Indifferent
to your arrival
I feel your blame
I will never ask
for breakfast again
your crash
but my life changed
“I don’t wanna talk about it
that breakfast cause me crash”
this is what you said to me
when you came back
from your comma
that I cried you out of
still breathing
because of my love
under a ceiling fan
I lay
maimed
by my man
your words slit my throat
you don’t understand
blood oozes down my chest
“You Take My Breath”
your mouth a heinous weapon
left me to die
didn’t even realize
I couldn’t even cry
wrapped in your world
as I am wrapped in it too
wrapped up in me
being wrapped up by you
Smirnoff green apple vodka
did not shed the pain
you came back home
revived it again
how guilty I feel
though YOU sped down the street
how ashamed I am
because I wanted to eat
I regret playing in the kitchen
asking for those eggs
I’d just as well starve
that morning
if I knew it was me
you’d blame
Breakfast
caused pain
stove fire
ended flame
© copyright Tia L. Clarke 2008
2 comments:
First stanza, absolutely brilliant. Brilliant in a few other places as well. It goes off the track a few times though before it reaches the end. Stanza 2 seems entirely out of place. It is not blended in with the rhythm of the voice of the poem. It's incongruous, an interruption, a speed bump. Stanzas 5 and 6 are unbearably melodramatic. Your poem need to be about a much smaller portion of this horrific event. You cannot compact so much of life into such a small space. It ends up being like rice all clumped together rather than each single grain being separate. There is to much more weight in some stanzas than in others. They should all have a soufflé-lightness though, no matter what the subject. Comma as subject, is so very off-putting. Why attempt to make poetry of what is not poetic? The idea of poetry, like SONG, is intended to uplift, not depress. Unless what is heavy is presented for the purpose of catharsis, wherein the author in the end, deposits the reader once again safely upon the opposite shore. Your rhyme in place though, is so very pretty. I sense you still searching for your voice. It is necessary to listen hard, hear it and no other. There are in addition to your voice, so many noises inside our heads. You must know it like a river apart from the rest of the landscape. Another observation. Your poems often seem too heavily weighted down on the REALITY side. You need to select just a manageable bit of what's real to translate or to convert into fiction - meaning ART.
Before I go to bed, allow me to address this:
I’d just as well starve
that morning
if I knew it was me
you’d blame
This is extremely problematic. This is as petty as shit. Not noble at all. How dare you permit your voice to expose such a CHARACTER flaw? The regret is shifted from who has really suffered to the speaker regretting being BLAMED. How much harm is this blame, compared with what has been and who has really suffered? It the face of this tragedy, this is too petty to bring up. I do not it should have been. How could having to suffer being blamed compare what what was a near-fatal accident? Your VOICE or narrator, is regretting having to have to live with blame. All the regret need to be focused upon the actual TRAGEDY. Being THE BLAME in such a situation involving someone one loves, seems but a very tiny portion of all the suffering to bear. It suggest that once the speaker is vindicated of any responsibility, all would be just fine. But you'd still have the TRAGEDY. That is inconsistent with the suggestion of LOYALTY every where else in the poem. I address this at length as I have, because ultimate your VOICE has to be the voice of heaven, the voice of CHRIST. Read the New Testament, Jesus is never petty. Love is never petty. God is love. There is no other. This one same quality of love must be manifested in all writing, in all poems. If it is not AGAPE, give it another name or get rid of it down the drain. A writer has a bigger responsibility than you realize. We're not writing for ourselves. Like what I've written here. I write it not because I have time to waste of to spare. I am exhausted, been up all night. We write because we are in the service of a or his holy spirit. We must keep focused, we must stay on track. I hope this is helpful. If this is too lengthy to post, I'll understand. I'll not mind at all. Though it might be, lengthy though it is, helpful to some other young writer who might stumble upon it.
I beg your forgiveness.
After writing my lengthy essay, I read your poem over and I now understand it; after having preached to you for forty minutes.
I see now that this BLAME is actually what the entire poem is about. Again, I wrote what I wrote, only half understanding what you're written. What I wrote though brought on the LIGHT.
This is an absolutely beautiful poem, extremely UNIFIED. Forgive my not having understood it initially.
The speakers has been loyal. It is the victim who is unappreciative of all the support provided.
There is still some issue though, about needing to mind so much about being BLAMED. This blame it seems need to be borne along with all the rest, in the name of LOVE.
Your VOICE should not want to extricate itself because of BLAME.
To use the example of Christ again, he suffered being falsely accused along with everything else. Love swallows it all and goes right on loving. We must look to HEAVEN and no where else for vindication.
The lover in your poem, because of BLAME, it seem, wishes to take its love BACK. Never TAKE it BACK.
A wonderful poem, even if ever so slightly flawed. I thank God for it and I thank him for you.
You do have a job to do. You're a very gifted writer.
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