The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Terence Winch
Dialogue
It is wonderful the way prayers are always answered. The lost dog found. Sickness cured. The dead come back to life, as I am doing in the future in this poem, which isn’t even very good. It could be improved, I think, with some dialogue, some feel of real people talking. Like if I were to say to you, “I can’t imagine life without you,” and you were to reply, “I can’t find my keys. Have you seen my keys?” The Dig Where you stand now, powerful gods once stood. People lit candles to them, said prayers, sacrificed lambs and virgins in their honor. Right above you were once mythological beings who lit up the sky with their seductions. They were awesome creatures of the black firmament. They made the oceans rumble and the rest of us humble. Now you wake up in a daze, nothing left to amaze you anymore. The cat is just a cat, not the devil. The silence is not trying to tell you something. Those scary shadows in your peripheral vision are not ghosts. They are just the spirits of the dead come back to haunt you. Search Me I am not looking for you anymore. I stopped all that. When I’m in town and I pass your street I don’t remember the time you came to my apartment and asked if I could put you up for a few weeks. When I look at my face in the mirror, I don’t see your face. When I cover myself with the blanket you left to me, I do not think of your warmth. When I stir something in the old cast iron pot you left behind, I never even think of what a terrible cook you were. When I hear you speak again on that ancient tape it never occurs to me to miss the sweet sound of your long-lost voice. Surrender
Everywhere I look I see your face.
In the pub, on the bus, in the store.
And though you have left behind no trace,
I feel your absence to my core.
In the pub, on the bus, in the store
most people make me misanthropic
and I feel your absence to my core.
This is so depressing—let’s change the topic.
Most people make me misanthropic,
without regard to race, creed, or gender.
When you’re depressed, it’s hard to change the topic.
I don’t want to fight it anymore. I give up. I surrender.
No one, without regard to race, creed, or gender
could ever take your place.
I give up. Okay, I surrender:
Everywhere I look I see your face. Capitalism
My lord, I would like a word with you.
You are standing right in my landscape and I’d like you to leave. Please be gone by Christmas. I don’t like your women either, so take them with you, you dying ember, you sick spirit of money-love, you enslaver, you evil embracer of my ecstatic moonlight, on which I am so alarmingly dependent.
Be gone! I say. Or I will insult you.
I will break your mirrors, smash your porcelain mermaids, drown your sorrows in a tiny pill box filled with glitter is what I’ll do. Taken together, the above two stanzas express the frightening feelings it is possible to have about someone trying to put you naked on a giant platter, like, you know, some cannibal, or some deranged airline employee maybe, and then trying to eat you, even while your stomach is growling and you yourself are really really hungry. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |