The Wild
In a tangled midnight trap
I had a dream I could not stop,
a madwoman's dream of you the impossible
coming back to me the irretrievable
coming back to me though I know
exactly where this leads; it's
an appetite that grows the more it feeds.
exactly where this leads; it's
an appetite that grows the more it feeds.
I wore the pale denim skirt that falls to my feet,
skin blanked smooth as past erased. You sat
on the sofa, wild mahogany hair shadow sweet
over the upswung deer's eye flash of spark.
I walked right up your scarecrow legs splayed straight out for miles in the dark, you
wrapped your thin player’s fingers
tight round my elbows, quaked my thighs
tight round my elbows, quaked my thighs
looked in my face as if I were
the last good thing before
the apocalypse. Your ember eyes,
your banked laugh ran me through
hot and sharp as a live wire, lit up the blue
deep hollow so long unoccupied
save for the slack jawed creature on the slab
save for the slack jawed creature on the slab
waiting for the dubious gift of life,
all the corpse parts sewn up cunning but drab
put back together clumsy, cold to the bone
without that lightning touch. Now stark alone,
waking, electrocuted questions still twitch
and crackle in its never-animate place;
how do I quiet that black wildness
how do I quiet that black wildness
begot by the fear that owns me
find the wildness that you've shown me
find the wildness that you've shown me
that unmakes the dark's insensate fight
makes dead hearts beat all night
makes dead hearts beat all night
worlds breathe and turn again
beyond my sight?
beyond my sight?
May 2012
Optional Musical Accompaniment
Optional Musical Accompaniment
As always, blogger is playing headgames. This time I can't get the video to play-if it won't play for you either, refresh the page and click the "watch on youtube" button and you'll get it on a new tab. It's worth listening to, though it has a long meandering instrumental intro to set the mood.
Header Photo: Cascadia 2009, by Gord McKenna on flick'r
Header Photo: Cascadia 2009, by Gord McKenna on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons 2.0 License
Holy St Jude the Obscure.... This is amazingly potent a rendition of passionate dark poetry as ever I have read. Phew! let me wipe the sweat from my brow and read it again.
ReplyDeleteThat's the saint I always swear by, too, Kerry. Thanks.
Deletelove the intimacy in walking up the legs....the players fingers on the elbow and...the last good thing before
ReplyDeletethe apocalypse...ha...much...then dr frankenstein...smiles...the last stanza though really is my fav where the questions turn more personal...smiles...
oh dang...i have to wipe some sweat from my brow as well...but...heck....that's the way i want to be looked at...as if I were the last good thing before the apocalypse...ha...love it hedge
ReplyDeleteHard to shake the image of "I walked right up your scarecrow legs /splayed straight out for miles in the dark...."
ReplyDeleteWow! That's some write....some fabulous lines, I loved "Now stark alone,waking, electrocuted questions still twitch and crackle in its never-animate place"
ReplyDeleteseems thats the line, 'last good thing...' powerful stuff.
ReplyDeleteoh my, that ending is fabulous! and i loved these lines:
ReplyDelete"Your ember eyes,
your banked laugh ran me through
hot and sharp as a live wire"
very intense write!
Wow. Excellent work, as always. I think you may well be
ReplyDeletethe last good thing before
the apocalypse.
;-)
dark and intense and intimate and fantastic.
ReplyDeleteJoy- such sadness in this- a take of two hearts seperated - logging to be together but unable to reconcile whatever lurks in the darkness if these lines...your poetry always captivates me...it just has 'something' that draws me in in- maybe its honesty - This poem is love and longing at the deepest depths of the human soul....seriously fascinating and engaging writing...
ReplyDeletesave for the slack jawed creature on the slab
ReplyDeleteall the corpse parts sewn up cunning but drab
and with the tune underlying a vibe -
i got caught up... in your pull back...
I wore the pale denim skirt that falls to my feet,
skin blanked smooth as past erased. You sat
on the sofa, wild mahogany hair shadow sweet
over the upswung deer's eye flash of spark.
I walked right up your scarecrow legs
splayed straight out for miles in the dark, you
wrapped your thin player’s fingers
man - like i was there... i mean i have been, you know... i can relate... you tapped right into it...like spinal...
and i sure as shit have scarecrow legs - :D
cracking piece hedge
Thanks, maestro--glad you could relate--and hope you regained motion painlessly after the spinal tap--at least your scarecrow fingers because I would hate to lose your poetry.
