Not much that I lose (anymore) upsets me very much,
but the world has lost its bones and I feel like a stranger.
Faces become pillows, buildings blobs.
Only my heart retains its hard edge, and I bleed myself dizzy every night.
"Look," say the pillows, gathering around my wheelchair
Like dumb birds for bread. They think I'm blushing
when I'm dying and hang little samplers on the walls of my room.
"She's as rosy as a girl," they say, silly chatterboxes
Without faces, but with mouths as big as the white shadow that doctors know.
______
mini-challenge.
incredibly sad...
ReplyDelete"but the world has lost its bones and I feel like a stranger." I love that.
ReplyDeleteAnd this section:
"Look," say the pillows, gathering around my wheelchair
Like dumb birds for bread. They think I'm blushing
What a haunting, deeply twisting (in my gut) poem.
It's a hospital poem, in a way ... at least as a metaphor. But I'm picturing her dying every night, becoming a ghost, but then waking up alive to do it all again the next day.
DeleteThat's what keeps happening to me, anyway.
This has an echo of every prison cell and madhouse the mind constructs, or that the body visits upon us. Each line is exquisite and disturbing and real, each image familiar as a dream monster that never ceases to wake us in a cold sweat. One of your very best, Shay. (And it's very Crane-ish in all of that.) My words can't do it justice.
ReplyDelete"but the world has lost its bones"......incredible. This poem is haunting, as only you can haunt.
ReplyDeleteEEK!!! A horror story! Hideously well told.
ReplyDelete"I bleed myself dizzy" is dazzling brilliant.
ReplyDeleteYou are the first pawson in da world who think the same as me " the birds are dumb ! "
ReplyDelete*** Lift paw for Hi-5 ***
'the world has lost its bones and I feel like a stranger' - that's just how I feel without my glasses. People look like aliens with no bones- so well observed!
ReplyDeleteFrom an almost willful blindness to a bleeding heart, you sum up the sense of alienation which, I believe, is becoming common in a world so prone to self-destruction. It is alarming and real, this scenario.
ReplyDeleteWow! This is packed full of emotions.
ReplyDeleteDark...
ReplyDelete"but the world has lost its bones"
ReplyDeleteThat is just incredibly beautiful.
I feel as if I've fallen down a very dark, twisted rabbit home in your poem--which is to say I think it's beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI have unfortunately a lot of problems with my eyes and vision and inadequate glasses--so this spoke to me a little too directly! Very powerfully done. I especially liked the beginning, honestly, the glasses going blind in one eye. thanks. k.
ReplyDeleteimmense impact in the understated way you wove this - deserves several readings and gets better each time
ReplyDeleteSad!
ReplyDelete"but the world has lost its bones" Oh I love that. I wear glasses so I know the world view without them. At times I've feel like I sit alone in my inner nightmare while the world twitters, "She has such an incredible sense of humor."
ReplyDelete