axew0und

[axew0und]

this tweet is literally never not on my mind

[axew0und]

“But tonight, the conductor decides, it must be played”

Louise Glück- Forbidden Music

[axew0und]

“It was beautiful but it meant nothing. I was a prisoner, stunned by a sentence just received, on my way back to serve out my time, and my senses only observed, they did not appreciate.”

Joe Tasker- Savage Arena

[axew0und]

“Do you go ahead and laugh at the water?”

Arda Collins- 25A

[axew0und]

“It was a long time since any speaking but it was as though there had been speaking”

Arda Collins- Department Store

[axew0und]

Side by side of Richard Siken’s “Turpentine” and Rupi Kaur’s untitled canvas poem.

Both of these are using the canvas as a device to talk about something else. Both are relatively short and very readable, but I think that Siken is far more successful in creating depth and meaning. The canvas itself is convincingly personified through its dialogue. The relationship between the reader and the canvas is charged and complex, their motivations clearly at odds.

Kaur’s simile is comparatively straightforward; a one to one relationship between the legs of an easel to the legs of the speaker is nothing crazy. The implication that the canvas is a stand in for the speaker’s genitals is something that can be explored a bit: does this imply that there is a blankness or a void that can only be made art through contact with another person? I feel that upon analysis, this poem actually crumbles, apparently betraying the overarching message of self love and growth that the overall collection attempts to portray.

What do you think? Which do you prefer?

[axew0und]

[axew0und]

this one gets to breach containment me thinks

[axew0und]

Summoned

I put other things in but it doesn’t get you out! Burrowed in deeper. Wormed in further. I could beg but it summons you. I could cry but it summons you. I could scream but it summons you. Get thee behind me, get thee out! You might be gone, but you have deposited your spirit in me. If I could shake awake from this, if I could shake your spirit out… 

I’m sorry that I summoned you here when there is nothing for you to do. I know you cannot help me take it out, help me dig it out, help me pull it out of there. Help me scramble out, help me up and out, help me away, help me away from here and away from where I end up. Get me behind me, get me out! I might be gone from you but I am still here, I am painfully within myself. Sleeping or not sleeping I am in here!

[axew0und]

[axew0und]

“How lush the world is, how full of things that don’t belong to me”

Louise Glück- Vespers: Parousia

[axew0und]

Making Loneliness Work for You!

When I am alone I’m not really alone. When I am alone I’m not really alone. When I am alone I am covered in blood, I’m covered in drool, covered in sweat. When I am alone I am covered in blankets, I mean. I am laying down, and I know you. When I am alone I am me and you all at once, together. It is easier to hold us both in my own vessel, easier when I know what I will say and what you will say and what I will not say back, what I will let you hold forever. If I make you wince you are wincing for me, if you move by my hand the motion is mine. It is easier when I am alone because no one has to get hurt to give me the feelings. It is easier to take the heart out of this body so that it is just a body. 

I do not always deserve to be loved; when I am writhing and crying out, clawing for purchase and hurting you I am hurting you! You say that I’m not but I don’t want you to pretend. You said you saw smoke but I know there was no smoke because I hadn’t finished yet. Do not declare to me your undying love, I want you to die. Do not declare you yourself to me for I cannot conceive your declaration. It is romantic, desire, but it is not love. It is not romantic, my desire. I would kill god to make room for you in the narrow space of my mind.  Coming down the hallway there is only the hallway and the end of the hallway. Don’t waste this chance, this space between when you are walking and when there is nowhere else to walk. When I am alone I can contain it in you, you and your heartless body. I enter you like a long corridor, walking and walking and not caring for the space behind me, the time behind me, not caring for treading on the ground, every step in this cavernous hall filled with emptiness, filled with the smell of you, which is not you. Filled with the thought of you, which is also not you, but I’m getting closer.

[axew0und]

“Here we are in the bowels of the thing”

Richard Siken- Boot Theory

[axew0und]

chill dude

[axew0und]

“I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s line”

Dylan Thomas- The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

[axew0und]

“I must need you to worship you”

Louise Glück- Vespers