free misery

 

 

 

I am offering

for FREE to those

who are banging their

heads against the wall,

pining over hearache

or lost love, all my life

long, middle class misery.

 

All my days waiting for phone calls

that never came or knocks

on the door I pretended happened.

The shoulders I turned around

only to find myself looking back

at me, bending at the waist

an old man clinging obstinately

to old conversative ideas about

jumping over brooms, even

with the blood of disappointment

pooling in my legs.

 

And please accept the bullshit

ornaments I have kept and collected

in a wooden box that in another life

I will fashion a string instrument out of.

The Trojan condoms from 87 when someone

was afraid of me and I ran around

the evergreens pricking my testicles

with forest thorns in the city until

something canescent coated the floor

of sugar.

 

Please take it all from me.

I have tomorrows dreams to

remember.

Reviews

[SHEEMA HUQ]

I felt quite amused, particularly by your finicky display of language and the meanings and counter-meanings of your most fruitful imaginative language, marvellous Dana

[Corset]

hear ye hear ye, broom jumping is for witches only :P jk..I understand completely, white picket fences, middle class roses by the steps, the American dream, have a house, some land, make a home die in love, all the while whispering to the stars your gratefulness, sounds pleasant enough, harmless enough...yeah. I'll take that box :) Thanks

[Ees]

In the first stanza: "or lost love, all my life
long, middle class misery." I think that you might want to consider taking the "my" out of that line to make it make more sense with the rest of what you have written there. Or perhaps it should be "your". I don't know, just something for you to look over and think about.

Blood of disappointment pooling on your legs gives a very disturbing image, especially after you said you saw yourself, and old man bending... I can't help but see pooling blood on the legs as menstrual...


It is an interesting poem. I feel like I will have to read it again tomorrow and the day after and maybe even the day after that to really get a grasp on what you have written. But I like and I think that it is really, really well written! Great job!

[Tree]

Giving it away, letting it go. Let me know if this worked for you, my friend. I suspect I could fill a box or two myself. But maybe if we write enough poems and stories we can return to equilibrium, start over. I don't know if it was intended but I found this poem to be a hopeful one. It felt good, the ending.

Well done, Dana