The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

Notes from Underground

Motes crushed invisible gather
where least expected or wanted,
you cough, you wheeze, you freeze
lungs shut against dark memories.

Nature insists.

Your living room
feigns dusk even while brightest blue
and birdsong press the walls of the house,
you hunker before blazing fire
within walls washed warm summer.
Death means nothing to the buried,
life an idea traded for the ticking
cliché given for lifetime surrendered.

Still, we talk as if your face
could ring a bell beyond the doors,
as if the rasps and whispers
could move the stone from a tomb,
as if.

Notes from Underground

Motes crushed invisible gather
where least expected or wanted,
you cough, you wheeze, you freeze
lungs shut against dark memories.

Title made me think of Dostoevsky. I read that N. being ambushed by the past. Still breathing in that past despite all the mechanics of resistance. Alternatively, in the current climate, I thought of long term COVID.

Nature insists.

Your living room
feigns dusk even while brightest blue
and birdsong press the walls of the house,
you hunker before blazing fire
within walls washed warm summer.
Death means nothing to the buried,
life an idea traded for the ticking
cliché given for lifetime surrendered.

Still, we talk as if your face
could ring a bell beyond the doors,
as if the rasps and whispers
could move the stone from a tomb,
as if.


Like the death line, despite the gloom. I guess, from an existential viewpoint, that it is the inner landscape that defines.The 'we' got me to domestic distances. Locked in, lockdown, locked out from living life.

best

Phil

Gloomy stuff but interesting. The writing has a sort of overall staccato texture which works in the context but perhaps stumbles a bit here:

you hunker before blazing fire
within walls washed warm summer.    

I'm also not sure about the definite/indefinite article aspects around stone and tomb but I did like the ending flourish. 

Hi Dave,

Untitled, or Notes from Underground?  I like the latter better. 
The poem is about a man overcome with dark memories, cocooned in his house, like a coffin -- already dead - functionally dead.
I initially misread/misunderstood "underground" as the underground  -- survival refuge for radical politicos and radical political movements.  Without the 'the', I understand it to be literal - under ground - coffin-esque.  His house is functionally a coffin.

S.3 -- line endings.  I know line ending choices seem to fall somewhere between super-subjective and arbitrary.  Still, and for what it's worth,  the first couple lines suggested a different set of breaks.  Consider breaking the first line between 'dusk' and 'even', deleting the word 'brightest' [let me know if you want to hear my rationale], and break the second line between 'birdsong' and 'press'.  The stanza would open like this:

Your living room feigns dusk
even while blue and birdsong
press the walls. . . . . 

S.3 L.7 -- first word "life" -- my mind sometimes reads that word to be "like", which works well, but drastically changes the import.  I am just checking that it is not a typo.  What follows is powerful.

This brings me to the last line, which is what I most want to discuss.  4-5 years ago I read a Joan Kane poem which ended with the identical last line.  I thought it powerful, unexpected, challenging, and almost like a concluding aside from an actor to his audience.  All of these things.  At once.  It has never left me, and I thought some day I might find the right poem to use it or something like it.  

Bloody hell -- you've don't that! The Narrator is reconciled to but not accepting of the fact of the MC's terminal reclusivity, in tacit pretense with him/her, yes, but still quietly aghast at the pretense.  

At least, that's what I get.  

Challenging poem on several levels.  

Thanks Dave.

Cheers.

T

A friend trying/hoping, in vein. It's all rather dark and gloomy; I like that.
And like these lines:
life an idea traded for the ticking
cliché given for lifetime surrendered.
Maybe a comma after 'life'? Maybe 'a lifetime'?
Anywho, I enjoyed the read.

Thank you for all the comments. Much appreciated and all pertinent.

Dave

Your living room
feigns dusk even while brightest blue
and birdsong press the walls of the house,
you hunker before blazing fire
within walls washed warm summer.
Death means nothing to the buried,
life an idea traded for the ticking
cliché given for lifetime surrendered.

I'm not certain if this:

Notes from Underground

is meant to be a title or an opening line. I read somewhere in these many TTB comments that "Untitled" means the writer is lazy or doesn't care enough about the piece to even assign a title to it. In the case of this poem, I think "untitled" is a perfect title. Whoever is being addressed has rejected his or her own being in the world. Because you are in Germany, I'll write it like a translation of Martin Heidegger's writings--being-in-the-world, as in Being-and-nothingness. The rejection of warmth and sunshine and birdsong Pressing the walls--(what an image!) This is a chilling account of the living dead engaged only in hopeless dialog with one who is actually dead and buried. Wonderful write Dave.

Hi Dave,

How about using "Nature insists" as the title, removing everything before it and putting the "Your living room...warm" summer section (in past tense) in the middle? Maybe also remove teh last "as if"? See below for clarity.

Hope it helps,

Trev


Nature insists

Death means nothing to the buried,
life an idea traded for the ticking
cliché given for lifetime surrendered.

Your living room
feign[ed] dusk even while brightest blue
and birdsong press[ed] the walls of the house[;]
you hunker[ed] before [a] blazing fire
within walls washed [by a] warm summer.

Still, we talk as if your face
could ring a bell beyond the doors,
as if the rasps and whispers
could move the stone from a tomb.

Thank you for all your comments which have enriched this poem way beyond the quality it actually has/had. Thank you Linda for such in depth and intelligent commentary and Trevor for a close and well thought through edit that i can fully go with without hesitation though i will certainly consider the edit of the last 'as if'.
Dave

An interesting poem and set of comments. I get the feel that you are already re-drafting it, so will reserve any comments for the re-appearance of the poem. I like the first stanza and I like the rest of the poem, but i can't see a necessary connection between them. I take 'Notes... ' as a title.