literature

Song

Deviation Actions

ExistenceWeSummonYou's avatar
Published:
505 Views

Literature Text

I am a thousand moments of forgetting from the first
mooring when I met you. Still I am held to the earth
by the impossible hope of having you. I walk out
into an air polluted with your absence. My way
of seeing the world is carved by your memory: I
only eye the autumn leaves because we once
shuffled through them together. I will find you
everywhere; I will touch the tree that bears your name
that you might flicker into me. I will tear open
my mind for a glimpse of your shadow.

Death to death. In an elaborate blooming. But death too
is a dunce. Doesn't know the world. Where it's going.


I walk out with the heart of not-having. A hulking
dissatisfaction has hunkered down in me. I hear
the silence of your absence. It preaches to me
that I might plow the earth for a future,
that the future might be a better past for someone else.
In Ifaluk, the word 'song' means 'justifiable anger'.

Written in the voice of someone who isn't me :)

Feedback would be much appreciated on this one: Is it too abstract; does the abstraction prevent the emotion from coming through? (In particular, I keep going back and forth on whether it should be 'mooring when I met you' or 'morning when I met you'.) What about the sound, too shrill or anything like that (there are lot of 'ahy's and 'ee's)?

Here's a critique for Written Revolution: [link]
© 2011 - 2024 ExistenceWeSummonYou
Comments18
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Avallynh's avatar
:iconthewrittenrevolution:
your opening sentence is absolutely beautiful. i want to keep it. :heart:
as per your specific questions: i don't think it's the imagery that's hampering the evocativeness(?) off the piece -- in a few places, i find that the snags are better accounted for by punctuation. in the first stanza, for instance,
Still I am held to the earth
by the impossible hope of having you. I walk out
into an air polluted with your absence. My way
of seeing the world is carved by your memory
--
the two full-stops are somehow marking halts too abrupt to enable the flow of the poem. the second sentence itself ("I walk...absence") is slightly clunky, and your stanza would do better if it were re-worded, or even removed.
also, 'carved' is too harsh a word here. try 'coloured', perhaps?
in all, your concept is lovely, and most of the phrasing is good. a better flow to the words will enable that to show through much, much more.