People, places, and things evoke feelings. This is my latest poem, untitled as of yet:
The closet is a mishmash of jeans & suits and t-shirts.
Bookshelves boast Faulkner & Salinger & Updike.
Improper Bostonian, Newsweek, & The New Yorker
stake out territory on the coffee table.
Many layered.
A little messy.
The bed is made.
Wet towels dampen the black & white comforter.
Wrinkled clothes lay discarded in a heap.
Drawers are sorted.
Able to prioritize.
A little hurried.
The kitchen sparkles.
The fridge is full, but not to overflowing,
with leftovers of the homemade variety.
The dishwasher whirs.
A lone bowl on the counter, slick with milk,
indicates cereal for breakfast.
Responsible.
Spontaneous.
In all these rooms,
shades of humanity.
Photographs & Paintings,
Books & Journals,
Documenting Life.
I could live and love amongst these remnants.
I have struggled a lot with the last line. Originally I wrote, "I could live amongst these remnants and love this life." I then changed it to, "I could live here and love." Eventually I settled on "I could live and love amongst these remnants." Most interesting to me is how rearranging the same words or restructuring the same thoughts can change the meaning of the entire poem. Any thoughts or suggestions?
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Hey thanks for stopping by my blog!
ReplyDeleteThe bowl idea came from here
http://alittlehut.blogspot.com/2007/09/recycle-project-no-7-magazine-bowl.html
but I tweaked it. The instructions there are pretty much exactly what I did. She used all the same size pages but I used random junk mail, magazines, ads, etc. that were totally different sizes and paper thicknessed. Then I folded the strips to different widths. The result made the underside of the bowl really "fring-ey" or steplike and I really dig it. Now I'm obsessed with the tecnique and making a wall collage thing. We'll see how it turns out.
On the poem, what about something like "amongst these things my passions live". I really like the poem.