With my heels to the brick, I am hanging out the window.
There is light without heat.
In the bedroom I am drenched in wine.
There is heat without light.
I pass myself by in the hallway;
Blood rushing to a musty head, thousands of strings running down to cold feet
I sing of barley and basil to the couches and armchairs
yellowed by pollen from the ever-open windows,
dust dancing in lemon illumination.
There is light without heat.
In the bedroom I am drenched in wine.
We are sucking electric crystals up to our brains,
sluggishly swigging from thin necks of thick green glass;
and we are smiling at each other’s soft faces, slowly becoming fragmented,
the pads of our finger tips adorned with grain and powder.
There is heat without light.
I pass myself by in the hallway;
my right hand
does not know my left.
Cool stuff. I like how you used imagery here, particularly in lines 4 and 7. I also like how you showed instead of told. This is one of the most important things to do in poetry, and also often one of the most difficult. I think this is particularly well done in the third strophe.
ReplyDeleteAs for constructive criticism I'd recommend reading it through aloud a couple of times to see how it flows rhythmically and to work on the punctuation after doing this. Also there's a tense change in the second line, but that's an easy fix.
As for recommendations I'd recommend that you read some H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). She was a modernist and an imagist, and possibly the greatest female poet of all time (in my opinion at least). Here's one to get you started:
At Baia
by H. D.
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"
or
"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."