Serpentine

I believe this poem was inspired by a dream. In any event, it was written four or five years ago, inspired, as will become abundantly clear to you, by a street lamp.

I backed away from the pallid hum of the lamp light;

I knew what it could do to me.

 

Where I was standing, the black road bled

into the thick shadows of the faceless buildings,

and I was stripped of the responsibility

for my form.

 

Into the city air, thick, stale, cold

I evaporated slowly, becoming less and less me.

 

Where I was standing, form mattered

about as much as the small fragment of dislodged asphalt

the breeze from the river was ushering, like a crossing guard,

into the shivering wash of yellow light upon the road, and back out again.

 

I have entered the world of fragments. Fragments of men paying fragments of women for only fragments of what they need.

 

Where I was standing, the compliant chunk of asphalt

called home from the lamplight to the dark

seemed more fascinating than anything I was doing:

after all, I noticed it, but it did not seem notice me.

 

I moved up the street, past neon and someone's daughters,

from shadow to shadow in a slow and cautious serpentine.

The space between the shadows is my favorite; it’s coldest there, darkest there.

Time stops there, doesn’t even bother to exist there, knows it’s not welcome there.

It is safest there, if shapelessness is safety, but most dangerous too;

they are as shapeless as I am, as large and as powerful as I am.

 

I remember what my father taught me so long ago, that he who stands amongst the shadows, commands them. And so I shout “I see you!” and give shape to the shadows.

 

They are unhappy with my revocation of their anonymity,

and I do not blame them; spending as much time as they have in this place makes even the faintest flash of light exceedingly unwelcome.

They do not like the responsibility for their shapes, their forms, their actions.

 

They want me gone; they want to carve me out of their darkness.

I am shoved, punched, kicked into the light and shocked by what I see.

 

Where I stand, the light moves sluggishly like a million gorged mosquitoes.

They expand and contract grotesquely in the darkness, daring me to emerge from the refuge that they, themselves, provided.

I recognize the shoes and the pale legs that sprout from them as my own.

 

I march home, feeling vaguely and inexplicably victorious, making certain to stick to the fragile glow of the lamps.

Reviews

[Rebecca]

needs work. doesn't flow as well as it could. has strong diction. go deeper into metaphorically discussing the city air. feels like a stream of consciousness type of piece and could be prose-poetry. too dark, it needs some light. you can say the same thing in a different way

[j.a. mills]

Thank you for your review. It is indeed a sort of edited stream of consciousness; too structured for prose-poetry. Some of the forms I put in got messed up when I uploaded it, I'll have to see about fixing that. I didn't want to give too much about the setting, it's not nearly as important as the characters that dwell in it. As for the darkness, as a poem that refers several times to darkness itself, I figured it made sense to keep things a bit shrouded and ominous. I think you're right about that in the end though. I need to give my character a light to walk towards, a foil to the darkness he was fighting. Ultimately, as an early musing about nyctophobia, I think it came out fairly well. Thanks again for your review, I hope you read some of my other pieces if you weren't a fan of this one!

[Rebecca]

okay I will. mine is stream of conciousness too check it out