Concupiscence - Shakespeare's Monkeys

concupiscence

The lavender garden is sharp dry sticks. The half withered lilac bush hangs on like a stroke victim, small white flowers facing away from its dead side. In front, an entire clump of golden ground cover, eaten alive. The herbivores moving on to tasty nettle flowers and deep blue hostas.

The thistles are thriving. Feeding birds all winter, has afforded me this reward.

I sit under my willow’s weeping, and look to its stunted branches for emotions appropriate for the dead and dying. Are they waiting under heavy clay soil to emerge with cicadas? Will I recall my love in the arrival of their ravenous droning?

Perhaps.

All dead, or will die. From neglect, my breakdown, or passions' burial, in the end, all will feed the soil.

But my today is not for poetry.

Today I stand in thistles. Last summer, I brushed past lavender for the perfumed caress it left. I regard the desiccated bed before the return to slumber.

Leanne -

"But today is not for poetry"... a sad line. Be careful of your passives, like "appearing to have had a stroke" -- even the last line could be slightly more active, although it's not an energetic kind of thought.

Now. Metaphorically this is intense -- at face value it's almost self-pitying (though not in a teenage whiney way), but in conjunction with the title it's exceptional. You extend the nature of man to commit sin into the natural world (is it a sin not to be bountiful?) -- I can't help noticing that we see things in a more glorious light when we're happy (such a silly word but the only one that really does it), yet when we descend into despair (or sin, perhaps) we tend to highlight the death, decay, misery around us. Is it cause and effect? Having forgotten the earth, does it die from our disregard just as much as from our active destruction? How closely are we tied to the natural world? Is it paying for our sins? Or is its decay contributing to increasing sinfulness in mankind? Are we parasites or are we in a symbiosis?

Or are we just pathetic little creatures who don't even deserve a patch of lavender?

Callooh -

Leanne:

I was doing well till the mention of not deserving my lavender patch

I AM teenage whiny right now, the world is not behaving as it should and it is making me whiny.... sniffle.

Funny though, I've been listening to Buddhist podcasts on my ipod and the last was by an Australian woman about external forces having nothing to do with our internal happiness (obviously had NOT seen my dead lavender). Perfectly logical, simply change your how your mind thinks. course that would be the most bloody difficult thing to do!

The other day I saw clear cutting of trees for a new "McMansion", I almost threw up (wrote about it on the other site). In the end I think we'll just stupid ourselves into extinction and the earth will carry on happily with out us. The incredible arrogance of man that we somehow should carry more importance than any other being on this planet is staggering.

Oh, and thanks for the passives point, I tend to do that sometimes - will address (passively of course)

Alcuin of York -
Cal,
I expect your McMansionites will pride themselves over their donations to some environmental fund. Part of the American mindset.
The write is, I'm certain, sincere, but it is not particularly tight. You might consider editting the language thoroughly;
or you might prefer wisdom and just move on.
Alcuin

Callooh -

Alcuin of York:

Not being American, this mindset takes getting used to...

You've given me something to think about, it was more of a journal style piece, but perhaps it's not working as that. I will stare at it fiercely and decide what to do.

thx! Ruth

Limeymcfrog -
This poem made me think of a G.M. Hopkins poem that is also superficially about nature

it ends:
"it's the blight that man was born for
It is Margaret you mourn for"

Gardens and forests really do make fantastic vistas for inner joy or depression.

I think the third stanza is incredible. The image of the speaker hidden under the leaves of the willow and seeking answers from the ground and then the cicada image. Cicadas that burrow and live under the ground giving the reader a small hint of death and suicide imagery. And the sound of cicadas as a sound of mourning.... it's really an incredible stanza top to bottom.

Stanzas one and three are by far the best, any changes you make their should be superficial if any.

Stanza 5 strikes me as emotionally honest, but bereft of the strong imagery present to this point. If there could be an expression of guilt through an observation or action of the speaker it would carry a heavier emotional payload. All in all this stanza is the only place where you "tell" us instead of "showing" us.

I like stanza seven but I think your diction gets a little to formal and syllabic at the end. "re-immersion in barren slumber" is to busy in its wording for me. maybe just a simpler expression for one of those ideas would free it up.

Just some musings. Really a fantastic poem.

Callooh -

Limeymcfrog:

LOVE Hopkins ("Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying "What I do is me: for that I came.") aahhhh....

I use nature quite a bit as a foil, a muse, a metaphor, a whatever - handy thing those trees, those birds and them bees...

right, MY poem... thanks very much, you're spot on - those two stanzas have been sticking points for me too. reworded them a couple times, and will reword again. I appreciate you being specific, that helps a lot.

thanks very much for reviewing it, I appreciate it!