Love not

[Guest Phoenix]

Sitting and praying the day not to end,

the cavern of my bed calls me.

I dwell on old lovers, most long gone,

wrap myself resigned in cold sheets,

Soft with their smell.

 

My head hits the pillow,

But sheep count themselves,

like fluffy pillows, out of my head.

I stare at the wall, curled shell-like

around memories, hopeful dreams.

 

My mind turns them, before

resolution can come.

Demon-dreams to dust.

Painfully afraid of hoping.

All hopes come to nothing.

 

Midnight solitude returns.

The clock ticks loud in the witching air.

The day won’t end, will not begin.

Phantoms wend their way

through the silence of my brain

 

If this is madness, I welcome it

wanting only the knowing certainty

after months of doubt and questions.

My mind carries me within itself

to pressure points only I know,

 

And I fall again in solitude

to the softness of skin against skin.

One moment is no trial.

It is the next, and the one after that.

The prospect of eternity.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

To the last syllable of recorded time…

[Guest Phoenix]

fyi - the last two lines are a direct quote from Shakespear, Macbeth - not sure Act and Scene, but its one of my favourite monologues - Macbeth has just found out his wife killed herself.

 

 

Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

[Wyvern]

Very good poem(s), Pheonix. :-) I love the closing stanza of the first poem, as the segment about every next moment being a trial until the "last syllable of recorded time" was beautifully worded and struck me as a very original and evocative way to think about time. The repetition of "tommorow" also worked very well in this stanza, and I like the frame of insomnia that surrounds the revelation.

 

One thing that felt a bit awkward to me in this piece was the uses of archaic vocabularly in describing modern objects. The reference to the bed as a "cavern," the "Demon-dreams," the "witching air," and the "Phantoms" all felt a little odd to me, perhaps because the last stanza presents such a modern and original image of moments of time.

 

Is the second post in this thread a new poem, a continuation of the poem in the first post, or a complete revision of the first poem? The Shakespeare influence is definitely present in the stanza of the second post... the phrasing of the fourth line makes it feel as though it's straight out of a different era.

 

Very nice stuff, Pheonix. :-) Thanks for sharing these here!

[Guest Phoenix]

the second 'poem' is the quote from Macbeth - i'm just still hunting for act an scene.

the references he makes to time are my favourite part of it too

 

thought i'd throw it in there to give credit where credit is due

and because i love it of course

 

i think i was in a very Macbeth-y frame of mind when i wrote this. it was 3am, and the phrasing seemed to come out of that. i was trying to link the more archaic mood and superstition and create that mood around something that still happens now....

 

maybe it didn't work so well

*goes to play with it some more*

[Mynx]

I love this Nix

My brain's still fogey from being on holiday so I apologise for the lack of in depth feedback, but I really enjoy the flow of the poem.

There's a kind of eeryness to it (is that even a word?) that gives me shivers and makes me grin every time I read it

And I love the Macbeth-y feel to it

Thought you'd like this too - the soliloquy you quoted from came from Act 5, Scene 5

 

*hugs*

Thanks for sharing this hun

[Guest Phoenix]

thank you!!

its been doing my head in