Moth Dance

​Moth Dance

Because a closet is as good a place as any to start a poem Let's pick the story up there To the left of the levi's button fly jeans Behind the bugle boy khakis Somewhere between the member's only jacket and the parachute pants was a poster of the new kids on the block torn from the pages of my friend ellen's tiger beat David found it while he was foraging for playboys He tore it up Claiming no brother of his was going to listen to those whiney faggots This from the wrestling fan who dry humped me and his friends when he was feeling frisky

Maybe that's not a great place to start a poem But like you can't say an antique rocking chair is one hundred and fifty years old because it had to have spent a century or so as a tree which grew from a seed dropped from the mouth of a sparrow when the shadow of a hawk caught his eye I don't know where this poem begins

I have never been an activist in victim's clothing Hate preaching bleach that purifies others' ears while it burns my throat I grew so tired of people telling me that my heart was in the right place that i had it moved next to my liver so it could pump blood and bile simultaneously

I never got used to you kissing me like i was the exhaust pipe on an idling car Telling me i was the most beautiful imaginary friend you'd ever kept in your closet Wyatt i never felt so ugly

I'm sorry i'm so inept at apologies I'm so focused on quality over quantity that i forget to let people know that i'm sorry is my personal mantra If you listen (i'm sorry) you can hear it in the (i'm sorry) grace notes of silence between each (i'm sorry) breath

Wyatt i'm sorry i used the cement in our relationship to build a bombshelter strong enough to survive our love while you were developing a passion for pesticide ingestion Carving cueniform into arteries Dabbing bleach behind one ear Ammonia behind the other

It was your scent that drew me to you The familiar pheremones of fear Though you were speaking braille to my american sign language fluent ears I understood you But i feared our bond like the antique rocking chair would break I didn't want us to be kindling More faggots on the flame I didn't want to see our future as smoke that would someday condense bringing rain to water someone else's seed Rather than us i wanted to break the cycle But i didn't know where (i'm sorry) to begin

The first person you came out to disowned you Mother may i nayed your sexuality Chose church over family and didn't speak your name until you were nothing more than an organ donor beneath tire treads
Current Mood:  blank
Current Music: talking with grammarsquirrel on the phone
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Mon, Jan. 5th, 2004 12:13 pm (UTC)
elph8Like the second installment. Great performance opportunities. Though for reading purposes, I'd recommend line breaks. And cut the last line--it's too much. Or maybe put somewhere else in the poem. "...tire treads" is a much cooler line to (I'm sorry) end on.

I don't usually read other people's LJ poems, but since I get pissy when people don't read mine, I figured I should be karmically proactive.
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Mon, Jan. 5th, 2004 12:19 pm (UTC)
akamuu: I Shall Return the KarmaAlso, good call on the end line.
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Mon, Jan. 5th, 2004 01:14 pm (UTC)
kattullusinstead of 'start a poem' simply say 'start' or 'begin'. Breaks the rhythm

second verse is weak and pointless, drop it.

just 'sign language', 'american sign language' too long, impedes the flow.

Substitute 'organ donor' for something else. No suggestions, but it's somewhat too witty.
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Mon, Jan. 5th, 2004 01:30 pm (UTC)
kattullusoops... those were just notes that I was going to elaborate on, but I hit post without thinking.

But looking at it, that's all I really had to say about specific words. It's not all that good. I don't really get any feeling for the character, which, for a character poem, is rather deadly. I'm not saying it doesn't have promise, but that it's very raw, it needs a lot of work. Perhaps give it a rather simple structure to hang the language on. I'm sure you can work on it.

I'm sorry for my tepid reaction, and I hope you don't fly over to skin me in my sleep.
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Mon, Jan. 5th, 2004 01:58 pm (UTC)
akamuu: There shall be no skinningIt's a rough draft of a slam poem. It's the first just-for-slam poem I've written since Bad Sodomy. It's not something you're likely to ever see in one of my books, I won't be submitting it anywhere, I may not even perform it more than a couple of times. The early version (which was suckier) got a good response. Especially the second stanza, oddly enough.

I'll take it around to The Lizard and maybe the Cantab, and if it looks like it's worth editing, I will, otherwise I'll shelve it until I'm inspired to fix it or bury it.

Now to get my passport and a sharp kni... *innocent grin*