Tonight,
the heavy sky
could no longer hold
the smoky mist
that drifted
along the hedgerow,
and low darkness broke
in veins of blue
that branched into
the lung-black cloud.
Tonight,
the inky trees ran down
through the watery hill
and reached the ground
beneath my feet.
Tonight,
the time had come
to stop looking,
to lay aside the burden
of a world
no one wished to see
or know,
and head for home
in the familiar cold.
About Me
- Straw Dog
- Some would call me eccentric (for reasons I can't fathom) and I am a sinestral ('left-handed' for those of you who aren't aware what that means).
4 comments:
:)
just by mistake I managed to
log in ... I am hopeless ...
well so now I forgot what I thought of, "Low darkness" is a bit too difficult in English to get the tiny differences in the words and expressions.
I understand the "clinical" meaning of every word, in one of what went to cyberspace I believe I wrote that your poems made me want to learn English better. It was >20 years since I had that thought a lot ....
Well I like this poem and it is so much "vision" that I have a hard time following and it might not do with language barrier , can be hard due to that I am tired :) .
it is sad and I am a bit amused since I can't figure out if the "stop looking" means to forget or to accept this world that noone wishes to see or know :)... I can't make up which and then also is this person going to the "usual" home and give up, or is the person going the new "home" and that perhaps has to do with the world noone wants to see of know ?..
I am not in the habit of trying to figure what the writer might want, I please myself with my own imagination.. but you have written a bit like I would write and now I laugh ... since I love to almost say yes and no and the same time Oh but I mean I like when it can be black but it is turned into white, but I am not trying to be clever or "against" I don't know why I am like that.. I do understand it has to with somekind of fright in me for never having met anyone who "thinks" of a bit heavier stuff the way I do, most people are so "geez how much probs do you have ?" and I don't mind, I well understand we are so different in the small details in us, but that's much where our personalies are. (and to be ambiguous(sp?) allows myself to not feel so lonely with my kind of deepishness, and I don't feel bad about thinking hte way I do I just feel alone with a part of myself now and often l.o.l to be honest ) well not many read here anyway so I might aswell let it stay.
"tonight
the inky threes ran down ...
..... feet."
is that the things that were believed to be true like trees that stands tall... but turned into water dissolved ... like an illusion that is so true untill we find out it wasn't true ? Well my own interpretation in that case is that the world noone wish to see or know , the home is not the "old" home then .
now I've read some from so called intellectuals and most of them are preaching that we all are so lost and alone with our "inner" but I don't believe so at all, I should have put it this way earlier: I would like to be with someone who thinks a bit like me, because I recognize nothing of the being an island in my mind like so many intellectuals whine about :) and dear Remus you can clearly understand why I can relate with yes and no at the same time, easy in the same sentence too, and to be even more honest I discovered this not so long ago about myself. . . . . . but I think it is because I am afraid of real commitments .....
What I've written was not at all what I meant to write, but I am really looking for ways to change myself I need that so I find my new ways in stuff like yours written and being tired I easily open the gates for my subconcious, and it also took so long for me to understand how I am ...
-------
so one more thing on your beautifull poem:
well the rain was coming it had to be so to clean the old "beliefs" and they ran down through the watery hill 'cos it was time to accept a world of joy and just live it :)..
blahblah
as you hopefully understand that I just enjoy using my imagination just as it comes, and that I am a very happy person too. and I in no way expect you to comment, I am a bit crazy too I enjoy writing only for the sole joy of it.
blahblahblahblah
If I change my mind on the poem I will write it ..
Helena
That's an interesting interpretation.
I think it's important to say I truly believe however the reader interprets the poem is the proper interpretation. It's fashionable in poetry at the moment to be more 'concrete' and simple. I can't buy into any idea of 'fashionable' in poetry because it's something I fundamentally disagree with. Fashion means cool, and cool is a certain detachment from yourself, a decision to not expose yourself because it's too easy to be shot down if you are exposed. That's death to any art form. I consider poetry an art and I'd rather be uncool and gauche if it means being myself, even if I do get shot down. To me it's worth the risk.
So poems, like this poem, are what I write, I normally put several layers in my poems to try to give the reader something new to find even after a few reads. I've always liked to read poetry that is like that so naturally I prefer to write in a similar way. So, it's not about my interpretation it's about what the reader pieces together. I like the idea of handing my poems over to the reader like that.
Having said that I'm happy to explain my own thoughts when I wrote this, as long as you bear in mind it doesn't mean any others are wrong.
This one was about a journey home one evening in my car. The sky was heavy and dark but the clouds had parted slightly and a bright blue streak of sky went up from the horizon. It made the clouds look like a big pair of smoke blackened lungs. and the blue sky like a pale vein running between them.