DeleteWow. REALLY impressive.
ReplyDeleteyou have an amazing gift.
i really like your dark intimate expressiveness here
ReplyDeleteradiation rampage
This is a delicious serving of reawakened lust served with a thick gooey dark sauce. Yum! (Well to my tastebuds anyway.)
ReplyDeleteSpot on, m' dear.
DeleteOh, Hedge. The video is playing fine for me--one of my favorite songs EVAH-- and the combination of the music and your words made me cry. It was the third stanza that did me in. But the whole thing captures exquisitely the kinds of feelings and pleasures and sorrows that are awfully hard to put into words. It feels like life, and the things that make life worth the blood and trouble. I admire this poem tremendously.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shay. Some songs just seem to want to be with certain poems. Glad it played for you--all I get is a blank screen.
DeleteYeah, Hedge, the video isn't working for me, and It never even gave me the option of watching on youtube, but I'll just head over there and search for it. Really cool piece here. I love the voice here. That 3rd stanza is crazy good, last good thing before the apocalypse, wow, what a good line. Great ending line as well. Really an excellent piece. Thanks
ReplyDeleteEerily, Joy Ann, the second and third stanza remind of a recurring dream (nightmare), I used to have some years ago. I became completely absorbed into this piece. Terrific write. It is nice to have an opportunity to share over at dVerse.
ReplyDeletePamela
Thanks pamela--always good to see you here, and that is indeed odd about the dream--this was a very vivid one--hard to come back down to the ground afterwards.
DeleteBeautiful, I love it !
ReplyDeleteThe abyss gapes wide in this poem, which offers a glimpse into a horror that may or not be part of a dream, or part of reality, that of the insensate - how I love that word - re-animated, brought back to a savage life.
ReplyDeleteAmazing, Joy...I'm getting a deliverance/mountain man vibe...but I always tend to vibrate a little differently to the reads...and here is not the place to be sharing MY dreams regarding such things...dark, yet inviting and always, always a wow on your imagery. You never fail to rock the song choices either! Might have to call it a night with this one...ending on a high indeed
ReplyDeleteReally, Joy... this is an amazing piece, so descriptive! I especially like stanzas 2 and 3.
ReplyDeleteDamn, this is one of my ALL TIME favorite songs from the Airplane...takes me back to a place so heady and bittersweet, with this album playing over and over all night long--all the "boys and girls" crashed out, splayed out on couches, the floor, in the bathtub...
ReplyDeleteWalked right up your scarecrow legs...I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall...yeah!
It's all brilliant...FIRST magnitude...but then you knew that, damn ya...
Thanks, Timo--you got the vibe right--loved this album back in the day myself--Plastic Fantastic Lover and all, but this song is just...out there in the best part of the ozone. Thanks for the generous reading, my friend.
DeleteAnother excellent piece, Hedge. These are my favorites:
ReplyDelete"In a tangled midnight trap"
the repetition in L4 and L5
"looked in my face as if I were
the last good thing before
the apocalypse" ... Now THAT is passionate longing and desperation that's on a timetable (no time to not fool around).
"all the corpse parts sewn up cunning but drab" (my absolute fave)
"how do I quiet that black wildness"
Thanks, Shawna. Appreciate your acute eye.
DeleteDark, but somehow meditative imagery--the dream seemed real. Evocative phrases.
ReplyDeleteSo very intimate, a passion reawakened and then left wanting.Lots of lovely phrases in this piece.
ReplyDeleteWow!! One line after the other, boom, boom, boom.....simple, beautiful, complex, soft, sexy and raw... That's it!!
ReplyDeleteWhy do the undead keep knocking at that back door down the brainstem, if not to get us to crawl back to the page and try to say it adequately at last? A s if we could button up the wound sufficiently so that it would rest in peace, few crissakes. This gets pretty damn close:
ReplyDelete... a madwoman's dream of you the impossible
coming back to me the irretrievable
coming back to me though I know
exactly where this leads; it's
an appetite that grows the more it feeds ...
