Song to the Imagination
Someone is being murdered
In the movie I’m not watching
While I copy Hokusai paintings
Upside down.
Still the walls of my head
Are a velvet nightmare.
The voice of my conscience
Sings lyrics I cannot hear.
Yet I am alive, cared for
For whatever reason.
Sleep off the ache of the day
Every night. Make another.
Yet I am alive, cared for
For whatever reason.
I can think of many good reasons, Peter.
Your first lines got my attention because I did watch such a movie tonight and normally the channel would have been changed in a flash.
I like the calm resolve expressed in the poem.
Mary
Thanks, Mary. So do I. Evidently, that's why I wrote it. I appreciate your comments.
Peter
btw, the movie just ended, Wild Palms, 1993...six hours later, a tv movie...
Nicely done, Peter, I seldom watch the news on TV, I prefer to take my news in small doses via the internet or morning paper. I don't watch movies with a lot of killing in them. I prefer a more realistic approach to life and death, these days.
Les
Sleep off the ache of the day
Every night. Make another.
I sense a feeling of submission in these lines...of someone resigned to accepting what fate (if there is such a thing) dishes out. That strikes me as odd because it seems so unlike you, Peter. Am I confusing the poem's speaker with its author?
Joe
Joseph,
Maybe the tone isn't conveyed clearly enough by those final lines, since to me, they carry determination, imperative. The narrator is telling us to
Sleep off the ache of the day
Every night. Make another.
He's not to give up. I don't much like the device of using exclamation points to bring out the force of a statement; I prefer word choice!
Thanks for the interpretation, and the vote of confidence.
Peter
I don't much like the device of using exclamation points to bring out the force of a statement; I prefer word choice!
I certainly missed the point (not the first time, and not especially important to anyone else, either). I am a punctuation fanatic...it goes with my anal retentive nature, I suppose. I know you rarely rewrite anything but I'll make a suggestion anyway. If you're absolutely resolute about not using exclamation points and such, perhaps, "Onward to another," or, "Forge another," would erase any confusion about your intent in this poem. Then, again, it's probably just me.
Joe
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2022 03:11PM by hpesoj.
No, Joseph, it is not just you, it's the inherent ambiguity of the written word as contrasted with the other ambiguities of the spoken word and the visual supplements of gestures we can otherwise call upon when we communicate.
And, no, I'm not absolutely resolute about not using exclamation points and such, I just have the preferences that way much of the time. I am actual also really into making punctuation function in a poem just as precisely as Surrey and Wyatt did when they were inventing the sonnet in English.
To the point: -- let's see.
Song to the Imagination
Someone is being murdered
In the movie I’m not watching
While I copy Hokusai paintings
Upside down.
Still the walls of my head
Are a velvet nightmare.
The voice of my conscience
Sings lyrics I cannot hear.
Yet I am alive, cared for
For whatever reason.
Sleep off the ache of the day
Every night. Make another, if you can.
*****************
Maybe. What do you think? [Anyone else can kabitz if she or he likes.]
Actually, although I do rarely revise, as Joseph notes, one of the reasons I post the poems here in the forum is in the hope that someone else will have a suggestion on how I can change a poem to get it to work better than my own first tries. I don't think the first try is written in stone; it's just that I always want to move on...either to the next poem, or to silence, or to what other people are doing.
amo,
Thanks a lot Joseph for the suggestions.
Peter
I didn't read those last lines as resignation or an exclamation. I read them as speaking to the cyclic nature of things in life or of a day in a life. I think every day has its aches, no matter how how good life is to us or we are to it. We sleep and move on to the next day and whatever it is that it brings (or we make of it).
I hadn't thought about it until Joe's comments (and yours, Peter, about word choice), but the very last line consisting of only two words; > Make another.
does offer a statement much like an exclamation. It implies anything but resignation to fate with its implication that tomorrow is of our making (or at least that we have some say in what we choose to do in it). I also like its mirroring back to the speaker's copying (making) of >Hokusai paintings Upside down.
Whether the speaker is standing on his head making a drawing, copying the image the opposite of the way he sees it, or literally drawing it so when it's completed and the paper is turned upsidedown...the image is right side up doesn't really matter. He's doing "something" unique to him and his day, despite things like murder going on in the T.V....or anywhere else for that matter.
Speaking of the T.V. movie, I watched "Death Sentence" where Kevin Bacon snaps and singlehandedly wipes out the entire gang of thugs who murdered his son. Like Les, I don't watch such movies. Not sure why I watched that one except that it was so over the top that I could view it fully cognizent of the fact it was just that, a movie production. I found it odd to have done something so out of the ordinary for me and then open up the computer to read the opening lines of this poem.
The more we discuss the poem, Peter, the more I like it. Good job.
Mary
Thanks, Mary.
I face every day as a challenge...which means engaging the possibilities as if I have control of what happens next. The other question of whether that 'really' is the case lets humans off the hook too easily regarding the consequences and our responsibilities. I guess the need for imagination is the greatest challenge, despite the fall back into the ordinary ache of every day.
I also take pleasure in the imagination of Joseph, Mary, Les, et al.
amo,
Peter