All grown up and nowhere to go

How to make friends and influence people

In dark, unguarded moments
I sense the potent rush of torments past,
a flash of bloated melodrama
cavalcades of censors seething,
thrusting manners down my throat
to throttle back my breathing.

I miss those rants and rages;
no euphemisms, paraphrases
nothing short of all-out war
on every narrow mind that went before,
and culture queens that wiped the floor
with bile and spleen recited
from my febrile screen.

My ego rocked, the good times rolled
I pawned my suicidal soul
for spews of swallowed pride
that taunted me until I cried black tears,
those drips of anguish spiked with pain
that left me wet between the ears
and primed for squirting poetry again.

An arbitrary line
break here
a bold ellipsis there...
parentheses to capture
(life's chemical catastophes, love's digest of despair)
and every one a killer
sensibilities dispatched without a care,
a world of lust and blood and gore
exploding into smithereens of rapture.

White nights spent, the gloom to follow
days that promised no tomorrow,
yet another crisis of identity
enshrined within the sanctity of lowercase
and stanzas sprawling in disgrace,
a calling to the quest to take
the high moral ground
to an all-time low,
and, so they told me, way to go.

But that was way back yesterday
when fire and ice wrought disarray,
and surely there are more or less
important matters to address?

The abstracts, the absurdities,
the myriad of mysteries
all honoured in scenarios
of finely measured ebbs and flows.

Masterpieces mired in metrics
rhythms steeped in antiseptics,
tasteful rhymes to understress
the subtle flavours of finesse.

The mighty wry supplanting corn;
a gape of awe - or did I yawn?

What is it that satisfies poets in need?
Well let's face it - we writers are hung up on greed
so, the best of both worlds - well, that's no big surprise;
and the worst? We get stuffed with a fat compromise.

Still, I can't deny these insidious cravings
or wave goodbye
to that literary terrorist
alive and squealing
for cathartic self-indulgence,
an egocentric vehemence
that sleeps within my dreams
of splashing through streams of vitriol,
to rejoice at the death of protocol
in the gold light of day
at the end of a screw-you-all rainbow.

Comments

Leanne Hanson -

I think that rainbow is following me around... I sense a certain amount of kindred spiritness here, correct me if I'm wrong (but you obviously won't have to, because I'm not). I particularly love S4. Something pathetic in the offing?

Leanne Hanson -

Oh, and bloody hell where have you been? And don't go there again. It's (pitifully) not the same without you...

Laura doom -

Unexpected shut down. Why? Not that I'm unstable or anything, oh yes, no. Moving on...

Yes - it was meant to be a double devil's advocate job, squared off with a regressive wail of frustration. I did post it at the otherplace.org, but had the vague impression that I'd squirted on a few pseudo-Gucci shoes.

I spent an inordinately extended period in one wilderness, then another. Recovery and rehabilitation? Didn't really work out that way, but that was then and this is now, in my poetic second home; hopefully, assuming I don't spontaneously combust. I've been reading, remotely, some of your stuff Leanne. In short, I've missed both you and your poetry, and others, and the potential of this place. Drama, drama all around, and not a prod to think :>

Leanne Hanson -

Well, it's been much less dramatic since you've been hiatusing (it's a word now, shut it) -- take that as you will. And with very little to feed off, there's been much less writing so you may consider yourself fertiliser. We don't wear shoes here, as you know -- can't get much of a grip on the trees -- so squirt to your little heart's content. I might even be inspired to write something suitably squirty myself. Stranger things have happened.

Laura doom -

How indescribably good does it feel to be wanted? Obviously I can't say, but I'll remember that on my next descent into self-deprecating lamentation - really, how squirty is that? :>

U668857 -

alive and squealing
for cathartic self-indulgence,
an egocentric vehemence
that sleeps within my dreams

... some serious self-appraisal going on here...this is a stark counterpoint to the usual self-justification of poetry and poets ... it touches on the whole issue of how/where the all-consuming "I" sits within poetry per se...Rgds.,Alan

Laura doom -

Hi Alan - yeh, that's a valid observation, and accurately reflects an essential element of this piece. However, it has to be acknowledged that poetry is essentially fiction, and that the 'I' in any poem can be employed as a virtual first person narrator if the subject matter is better accommodated that way. Admittedly, everything that's written reflects the characteristics, attitudes and/or experiences of the writer, whether implicitly or explicitly - direct quoting & even plagiarism reveals something about the writer, however subjectively it's construed :>
In this case, I did draw substantially on personal experience, although the intention was to differentiate between the slices and the filling (applied unattributed, until the anticlimactic yawn

Sounds plausible, almost grown up - and nowhere to go besides pulp fiction...

Thanks for reading & commenting Alan - obviously I relish any opportunity to squirt a response...

Sinnaminsun -

Today's the first day I've read your poetry. I like how you incorporate rhyme without it sounding forced....I'll need to read more of your stuff:)

Laura doom -

That could be seriously detrimental to your health Sin.

Yeh, finding words that rhyme is relatively easy; having them sound natural, unforced invariably involves some work. The same can be said for rhythm...and there's the proof -- I've just said it How frustrating is that? Having to work at producing something natural? I guess that's one of the ideas this piece of mind is attempting to address.

Thanks Sin