Deceit

Another one "Live from Writers' Cafe," coming to you fresh from my keyboard! This is another from a DIFFERENT perspective...

Dark closets harbor my desires
Slinking hidden passages around my mind
Wandering drunkenly down the back hallway
Late at night, fumbling with the keys

Shushing myself I dropped my future
Along with the key to my hopes and dreams
Wants and needs lie scattered carelessly
Across the floor of this, my alcazar

You hear me coming, pangs of deceit
Already the trap sprung back on me
And I'd gladly chew my arm off
Rather than have to face you this way

How can I say my conscience roams?
Exploring new courts on which to play
No more engaging than tennis
Yet pleasant enough until the game is won

I'd invite you again if the answer was different
But it's so hard to retrace those steps
Missing scenes in a old familiar movie
How did I fall asleep and miss the plot?

Haven't I the right to seek pleasure denied me?
...I get so lost thinking where I've been
Is it my fault for asking or yours for your silence?
It's so awkward tripping through ambiguity

All things become a passing interest
Until I'm not sure where to put my faith anymore
I remember when once it hung on the mantle
Now it's broken and stuffed in a drawer...

Author's Note

This is very rough. Give me some comments! I need to know what you think!

Reviews

[s y e]

// Shushing myself I dropped my future
Along with the key to my hopes and dreams
Wants and needs lie scattered carelessly
Across the floor of this, my alcazar //

Wow, this is absolutely fantastic imagery, Rob - it's so vivid.

Deceit is a good topic to write on because it is something that happens daily to people everywhere. No one wants to be deceived by friends or family because it truly hurts and ruins them. This is so very raw, Rob and excellently written!!!

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

It is so nice when being raw can be an advantage in writing. I did write this while freshly inspired and even thought it is not really about ME, it is definitely inspired by true events. I am not sure if others have really figured out what I am talking about in some of my lines. I was daring to be a little more inscrutable than usual. For example, when I say, "Shushing myself I dropped my future" I am just summarizing that the act of dropping my keys was the moment I woke the wife upstairs I was cheating on, thus changing my future. Of course, I personally have never been married and this is not really about me. However, I know what it feels like to be that person who is marked by deceit. I have been on both sides of that feeling. I love that you can appreciate this imagery!

[Coyote Poetry]

I enjoyed the poem. I could feel the real thoughts and questions in the words.
"I remember when once it hung on the mantle
Now it's broken and stuffed in a drawer..."
The above lines hold true for the most of us. Sometime we don't land where we expected. Thank you for sharing the excellent poetry.
Coyote

[SpeedyHobbit Armstrong]

deceit is always a very good poem topic. I liked your witty summary. It was also a really cool point of view. Reminded me of this song House of Cards by Madina Lake

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

Thank you my hobbity friend!! I really think taking a unique point of view is a great tool in writing well. I listened to that Madina Lake song and I like it. I actually think that Muse would sound amazing covering it.

[SpeedyHobbit Armstrong]

Yes they would, I love Muse and all their music! So good!

[Traci]

This has a real sense of rawness to it, a deep sincerity in each word shared.

Shushing myself I dropped my future
Along with the key to my hopes and dreams
Wants and needs lie scattered carelessly
Across the floor of this, my alcazar...............Great imagery here!

Now it's broken and stuffed in a drawer...

Time heals all, even the broken heart as memories resurface from time to time.

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

In this case it is the raw feelings you are getting, even separate from the actual imagery. The images are not really from my life, but rather from an imagined life which my ex projected on me. I was trying to write from the point of view not of myself, but the person she THOUGHT I was...I do like that imagery too though! Thanks so much, love!

[LJW]

What I liked about this was the accesible language. You wrote about something that is personal to you ( and if it is not drawn from your own experience then that speaks to your writing skills) with the language and type of introspection a guilty drunk man would have. This is the kind of writing that speaks of me, so it speaks TO me.

Again, this thing (....) Do you know the correct usage? I do not.
alcazar. Who or what is this? I have to Google it and I will after I write this review. Not everyone will. So there are many who will read this piece and think, "alcazar, what is that"? Breaks the flow. I often will go back and instantly reread a stanza that contains an unknown to me word, hoping to garner its meaning from the words surrounding it. Now I'm REALLY thrown off. So I mention it to you just as a point to consider. I have a couple of favorite writers here who make me feel like the grade schooler at the high school dance with their smarty pants vocabulary( Ken Simms and W.k.k. Kortas) so it doesn't stop me from an overall appreciation of their writing. I just go into it knowing there's going to be some homework after. :-) Especially Ken Simms. He gives me a headache. :-)

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

As to alcazar, it was a kind of "castle" that I was trying to find the right word for. I meant it in the sense of "a Nan's home is his castle." I try never to use too big a word for the circumstance, but also never to shy away from using a highly specific word, where it says more than a more common word could. It is a delicate balance always. I never know what words everyone else will know. I have an unusually complex vocabulary (according to SATs and that sort of thing). I even had a good vocabulary as a kid. I never think that dumbing down my language is acceptable -just so that I can allow people not to learn new words. However, I try to keep words I have doubts others will know to about one per poem...If you notice, there normally is at least ONE. You gave me a good idea though. I could save my best vocabulary for instances when I WANT the reader to pause and reread!

