by a pause, as in the house contracts (gets smaller) and then the shadow falls, rather than bargaining or coming down with shadow falls. This is just my sense. Frankly, the other meanings of contracts here are pretty cool too, so may be you mean to leave it open, but I think it could be confusing to those who are involved with things like commas. I am very sure I am the only person who will have a problem with this kind of thing so just ignore my kvetching, if you wish, but I do think it is something to consider. k.
I realize I may have commented too quickly - so obsessed with comma=ing. A laugh is certainly a way out of the deadbolt of descent/damnation, even if a kind of self-deprecating one. k.
ps - last comment. Love the use of "eyemote" with respect to God. I know there's some passage about judging the brother - I am not sure how this all connects - I will read more carefully, but it works nonetheless even without a plodding reader, going through each thread - for me, it has to do with insignificance, but I can also see it as God somehow casting a certain judgment on those who have fallen, while the world itself is full of evil - and for a saint this must be the greatest agony of all - how to rationalize the evil world with a merciful God.
Hi, first time seeing your work and enjoying the ambition and intensity of your work "A chiaroscuro grief, saint's agony" is terrific stuff... Keep pushing I'd say, you're knocking on doors harder than most - respect to you... Scott www.scotthastie.com
Comma added. Thanks for noticing the oversight.
goodness...great use of language to set the tone in this...tongueless hours...wow...great descriptor....the wormy apple of paradise...tight last couplet too....
' A chiaroscuro grief, saint's agony
is Lucifer's anaphasic mutiny....' - oh my, this hit me hard. stark and filled with cold beauty. loved the language and intensity emanating from these lines.
Lots of original phrasing in this. That tongueless line grabbed me from the very beginning.
I too had to look up some of the words and you really captured this. There is a lot of original thoughts and phrases in this piece and it is a very interesting read. I did enjoy this very much. Here is my entry for this week: http://gatelesspassage.com/2013/02/04/mothers-love/
I see you are expanding the word hordes of dVerse poets! Fun!
And mutiny forever!
Having just watched a V.creepy movie (Sinister) in the gark and alone i was totally primed for this piece!
to the deadbolt of ambivalent remorse
a remembered violated electricity.
electric is right!
God being one of my favourite topics but eye-mote
has never popped into my head but its a great and memorable phrase/idea . . .
some smart craft and original spark:
an exciting read . . . probably the closest
i'll get to a valentines day heart flutter! :D
Plenty of wordpower going on!
shadow falls, tongueless hours, box of no replies, powerful imagery.
"He kicks the wormy apple from paradise
to roll the long descent to cidered hell
square-ended in a box of no replies,"
Well shit. *throws away pen, buys wig*
awesome words, I love your choice of words.
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