in this time of dead clocks.
We can interview the air, jammed with blackbirds.
We can discard our clock-lungs,
turn our hearts to fragrant bowers.
We can tightrope, half-awake
over the roofs of our old loves,
and fall into chimneys like bones into limbs,
fantastically existent, howling, dumbfounded.
_____
poem #5 of my 39 in 39 days.
for Friday 55 at Verse Escape, hosted by the incredibly fab Hedgewitch O' The Wilds.
I'm searching my mind for a superlative I haven't used to death here, Shay. The tension in this is the wire on which the beads of image and metaphor glitter out at us, necklace or noose around our passive necks.You open the doors of endless possibilities even as you accept the prisoning of the clocks, creating a force that hops over reality into something freer, wilder, and far more satisfying. I won't start quoting, but yeesh! every stanza has a heavy hitter, and some include the entire stanza, especially the last two. Thanks for the kickass 55, my friend. You make the form sing.
ReplyDeleteThis is just stunning, Shay. Every damn word.
ReplyDelete"Tihs time of dead clocks" and "tightrope, half-awake over the roofs of our old loves"....I am always amazed how you say something we are all feeling in such a way that only an amazing poet like you could. Breathtaking Shay!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the coolest things you’ve ever written.
ReplyDeleteI can scarcely breathe, I am so overtaken by this brilliant image:
“and fall into chimneys like bones into limbs,
fantastically existent, howling, dumbfounded”
How proud of that are you??? You should be VERY!
Also, mad love for this line: “We can interview the air”
Though I would like to see people interview themselves about themselves.
I have to admit, I was pretty darn happy with that "limbs line.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to need *even more superlative* words than what Hedgwitch comes up with. It's better even than that. Each line somehow breaks the world open, our minds try to hold on to what words might mean, with a crowbar splitting them apart, but that destruction in fact the creation of the new, the possible, where *of course* clocks are dead, we interview the air, fall into chimneys like falling into our own bodies.
ReplyDeleteThe tightrope over the roofs of ouur old loves - and falling into chimneys. Wow.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where to start...It would be a copy and paste of the whole thing. I also am a fan of that "bones into limbs" phrase. We are all walking a tightrope wondering if and when we will fall.
ReplyDeleteOnce we are loosed of the constraints of time, we must still find a way into something that is "next". We have many options, and you've enumerated fantastical options: finding beauty within, walking away from what seems to pass for love, daring to cross over into another incarnation. Thought and emotion all balanced on the head of the same pin. Very fine.
ReplyDeleteI'd seriously like to live inside your head for a bit! Um, that means I am gobsmacked by this. The whole thing is brilliant, and I especially want to discard my clock lungs!
ReplyDelete