Here are we, in our clean white smocks
carrying our easels
waddling in flocks
freed by signatures, approved by weasels
with keys to all the locks.
Gone in a group, out to the duck pond
chicks watching chicks
circling around
like the melt around ceremonial wicks
we the lost, them the found.
We who ate bitter oftener than sweet
who had enough
and beat our feet
into shadows where we flicker and huff
sentient suns in setting concrete.
_______
for Word Garden Word List--Save Yourself
Music: Gnarls Barkley Crazy
I like the unlikely feel of whimsy here, combined with a touch of the sinister and strange. There's a cinematic quality as well to which the specificity and lushness of the descriptions add. Your tags are wonderful, too. Who are these people, so disguised yet so piercingly us...or is it Them? A fascinating and perfectly structured piece, Shay.
ReplyDeleteI love the image of the clean white flocks - waddling in flocks. So good!
ReplyDeleteSmocks. Gah. My brain is having trouble today.
ReplyDeleteLots of images in your poem to play around with in my mind! I like picturing the group heading to the duck pond. My favorite phrase is "chicks watching chicks circling around." Bravo for the Gnarls Barkley song. I always like his songs.
ReplyDeleteGreat images and a feeling of forlorn hope in this, interesting poem.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Joy, there is whimsy and sinister in this poem. I often go watch the ducks at the lake in my subdivision. I don't think I'll look at the the same any more. We are mortals swimming in circles sometimes in the sunlight, sometimes in the dark with maybe a witch or two. :) Love this poem!
ReplyDeleteThe clean white smocks somehow made me think both of straightjackets and laboratory coats. And those "who ate the bitter oftener than sweet" wearing one, and the "weasels with keys to all the locks" wearing the other. It seems many times in life, the lost are the found and the found are actually the lost, which I love here, along with your superb cadence, especially the way it falls in those most satisfying closing lines. You are fabulous, Shay.
ReplyDelete"circling around
ReplyDeletelike the melt around ceremonial wicks" - love the way you used this image in the poem.
Like Jennifer, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" floated around in my brain as I read the opening lines. Love the poem and appreciated the subtle rhyming.
ReplyDeleteThe way I read it, this is a damning (and satisfying) indictment against the "weasels with keys to all the locks," locks of entrance into the approved artist's crowd, who walk lockstep, indistinguishable. The rest, the lost, fed more on the bitter than the sweet, wander in the "shadows where we flicker and huff/sentient suns in setting concrete." SENTIENT SUNS. Yes. A brightness that those around "ceremonial wicks" will never know, though they be "found" by weasel art critics. Brilliant writing, blunt, beautiful, and ineffably sad. But are the "lost" artists really lost?!
ReplyDeleteHad to read that a couple of times. Gets better each round. First pass it had more whimsy, but by the 3rd or 4rth reading was a lot darker. Nice that it unfolded like that, the white smocks fade to black.
ReplyDelete