Beneath them was a hill soaked by the rain. The trees were in shadow which merged with the darker hill like ink billowing into a pot of water. Which is a mirror image of the lung shaped clouds. This was my reference to reflection.
The poem is about reflecting on a situation and deciding it's time to leave that situation. My idea was on one level it could just be a moody landscape, a cinematic poem, but if the reader wanted to look deeper there was something to find. I do that with a lot of my poems, they are not always what they seem to be.
Another example is 'Car Alarm'. Read one way it's about a man and his idling mind recalling key moments in his life, then finished off with this person telling us about normal suburban noises in the second part (after the break). A very straightforward idea, the comfortable mediocrity of suburbia. But... If you read the second part in a different voice and the two voices are describing the same moment in time, a moment that ends with the activation of a car alarm, the poem changes completely.
Now, words like 'down' to the corner shop and 'tower block' become more significant. Read this way, the poem is about a person falling off a tower block and landing on a car, setting off the alarm and a person up the street talking about the same incident. The faller's life flashing before his eyes as he falls. That's why it's called 'Car Alarm', the title is there to clue the reader the car alarm is a key element. It's a much darker poem. The second interpretation is underwritten so the emphasis is on the first interpretation, with, hopefully, just enough to nag at the reader.
That is two of my poems. I hope my explanation is clear, and by the way your English is excellent.
Remus
Hi! Your pic of what you saw is simply beautifull it's so underestimated to simply watch the skies and nature in general, just a little earlier I watched hurrying clouds reflecting the very yellow light from the sun just below the horizone . I think it's so cool and what pleases me the most is that it is only now.
We had a thunderstorm earlier so the clouds are the remains ...
Right now there is a cloud that is like something from a Dalì paiting so surreal, darker blue on the upper side and very pink now under due to the sun under the horizone. Then I see a cool birchtree that gives "depth" to the clouds.
Yes I like that you write with several layers, it is so much more interesting that way, and allows the reader to put in something from her/him-self more easily.
Just because you wrote that my English is good I at once started to think of how I write :) but thank you it of course made me happy. I like English language it flows more than Swedish.
You write very interesting and I when I read the Car alarm again the poem I wasn't able to "see" what you wrote even if you wrote of it, but it doesn't matter I enjoy it anyway.
It's the only way to "expose" ourselves and the only "art" that is good is where there is some sort of exposure even if it's not always plain.
What I struggle with is that I have a sort of "spartan" upbringing so I am not aware even of what I could expose, and that is where I try to be brave to myself.
It is very rewarding to read poems like yours also music with lyrics I like, because I am able to find myself in some of it after awhile or many years after to be honest, and I believe I am not very unusual at all. But in one thing I am and it is that I fight for not being so "spartan" , and I do very big circles around myself before I can even admit the feelings I want to incorporate in me.
The sky is so beautifull now a little pale light hardly detected orange and yellow and then it gradually turns into a very light pale turquoise.
Nature has always been a great joy and comfort to me, as Scandinavian as can be! but during certain weather I can in fact go to a place just because I know the light is "right" ... usually the lake.
yes I apreciate very much that you write like this and I am still crazy about the Honey glow and I just love it.
About exposing ourselves, well most people are simply not interested at all that is a fact and it's a shame since I for sure believe that we all would be happier if we thought some of the needs of our souls. We know so well how to fix, travel and to shop and make nice parties and everything is about doing doing doing and doing again.
To just listen to our own soul's "voices" is an very underestimated joy, I know I sound a little like it was fashion among the intellectuals 100 years ago, but they were so focused on beauty, that if only everyone lives in beautifull surroundings and reads beautifull books ... and have beautifull art
Then the world will be better.
:)
Well I simply believe that we all would be happier if we sometime in life do what I have grown fond of and it is to try to change my inner and to really expand my inner horizon and to learn things I never had a chance to learn as younger.
When I decide to do something I very seldom or never fail, and I feel like it's a wonderfull life almost everyday even when so much sucks and I feel so bad about things I think of, but I just know now I will be so much better off. You wrote of the comfortable mediocrity in suburbia and after many years living it I just had to change my life and it simply feels so good to feel more "alive" again, I believe we need to question the way we live now and then for real and really be aware if we live as we want to.
Feels good to have written something positive now, I felt I wrote so much negative earlier.
yes thanks that you put up this site!
Helena
Hello Helena,
This poem is definately about making changes. It's not always the easiest thing to do, in fact it's very difficult and people often wait till they are pushed into change rather then do it themselves. Human nature I suppose. Sometimes change is the only way forward.
I like how you described your surroundings, it sounds wonderful. There is a shift in the quality of light through the seasons, summer has a 'thick' honey light while winter has a crisp, pale light.
As always, thank you for reading and taking the time to post your thoughts.
Remus
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