Poem

[Mark]

.





Ineffable 

An old man, blank with cancer and newsprint eyes
walks along a dockside on a Sunday afternoon.
Seagulls wheeling,   
a distant foghorn mourns across the water.
His knots of random, thoughts of Rome,
ghost memories of things forgotten,
are as letters lost upon the wind -

In tandem with swift cloud-shadows
hop-fleeting-across-yellow-wheatfields,
wooden poles advance to wired horizons.
A skyfall woman, naked,
luminous in the long twilight
draped stark across basalt slabs,
speaks in copper jacketed vibrations.

An oracle innocent of conspiracy
and a warrior keyed with intention
sail into the silver mouth of the moon.
Splashed with curiosity, painted with fire,
asking of gold and laws, of zodiacal journeys,
sacred battlements, and silhouettes of union
flashed against the increments of eternity. 


 

[Tim J Brennan]

.IneffableAn old man, blank with cancer and newsprint eyeswalks along a dockside on a Sunday afternoon.
Seagulls wheeling,   a distant foghorn mourns across the water. His knots of random, thoughts of Rome, ghost memories of things forgotten,
are as letters lost upon the wind -

In tandem with swift cloud-shadows hop-fleeting-across-yellow-wheatfields,
wooden poles advance to wired horizons. A skyfall woman, naked, luminous in the long twilight draped stark across basalt slabs,
speaks in copper jacketed vibrations.

An oracle innocent of conspiracy and a warrior keyed with intention
sail into the silver mouth of the moon.Splashed with curiosity, painted with fire,asking of gold and laws, of zodiacal journeys,sacred battlements, and silhouettes of union
flashed against the increments of eternity.

Not quite sold w/the equality of "cancer" and "newsprint eyes"...although parallelism is there later w/"...in tandem"  But maybe that's my point...trying to decide what "two" things are in tandem.  

I have foghorns (ocean) & wheat fields also, not two things that are generally thought of as partners.  Later still I get a "innocent" and a "warrior" working together.

Things I like:  skyfall woman, wheeling, zodiacal journeys.  These are all wonderful details / images that help me along and put me into your world.

These are just thoughts I'm having as I am thinking after a first read. I will return later... 

[Colm Roe]

Love S1.
S2. Maybe something like 'wooden poles wired to distant horizons'. 
What is your interp of 'skyfall'?
There's a lot going on in this S.
'copper jacketed vibrations', munitions? I'm reading her sending, not receiving the bullets? 
OK, I'm possibly reading it wrong...
I feel an honest link between the three stanzas, but would like a better title to localise them.
Either way it's a fab read.

[Marc Gilbert]

Flat our love the last stanza. I'd know it was yours if you posted it anonymously and I mean that in the best way.

I think S1 could use some trimming, just not sure where. Maybe lose "are as" from the last line.

I like how the pacing gives me time to digest the density of some of these lines.

good stuff.

[Mark]

Thanks to all for comments on this piece.

[Janet]

The lead-in is impressive, as is much of the imagery. I am however, frustrated at how much S2 and S3 are inaccessible to me. Perhaps I'm trying to find the old man of S1 again. I want to know how he relates to everything. Painted with fire is memorable- lovely image.

[Mark]

Apologies for my slow response to comments. Janet, this is another experimental piece written in a loose SOC kind of way so it doesn't have an impeccable story-line but I do feel there's enough cohesion to hold it together.
The old man is burned out, sick, his memory is faulty but he is reminiscing nonetheless. Perhaps if I'd used the device of an ellipsis at the end of S1 to introduce S2 and 3, it might have been clearer that these are significant memories of seminal events, coloured by his brain fog into something more dramatic than they are which in turn becomes my poetic-drama device. So in S2, it's just a low-tech phone call but a life-changing one, Drab, skyfall woman is someone of mysterious origins, perhaps a little supernatural, a fallen angel maybe or an afterlife communication. S3 gets more delusional, the memory becoming like a fantasy quest with another woman, seeking after truth etc and putting their perhaps union into context - just a quick blip on the radar of forever.
Marc, any excess words are due to line length tailoring... Tim J, tandem is indicated clearly enough in the syntax - clouds and poles moving toward a horizon, there is no connection between the foghorn and wheat-fields, two different stanzas, different scenes etc and an innocent is not the subject, it is an adjective of oracle although I don't see why that couldn't work equally well. I hope that addresses all points raised. 

To me, the piece feels a little overwrought with archetypes and exotic imagery but hey there it is.  This an evolving piece with political undertones. The first stanza is actually the last stanza in another piece.  here:  
http://mywriterscircle.com/index.php?topic=60957.0  
where the last S was a departure in style from the rest of that poem that i wanted to develop further. Hence the experiment.

[indar]

Hi Mark,

I wrote quite a long response to this poem---what happened to it? I commented that I agree with Marc's comment that I'd know this was yours anywhere--right up to your control of the shape of the poem. I will come back to write more later