And All This Is Metaphore - Page 2

I remember when I was a small thing,
I used to leave it lying amongst
the blocks, dollies and weeds.
I used to bounce it off the walls
and slip it into my father's pocket,
and he'd walk around like a man
rich with all of my love,
though he didn't know it.

I used to dangle it over
my mother's cooking pots,
imagining what would happen
if I suddenly let it drop.
I hid it in her bedsheets once,
all wrapped up in the blankets like a gift
to which she reeled in disgust.
She washed the blankets right away,
That good housewife!

I've been carrying it around by myself
for quite a while now,
peering into it and turning it over and over
in my hands like some strange jewel.
Each night, I lock it up in a box
for fear that it will become lost.
Each night, it makes a queer noise
that sends topples down my stomach.
It is something
no one else can really touch.
But it grows a little heavier
every now and then,
and sometimes I really think
that I would like a bit of help.

I say that white is the colour of death.
The death of the mind, with its zing and pop.
The death between each page of the notebook
and its many empty mouths full of white.
A growing hunger in the vein of my pen
itches to set things right.

Each day
I am tricking myself into life,
spilling ink out of my pen
like it'll ever mean a damn thing.
Every night the blankets are
folding out and spreading their white.
A cushion in my head
that pushes thoughts out of sight.

Once, I remember you said to me
"You are out of your mind!"
but I think it more true to say
that my mind is out of me,
for I have been setting down the table cloth
each year now and dusting off the empty vases,
waiting for it to come back home.

There are a lot of people
who are afraid of growing old.
They have a strange hunger
to be as unchanging
as mannequins with teeth
as white as toothpaste.
They want to bury their
marbled eyes beneath needles
and drown them out of sight
with their chemicals and creams.
They don't want to grow into adulthood,
but rather, they want to halt halfway
and fall back into their naivety
like Jack and Jill who never grew old
but instead, kept tumbling
backwards into their old youth,
into that old story.

What miracle is this?
I am happy today, Doctor!
Or am I turning delirious?
Well I feel that I could
possibly jump a canyon
and not dream of that downwards turn
toward the centre of the earth.
Today
the only dream is of going
up, up, up
like a hot air balloon.
so that everyone will suddenly
have to tilt their heads
to look up at me
instead of down.

Have you ever watched that show on Nickolodeon for kids. Its got a Rabbit in it. Two of 'em I think. My niece has a movie with them on it. Thats the voice I read this stuff in. Its childish and hopefull. Innocent but prone to aggrivation.

No, I've never seen it.
Ta for the reading though, it's appreciated.

Drowning in the mechanical desert,
mankind is computerising the soul,
and the lonely man is fragmenting himself
lost in the madness of mainstream hell.

I am tired of being fearfull
that a real person is now a dying art.
That apathy cramps into the new arthiritis
and sadness becomes an illness recorded on the doctors chart.

Mankind is teaching itself
how to numb the world away,
it's become so unnatural
they medicate the sane.
And as I wander around with my eyes
plastered all over the dismal scene,
I wonder where we think we're going
if we're too sick to know where it is we've been.

Your mouth was gaped like a fish
as they yanked you down
from that bowl belly.
The air shifted around your skin
and called you a stranger.
And you cried and cried and cried
as it beat in and out of you like a drum,
lighting your eyes up like lanterns
and filling your head with its dumb love.
You took to life like a starved clam,
You shut your mouth upon it like a rare jewel
and in the end, you were more real
than any God of man himself.

For a while,
this was all you knew of the world.
It was all in love.
Men danced across fields
and died because of it.
Your mother hung the apron around her
waist and vowed upon it.
It took to being the consistancy of air
and filled your belly like a thick porridge.

Then one day
as you paraded into your third year,
this love simply drifted out of the window
like an old balloon.
And when it came again, it came through the door
transformed into something small and hard and hidden.
Suddenly it was something
that was given out like a prize
If you kept all of the drawers unopened
If you ate all of your food, no mess, no mess
If you didn't spill milk out of the sippy cup.
That's when mumma loved you.
If you were a good angel with nice neat hair,
Then and only then, would it flicker by
in those small words, small actions.
And you started lapping it up like a hungry dog
and took to crawling halfway across the world on its leash
just to find it again.

In a dream
I had no hands to lean against
and I sung into the sink
with a throat full of blood.
And what happened was this -
The sink couldn't drink it down fast enough
and I just couldn't hold the red stuff down.

