Friday, April 09, 2010

The Hook From Which You're Hung

Max Ernst

You are no vessel for your charms;
their high flying feather frightened
by the beach shell-cockled ear
From the ragged ends of arms display
cascade the broken synapse
that reconnect in dark array

Now apple cores for your mind’s eye,
lizard skin and red dust devils
while wind cold-cirrus paints the sky
Reduced to wandering dishevelled
in chequered cardigan and tie,
sadly worn to seed and furrow levelled

And on your dream-teeth whitened
the taste of salt dissolved
on a breath of windswept tear

7 comments:

Yodood said...

mirror becoming quite opaque

word verification: actualug— Aqualung without the pedophilic snot.

Barlinnie said...

Excellent visually to the eye as well as the ear.

Laura Tattoo said...

shocking visual! which i like in that weird twisted kinda way...

why not rid the poem of all punctuation, works just as well since it is already super sparce.

small idea/perhaps inconsequential:

on your dream-teeth whitened
taste of salt dissolved
breath of windswept tear

chose this for an example, thinking about how we get rid of superfluous "the's" "and's" "that's" "which's" and prepositions... tightening.

Jon said...

especially dig the line:

"Now apple cores for your mind’s eye"

get a layer of that on apple of the eye as well... like how you've mixed many meanings together on this, and other little gems in this poem... quite a talent of yours...

JP

Tom said...

yo, i like that line too. and what's that crazy bird man doing to his naked woman? Bad bird man!

Garth said...

I’m not entirely sure what this is about but,
going by Yodood’s comment, it appears to be clear from the other side of the mirror.
The apple cores are a reflection of my mental state at the moment – but seeds will grow from fallen fruit.
Laura is correct, I think, too many inconsequential words, but rather than re-write, I’m gonna leave it raw :).
The Max Ernst picture I first saw on one of my son’s tee-shirts (The Mars Volta) and it presents, to me, a disturbing set of thoughts – firstly there is something psychologically cold about it; the violence appears to be strangely consensual (not that that makes it right); at the same time both figures appear detached or at least otherwise occupied (psychosis). Tom asks what the crazy bird man is doing… more importantly where is the crazy nekkid wummin’s other leg?

Harlequin said...

on a breath of windswept tear

this line was a hook for me.

sometimes it seems the hook is of one's choosing and sometimes it is the long consequences of whole sequences of choosing. I like how you have managed to convey both random and purposeful " choosings" in here.

the images are evocative and other senses are well attended to as well.

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