Firmament - Shakespeare's Monkeys

firmament

draft

if every sky were this blue
the world would weep
and drown a warm salty death

oh, yes

if every sky
were so very very

the ocean’s vast reflection
back to heaven
would jail hope until
a slivered moon might
slice away these such petty little eternities

if every sky
were so Montana-big
and bald and desperate

oh no,

no hope could survive that
dry tearless suffering of sun.
the world would hang
an arid tearless
voiceless silent pendulum
of perfect mechanical doom.

each body, revolving around a pointless
point in a spacious void of vapid space,

each neck, snapped
and tender.

if every sky
were this
so boundless blue

the world would dream
of periwinkle
on the fermented froth of grief
massaging the rocky coast.

oh tears,
this is sunshine, again

oh despair,
swim with me in coitus
let us spend our life
and dream
the dream of snails

soft trails, death in salt
and a long happy rotting
into cool fresh loam.

only if
the sky
stays

so very
very

blue.

Derma Kaput -
Did you forget a 'blue' after the first "very, very" (line 6)? If not, I think you need something there. Nice use of metaphor in this poem. Are you melancholy today? 20th anniversary of your grandmother's death? If so, I like the way you're turning this into poetry that doesn't just express your feelings, but rather uses a few tools to create poems that exist as events in their own right. Further, in both these poems, you have a tight concept of structure that really works well to provide the bones on which you're layering the meat. Both poems seem to need work, but really have what it takes to accomplish something special. I hope you keep working on them.

Anstey -
Interestingly, I don't feel as melancholy this year as usual. I've struggled for years to write about this, but honestly I don't generally like writing when I'm all emotional. I like to write from a calm quiet place and carefully build the emotions into the poem. So, to me this whole subject is melancholy, so, i have been working it that way. But i'm really pretty happy today.

Derma Kaput -
I know how you feel. I've got an old wooden trunk full of my mom's most personal belongings (including a pony tail from when she finally chose to cut her hair short). I keep thinking of it as a chest full of poems just waiting to happen. As it is though, I'm still not up to taking a shot at it. Her birthday is on the 26th of this month and I'm already getting choked up, missing her terribly. (I only knew her for 6 years!) I don't care to write poetry in that state either, but I think it could be good if I did. Honest feeling can be turned into well-crafted poetry, even if the actual feelings are buried somewhere deep within the poem. For instance, in the Phillis poem, the corny stanza keeps resonating with me because it's so close in time to the actual death (1st anniversary?) and it makes me think of the personal struggle to engage in laugher at the same time as you undergo private mourning. All good stuff to work with, if not to experience.

Derma Kaput -
Oops. My bad. The corny stanza was years past the event. I guess it resonates out of context for me. Must have been all that corn. And why do I write about that poem in the comments for this poem? I think I'm going to go back to bed and try to start this day over from scratch.

Anstey -
They're related.

it's all good.