SoaringIcarus Posted March 9, 2003 Report Posted March 9, 2003 For how long could you tolerate the dull glare in her eyes? Her quizzical half-moon eye brows, Her flat forehead, unfurrowed. She pines for nothing (A most frequent generosity of yours) She strives and strives To answer most fleeting trivialities But you found her sweet In her simple manner. Sweet like the dollar-china Growing skins of dust To protect them from ages of neglect. Small children depicted in white stone Eyes painted off-center from their sculpting. Years will pass And she depicts the same emotion. She takes no notice Of the long silence that stifles the air Between you. She takes no notice Of the dust-skin under which you do not blink.
Archaneus Posted March 9, 2003 Report Posted March 9, 2003 I don't really know how to comment except to say good job.
Zariah Posted March 9, 2003 Report Posted March 9, 2003 (edited) Welcome back! You were very missed! Great adjectives and imagery, Icarus. I really like this. I don't know what it is exactly, but great topic and material. I think this is a little difficult to interpert, would you kindly point out the meaning you had behind it? Edited March 10, 2003 by Zariah
Quincunx Posted March 10, 2003 Report Posted March 10, 2003 Brrrr. . .I read coldness, distance into this, perhaps from the descriptive phrases that paint absolutely no visual of the whole, and leave a little void of speculation. I'm very much left guessing as to who is the most insensitive cad--she, the addressee, or the poet. Nicely done.
SoaringIcarus Posted March 13, 2003 Author Report Posted March 13, 2003 Zariah-- This poem is about a relationship gone very gradually and mind-numbingly stale. The sort of example I had in mind was a marriage. The narration is that of the husband's powerless but aware conscience: he sees his wife as the embodiment of mediocrity; as nothing more than a life-sized doll adding to his piece-meal concept of happiness. "If I have a wife, two kids and a golden-retriever, then I will be happy." was this man's concept of happiness. He has come to despise his wife in realisation that she was nothing more than convenient for him. She has no emotional or mental depth, and is as fleetingly materialistic as her husband was concerning long-term happiness. Unconsciously the husband knows this and outwardly dares nothing more than aloofness. The similie to cheap china (Think Precious Moments factory defects) personifies those personality flaws in one of his wife's trinkets. It is cheap, and she probably hasn't looked at it since she placed it in a window-sill years ago. She thought it was cute when she bought it. All of that is a direct metaphore to the manner in which her husband married her. The last stanza shows that the husband, although aware of the numbing relationship, is too guilty and too much like his wife to do anything about it. He was right, he did deserve her. In fact he's so much like his wife, he feels himself going emotionally blank; any passion for life only festering away beneath a shroud of apathy and self-inflicted imprisonment. The dust of neglect: from his wife and himself. In the last line, he has become her. The lifeless marriage of a couple, dead to themselves and eachother. Who says you can't have too much in common? -Cynical Icarus
Recommended Posts