Since you don't like rhyme, it is hard to explain why in some cases I feel the need to use an unusual word for the purpose of rhyming also. Ideally I would like to get to a place where I could use near rhymes with as much fluidity as some of my favorite poets. People like T.S. Eliot were able to place lines together in such a way that they flowed and felt structured but had no rhymes. I am jealous of this, being something I find quite hard. I either do or don't rhyme, but perhaps at some point I will be able to give my poems a feeling of structure while being opened to easy alteration in syllable counts and that natural pentameter that things have even when you don't mean for them to. Ultimately, I am trying to write LYRICS for the music I write on guitar. Ironically, I keep finding poetry is easier and comes out when I don't mean it to. Lyrics have that more relaxed style of rhymes and near rhymes and imperfect numbers of syllables which I am trying to work towards.

Also, thank you for saying it speaks to my writing skills. This is indeed NOT autobiographical. I have never had a drinking problem, not have I had an issue with cheating. What I do in my writing quite frequently is to break myself out of a rut by taking a drastically new perspective. Since I haven't ever been married, never cheated, and never had a drinking problem, I imagined what it would be like if I did. I mean, I have had circumstances in my life close enough to be able to fill in some blanks...

[LadyAnn68]

This is blatant honesty! It is your feelings of entrapment that are shown here when you are not ready to fend them off in momentary condition you are in. It is still seen as love an why it all happened. You are a love sick puppy that needs it returned! An you when you feel it, feel it HARD! That is why you are an expert!

Did you get a look at my second try at love content?

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

I did get a look at your poem, but let me look again...You may have changed it again. I thank you very much for calling me an expert!! I love that this has come across as honesty, because I suppose it clearly is. While the setting is not exactly reality, all the pieces I used are real things I have experienced. I just put them together in a novel way. It is kind of exciting to be able to see how I can create a scene that conveys the sense of pain I have felt before, but without being a real place I have been. It is like lucid dreaming...creating a new environment for my feelings to play out in. I guess I do feel my feelings the hard way often, which you have noticed. Thank you for your real groking of this!! Let me go search through your poems to make sure I have not missed what you done did.

[emmajoy]

I so appreciate the way this is laid before the reader, seems sincere and well considered without being slick or overly polished. There's heart here, there are feelings.. they sadly missing in so much writing.

'Is it my fault for asking or yours for your silence? ~ It's so awkward tripping through ambiguity'
Being lost in a situation, unclear of where it's been or where it's going, unsure, feeling a way through fog, maybe?

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

I appreciate you enjoying the rawness of this. It isn't quite my usual style, but thank you for witnessing the heart in it. I have been dipping into thoughts and ideas from other poems lately and I don't exactly know where some ideas come from, but I seem to be writing some negative sounding stuff, but I am doing it joyfully because I feel like I am finally getting to make several of these composite ideas into a working whole. These are like scenes I had tried to illustrate before but failed to, and so I am giving them a better try this time, and it may still be raw, but I think the heart is coming in where I really felt there was some meaning there to explore. Ideas ping pong around and then finally they land right in the sweet spot. It is such a relief when it happens.

The feeling through a fog is an autobiographical idea from real life, of course, but which I placed into this alternate setting. I am just getting at how it is to know you have spoiled something. To know it is over and yet the end has not actually been reached yet. It is kind of like the point between when you lose control of the car you are driving and the moment it hits the side of the road. You know it is too late to do anything now, and the rest is just left up to the Fates, God, or whathaveyou.

[Rachelle]

Curiosity and a sense of adventure, if not fulfilled, can take its toll on other aspects in life like relationships. An inability to nurture the fire ignited when everything was novel and fresh, however, cannot be put to blame. Choices we have and choices we make.

Excellent imagery captured of a treacherous heart!

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

Thanks so much, sweetbind!! You clearly really get where I am coming from here. I hope people don't assume it is me I am talking about, but I do obviously have some understanding of the situation. Your insightful review shows you clearly have gotten what I am talking about. Let's sit back and see if others get it!!

[The Representative]

Hi Robby, this is Thomas, from the UK, Wolverhampton.


From me, what you'll hear is that even though the meaning mostly escaped me - although that's just by and large because of me! - I liked the language.


"Shushing myself I dropped my future".....this line being an example.

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

I know Wolverhampton! I used to take the train through there all the time. I lived in Northampton for a good long while. As an odd anecdote, also my ex also had the last name of "Hampton" and when researched her genealogy and discovered her family were named that because they were from Wolverhampton.

Anyway, thank you very much for this review!! I wrote this last night and just decided to take a new perspective I have not written from before. If you re-read it then tell me if you can discover the meaning. It is there, though not something I normally would write about. I appreciate your seeing the pithiness of each line and your will to look further! Are you new on here? I should see if you have anything posted!

[The Representative]

Yes, I am new.

I don't actually think it's important, at all whether or not the meaning is discerned. For me it can be just enough to have in itself read the writers chosen language.

[Robert Tusitala O'Neill]

I like the way you put that! Each writer does have their own language, and I have found it is a wonderful thing to sample all the different dishes all these writers can prepare with their unique style and ingredients.