One Night Stand

[HappyBuddha]

One Night Stand

 

Let these fingers dance,

pirouetting over and through

your exposed strings

 

Let them pluck,

then feel you shiver

at each high-strung note

 

Let them strum,

meeting each scream

with a dissonant thrust

 

Here,

in the hardness between moments,

we trumpet a mutual nudity,

bringing brief harmony

to our tone-deaf hearts

[Wyvern]

This strikes me as an excellent poem, Happybuddha. :-) One thing that particularly stood out to me was the use of "tone-deaf" in the final stanza, as I thought it was a perfect means of describing the emotional state of the pair given the musical metaphor of the piece. The use of the metaphor throughout the poem was also very effective, and was kept very fresh and original. The choice to space the poem differently after the narrator's "thrust" also struck me as very intriguing.

 

One minor thing that might potentially be improved: in the first and third stanzas, there were moments where the language used seemed to distance the narrator at times. In the first stanza: though I love the originality of "pirouetting," I'm a bit ambivalent about it after reading through a few times. Perhaps if "over and through" were dropped from that line, it might work better, as that's simply implied. In the third stanza: "dissonant thrust" struck me as a bit formal in tone, and you might consider replacing "dissonant" with something else.

 

An excellent and evocative poem. Very well done.

[Sweetcherrie]

Hmm…I’m going to disagree with Wyvern…I do like the dissonant thrust.

 

One thing with a one-night stand is that it’s normally not to fabtastic, because you have no idea of each other’s wishes, bodies, and rhythm. So a dissonant thrust is brilliant in this subject, and I’m not bothered by the word choice there either.

 

The word that does bother me however is the word ‘harmony’. This is a word that makes me think of love and affection, not the pure lust that normally goes with a one-night stand. The conflict it shows to tone-deaf hearts is nice, but I would probably try to change the bringing part into something like ‘attempting’ or ‘trying to bring’.

 

A word I also don’t like is pirouetting it makes me think of figure skating, and that is so not what you’re trying to get here….I assume.

 

I understand the connection between dancing and music, but tone-deaf suggest that you’re listening to the music and not dancing to it. To me there’s a big difference….not sure if that’s too clear of a comment though

 

I will echo Wyvern’s comment about the spacing after the word thrust, I like it.

 

Nice work

[Katzaniel]

Not much to add to what these two have said, but that you could try something altogether different from "harmony", like "striking a brief chord / for our tone-deaf hearts". That, and that I'm halfway between loving and hating on the line "the hardness between moments". I guess I think it's too obvious, though highly amusing.

[HappyBuddha]

One Night Stand

 

Let these fingers dance,

pirouetting over and through

your exposed strings

 

Let them pluck,

then feel you shiver

at each high-strung note

 

Let them strum,

meeting each scream

with a dissonant thrust

 

Here,

in the hardness between moments,

we resonate with mutual nudity,

 

creating brief harmony

within our tone-deaf hearts

Edited October 25, 2005 by HappyBuddha

[Parmenion]

A good poem that I did enjoy reading. Tackled the subject in a very tasteful manner. Well done.

 

I do however think, that it should be placed into the Scarlett Pen...yes, no?