Sunday Scribblings #106 ["Fearless"]
Walk off into the paparazzi night, blue-stoned lips, narrowsmith dollhouse, mercenary rhyme. That’s my blood down there—treasure rears its ugly heads, visionary times, distillate joys. The applicants are waiting. We’ve brought you round to see the ashes, but the ashes never linger, pride never lingers, just the astral plane of our disinfected souls. I know no better than you, I pried my eyes out, there’s nothing left but augury, the fashionable turns of late afternoons in June, sun splayed across the Charles, honeysuckle at play: stifled, still lambent, mortuary bloom. Was it across this bridge, was it in this frame, should we linger or perish on? I fear the last of you, I fear the least of you, I fear the least that may last beyond these times. Carrion. Bestiary: jaguar’s doom. Play the midnights until they’ve run themselves out: I…can…no longer…spare. Territorial imperatives, the dragon’s heat. These your visitations, into august night.
posted by murat11 at 7:58 PM
16 Comments:
I won't pretend that I understand all this, but I love it anyway, its mysterious echoes and sudden crisp images, it's lushness immediately contradicted by ugliness and brutality. It is poetry put on the page to resemble prose. I still don't understand it!
Granny Smith: When I publish my Collected Poems, I will have you write the forward. Not to go all Gertrude Stein (or more accurately, Andre Breton) on you, but as a latter day surrealist, it's refreshing to have a reader meet such a prose poem on its own terms. I certainly do not understand it all meself, that's for sure, but your description captures much of what drives the poetic engines when the beat is on. To quote those poets laureate of Athens, GA (sorry REM), Hop in my Chrysler, it's as big as a whale and it's about to set sail!
Peace to you.
Paschal, I didn't understand all of it either but it reminded me of Princess Di. They just finished her much delayed and long time wasting inquisition. I bet her kids were glad to see it over and done with.
Peace!
Lee: How wonderful: the beauty of the surrealist mind: Princess Di is one of the last people I would ever consider writing about (cynical me had a hard time with all the - to me - bizarre Di-worship amongst Tejanos that I knew: Elvis worship, okay, but Di? It didn't compute)...and yet: re-reading this piece, I can see vividly the Di-echoes. It's the beauty, too, of the writer/reader collaboration: the work is worked out/puzzled out by both, not by any means just the writer. Thank you for your openness and willingness to bring eye and mind to the big whale.
Peace.
"Play the midnights until they've run themselves out." Indeed. Play them again, Paschal, and the eyes pried out, throw them, with the sun, across the river of words. Call across that river. Smell those words returning, honeysuckle at play.
Sweetly, to high heaven.
San: I love Lee's discovery of the Di-echoes. The dangers of surrealism: it may even give voice to that which you most easily dismiss. The honeysuckle, the Charles, the mortuary bloom: lurking in that lambent mess is Bill Faulkner's male Ophelia, brother Quentin Compson: he's memorialized on a tiny brick-sized plaque on a bridge that crawls across Cambridge/Boston's River Charles: drowned in the fading of honeysuckle...
That's all the heaven there is, no?
Reading this gave me a surreal feeling!
Great post!
shapely ghosts
gautami: Me, too!! Thank you!
Love the surreal peeling away of ideas and the play + interplay of words and illusions. For some strange reason, the death of Princess Diana seemed to haunt your words.
Gemma
Gemma: Against all odds, it seems the Di's have it. Thank you for your words and visit. I, too, am a teacher of teenagers. Peace to you and your fellow travelers.
Paparazzi night...those are the words that bring Princess Di to the mind. Interesting thoughts here. Jaguar's doom is strong and play the midnights... excellent phrases.
OK, since the Di's have it, let's read that sun splayed across the Charles as PRINCE Charles sprawled on the Riviera, tanning his pale London hide.
I am so sorry. I simply could not resist.
In all honesty, I didn't hear any Di overtones the first time I read, but after reading Lee's comment, I read again and they were all over the place and downright powerful. BUT if we're going to have a Di thing happening, maybe the river Charles should morph into the Seine. Then again, maybe not.
I see, Ms San: "the" Charles as some wayward self-referential tic (as others refer to themselves in the third person, as in, say, "Murat is not happy with all these Princess interpretations...").
Clearly, the Princess is getting her revenge and "the" Murat his comeuppance for his snide remarks about all the inane folderol of pre-middle-aged Tejana warblings about the lost princess lo those many years ago. Austin (Austin!) was rife with princess shrines and princess fan-gatherings. I felt the town was turning all Elton John on me (and not Tumbleweed Connections EJ). I know, I know: this certainly shows "the" Murat at his most unsympathetic and churlish.
In recompense, I'm soon to join the Psychic Friends Network: I'll be channeling "the" Di.
I fear the least of me...
Tumblewords: Mea culpa. Clearly, the lost queen has found her mark. I submit.
ever the realist,, i have a difficult time with surreal interpretation,, but i find the images you paint to be real enough that i can grasp the emotions,, if not the intentions attached...
paisley, thank you for your openness: I think it's emotions, pulse, sensations, and internal rhythms that write the images, and as with ms emily's admonition, there is the recurring inner imperative to tell things "slant."
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