And so it was, sister,
that I was as sick as a camel
and I was so dearly afraid of my insides falling out
that I called to you for help.
But you stood stock still in your black stockings
and you would not move.
Instead, you stood as heavy as a rock,
and just as I was about to ask you
why this was,
another strange twist of events occured
as these dreams are always prone to take!
And it just so happened
that you weren't my sister at all,
but a stranger who did not know my being
from a stump in the ground
or a shattered twig
and did not know my cries
from the hush-hush of the wind
or the madness of gulls.
And I thought,
will anyone ever notice me?
And then the dream passed and I woke
and even though there were people pressed
into their own beds all around me
I knew that I was still alone.

June,
Where are you going
with your eyes hanging down
your wooden face, like loose screws?
Did you find death bobbing around
in his dirty bathtub
and poke lucifer in the eye?
Or did you find that almighty God
and get tossed back out his window
like a wet rag?

Oh June
ye of little faith!
I know how your legs
must ache like splintered picks
and how your tounge has flopped into your chest
and how your belly always feels like an empty drum.
But come, you musn't despair -
The chicks are out of their nests,
The penguins are still marching over Antarctica
And the sun is still living.
The world moves on.
And you must move on too, June
or get swept under the dust of the jungle land,
or tossed in amongst the ashes of our yearly fires

Oh my sweet!
I know how you are so much more
than a lump of worm infested wood,
even if she tells you that this isn't so!
June! Drain that yellow yolked jaundice from your eyes
and brush that wreath of barbed wire from your hair!
You are not yet, who you really are.

Father,
you were the first man
who just couldn't love me,
though I have dreamed of loving you-
Despite the lashings of your words
down my spine like a string of whips.
Despite that tongue that you always
beat around madly like a baseball bat.
Despite all that,
I was still sick for the love
that you adorned upon all of the other girls.
And I so dearly wanted to be your good daughter,
the sweet dear dazzaling diamond daughter,
but I just couldn't be as pretty
as all the rest.
My scrawly brains, leaking ink,
and the words bubbling out of my mouth,
as fat as a cauldron.
None of it would do.
I took to covering myself up like a nun,
as you chased me around with names
like an excorcist trying to vanquish the devil.
And it was as if I were possesed,
swimming out toward the moon every night,
and howling for the stars
to call out the right name.

I'm not an english major, a lover of poetry or an advocate of prose but it seems that all teenage poetry puts abstractness before meaning. An artist that doesn't challenge the confines of society is not an artist. It's just someone who aspires to be good at a seemingly pointless activity. The reason many artists are worth remembering, in my opinion, is not their skill in their trade so much as their couragousness to put an ideal or a meaning above all other things. Few other occupations give one the means to bring fallacies to the surface or give certain ideals the light they deserve. This should be the focus of all artists. Maybe you're just refining your skill and I'm looking too far ahead in your career but these are the things great artists live for.

"An artist that doesn't challenge the confines of society is not an artist."

What if they are trying to challenge there own minds? What if they arent writing for society? What if they are writing in order to find there meaning? What if they dont think of it as a skill, just as something to express themselves with?

Is that not art?

ChrisD,

That seems to me, to be a terrible judgement to make - that if you do not focus on challenging the confines of society, you are not an artist. Art can be made in such a variety of ways for many reasons and intentions. I do not understand how can you so securley define such a subjective term.

To me, art is simply the expression of the human mind, its thoughts, feelings and interests through a range of different mediums. I believe art to be a simple labelling of the product of expression, not a labelling that marks value. Whether it is meaningful or unmeaningful is entirely dependant upon the eye of the beholder, but the interpretation that is made is always a subjective one. I do not believe that anyone, apart from the maker themselves, has the right to take the labelling of the word art itself away from the expression. You are wholly entitled to have your opinion of it being "good", "bad", "meaningful" or "unmeaningful", and your opinion should always be respected and accepted as a valid interpretation. However, I think it is highly conceited to state in such a matter-of-fact way, to any individual or group, that their expressions are just simply not art. That undermines the validity of the work even being an expression. I think it is highly disrespectful of other peoples opinions, interpretations and personal expressions.

As for whether or not I even wish to consider myself an artist or wish to make a career out of writing poetry - I would have appreciated it if you had actually asked me about my intentions before making the insinuation that I may already believe myself to be an artist, and then telling me why I shouldn't or cannot see myself as one.

Alright, let me make an edit: an artist that does not challenge the confines of society is a waste of an artist. True, you can still be an artist and give whatever meaning you want to your works but the great thing about artists is that they usually incite change. What's the point of achieving perfection of a meaning if the meaning has little or no significance? All I'm saying is that if you ever do take it seriously, give your art a meaning that challenges people's beliefs, causes them to think and perhaps pushes them to step outside of their circle of safety. The last thing I would have intended for my post was to degrade your work. In fact, I found some of it rather interesting. With my post, I was only trying to give you something to think about with the direction of your poetry, not the quality of it. Whether it goes unheeded is entirely up to you, you are the only person who truly knows what you are trying to achieve with it.