Black & Grey

I look down and I am silent,
up again and
    I am free.
I am free and
    I am dead,
crushed beneath the weight of a world
    that never really understood.
I'm a cold, empty shell,
and the little piece that's left of me
    is void and unafraid,
looking to mingle but far too empty
to put itself back on track.

 

Death is waking up to realize that
entire ephocs of life have
    burned and blown away
like ashes in the wind;
what remains is left
    to steer the ship back upstream,
    against the odds and against
    the waves that crush
our succulent, malnourished shells like grapes,
leaving us juice-deprived and stuck forever
    on the bottoms of dirty soles.

 

My thoughts too are mashed-
mashed and grinded like
pie filling, whipped and manipulated until
finally they reaches a maximum;
I sit nonchalantly by,
    watching them poured from the top of the ladder
    to the bottom of the universe and
   (smiling)
praying that the fall isn't too severe.
I wrack my mind, wondering nervously about the length
and horror of this ride and thinking about how wonderful
getting off would truly be.

 

I look down in utter silence,
up again and
    I am free.
I can no longer feel the sky closing in
and the once-mechanical drone 
is replaced by mumbling spectators,
living, dying,
and alls they've gots ta say is
gone. Silence, their silence,
is blown away like stray erasure marks,
leaving behind a clean slate and with it,
the chance to start anew.

Reviews

[Silent Kim aka mizmetap..]

watching them poured from the top of the ladder
to the bottom of the universe Nice lines.

You have that melancholy soul od a writer. It appears from the two pieces I've read you write out your feelings to move you from one mood into the next. You started this out in a deep dark place and at the end you expressed hope. Excellent.

[Katherine Moure]

I would have liked to have seen silence, death, and freedom illustrated in a more authentic way. There is, however, virtue in a grammatically crass stand against verbosity. I don't know. I feel torn because I've been chronically depressed for four years, just recently showing symptoms of "bipolar" disorder and this is a well-known territory. Usually when you get to the point of brain mashing like pie filling and severe misanthropy, there really isn't desire for hope and "getting off". There almost becomes like this grandiose idea of "being on" and how it's far more significant and intense than other people's lives. This poem makes me feel like the author just randomly pulled abstract words off the shelf of time and jumbled them together to sound sad. Why does he want to start anew? Why does he believe there's a point? Where does this sudden sense of hope come from? These are questions that first came to mind. Probably my most important question would be, is that last sense of "hope" founded? And (2nd part), is it the message the author attempts to convey (that there is hope even in the most desolate positions)?

[Katie Lynn]

this is simply amazing

[Roy Jacobs]

Very well thought out piece. I've drowned in that deep, dark sea of depression before and you illustrated the feelings in this poem very well.

[Luke Brooks]

Death is waking up to realize that
entire ephocs of life have
burned and blown away
like ashes in the wind;

Wow. Very well put.
Worded perfectly with great imagery and even better descriptions.

Great job my friend.
I really enjoed it.

[JR]

Damn, what a remarkable take on a well-used subject! You managed to put depression into a whole new plane for me, man. The mood of foreboding and ever-lasting darkness has now covered me... and its sinking in. Great use of language, too, such as "Death is waking up to realize that / entire ephocs of life have / burned and blown away ." God, what a fresh take... reminds me, vaguely, of all the things I lost in college, mostly due to unending vats of booze and an endless supply of drugs. Which, might I add, led to overwhelming depression.

I would really work with the images in the first stanza. The images are workable, but they lack the incredible emotional impact of the second stanza. "Empty shell" has lost a lot of emotional impact due to a lot of use. But the idea of death in this stanza, which I took as emotional detachment and a lack of will to continue, is remarkable, and can certainly be built upon.

The style is great, and it really drew me along. You also have good shock value; the poem was powerful enough for me to see things in a new way and make me think about things from a new perspective. That's why I read poetry, and I will read this over and over. Just goddamn great.

[Heather Angelika Dooley]

By your latest work, I feel as though you & I might be mentally in likewise places because I am identifying with all of your writings so much. Like this...

"looking to mingle but far too empty
to put itself back on track."

This, however, is just amazing. Hear hear (!) is all I am able to think to say...

"the waves that crush
our succulent, malnourished shells like grapes,
leaving us juice-deprived and stuck forever
on the bottoms of dirty soles. "

[Jazlean]

your peoms are always deep, sometimes i think too deep for someone like me to understand, but your words are capitaving so even if your meanings are not always clear i cannot help but fall in love with your work, another well written piece.

[Rc R. Vagilidad]

It is great my friend, the premise it offers is wide as the open sea. Being dead (or totally losing possibilities) is so easy to get into our souls. It evades as if it will kill us in silent conniving events not realizing we could still fight back. This ideal in life is not worthy to put up in our rational minds for in could destroy our whole entity.

I think, you ended this through fighting aback amidst uncertainty. For silence, often minds us for an irrelevant tranquility that burns our soul to the hands of uncertainty.

�Silence, their silence,
is blown away like stray erasure marks,
leaving behind a clean slate and with it,
the chance to start anew.�-you fought like a warrior, unrestraining the grip of hopelessness, loneliness, and depressions!

Perhaps this sounds wholly the same to the totality of the aforementioned idea (this quote-in-quote paragraph is from my review to one of K.E.Krantz� poem which I found it similar to the theme you�ve given in your piece):

�The deflective thoughts of how you dealt loneliness and boredom perhaps held you from being active enough to see the outside world. Hopelessness is the waning of every human thought as to fear itself. We tend to loss our track to reality, and craving for new things to come amidst our depressions in our life. But going beyond our anxiety, we realize how our life should end immediately, because we loss that track. We didn�t look back, loss the possibilities which in turn to degradation of sane mind, irrational perception arises! We want an immediate ending but that�s only anticipation because we are still on the hands of consciousness, and that�s hard to defy!�

PS-Just my �psychological aspects� of reviews. Hope it coincides to the thought you�re proposing. Going to my faves again!!! whooo

[Valerie Jones]

The way you used words to create such a poignant description is very intense. Excellent piece.

"Silence, their silence,
is blown away like stray erasure marks,
leaving behind a clean slate and with it,
the chance to start anew."

That is wonderful.