But it's not so simple, because love's involved: at least that horror is also the shadow lover, what makes bad lovin' so damn hellishly good. At least, and if only, thank gods, in the writing. This is just the kinda guy to have playing bass with the Strolling Bones Blues Blicker Band down at the roadhouse, loose and feral as a switchblade hidden in a boot ..., though a dude one should run, run for one's eternal life from come closing time, before the dreams set in .... Surely this guy is one of the devils Rilke wasn't quite willing to part with through psychotherapy because he'd also lose the angel there. These Jazzman poems would be interesting to read stacked up together, like some infernal honky-tonk Tarot. - Brendan
Yes--such a mixed bag, but the Rilke quote is pertinent here--this interchange of souls is what sparked the most poems from my pen back when I seldom had the time, inclination or opportunity to write--they would fly out like birds I'd unknowingly been keeping in a cage. So even though this is "why I don't date musicians" I have to realize what I owe to the man who played harp for the Lounge Lizards(for real name, and close to the Blues Blicker moniker, yes?) Thanks for reading B, and as always, for your input and insight.
DeleteThe midnight trap and oh, what an ending. Fabulous depth, dredging darkness with expert imagery and skill.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I thought about that Frankenstein element, and saw that Brian felt it too. As usual, Hedge, beautifully crafted. I like the rhythm here as well. Your poetry is always interesting, and often a challenge to read. :))
ReplyDeleteA classic scene of yearnings and longings of 2 souls separated but nearing. Rightly towards "the last good thing before the apocalypse" At least there's going to be ecstasy in the offing. Great write,Joy, as always!
ReplyDeleteHank
This poem (combined with one of the great songs that nobody remembers anymore) is so personally evocative...I'll be wrestling with memories all day...just hope I wear them out by sundown!
ReplyDeleteJoy, this one is almost too painful for me. A wonderful poem/ sharp vivid original details. k.
ReplyDeleteMy visits here are among the highlights of my poetic week. As usual Joy, this is a quite remarkable poem full of love, loss and intense longing. It sounded bells in my soul. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI almost hear an echo of Frankenstein here, though that might be going too far. It certainly does describe an existence that's reached the depths of sensory response to life. Such a terrifying reality is almost perceptible in your words, as you embody it in sensory and imaginitive terms. I don't know what sparked such terror in you but it's obvious that the dream invokves some vital force that can inspire both death and life. I'm not sure what that might be, but that is probably the source of the immensely attractive though repulsive mystery of the poem. As usual, Joy, this is immensely enjoyable and reaches into depths that call forth the strangest, most substantial intimation of alternative realities.
ReplyDeleteThese are wonderful lines "looked in my face as if I were/the last good thing before/the apocalypse. Your ember eyes,/your banked laugh ran me through/hot and sharp as a live wire, lit up the blue/deep hollow so long unoccupied"
ReplyDeleteI could read them a hundred times.
Wow, Joy, just...wow. This is my favorite of the goodies served up on this buffet. I read the comments, and was surprised at all the mentions of Frankenstein and the undead. I got a completely different vibe, one of a past that will perhaps never be dead, but continue to dwell in that "tangled midnight trap" you mentioned. I wish my own "impossible" would come visit in the night...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Patti--I really wasn't going for anything dark here, except a sort of emotional darkness, but once the poem leaves the pen, it belongs to the reader. It's always interesting to see how people will take one's words. But you've grasped my personal intent really well.
Deleteblack wildness... dead hearts beat all night. you passed me in and out of beautiful moment while the earth rumbles all around the two entwined together. i love the meeting point, the knowing of each other. this has a legend quality than makes me want to crawl up higher into this dark dream fantasy. the pale denim skirt is a detail i so love. what we wear for worthwhile encounters is something we notice, at least of ourselves. on second read, i think this is a detail really popped for me, of this meeting that makes it burst with reality. the scarecrow legs are richly sinister and unreal but so real too. there's a real love here as well, in the moment before some sort of great fall. it's a secret rendezvous.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ed. That was my hippie skirt back in the day, a garment I lived in so much it was part of me, pale from being washed a million times...I still have it somewhere though seldom find an occasion for wearing it. You also caught that feeling of knowing the other--that was very present in the dream and I was wondering if it got through. Really appreciate your comment.
DeleteWow. I love the shock of the fourth stanza, love the contrast of the phrase "put back together clumsy". Brilliant, singing language - you don't need no Jefferson Airplane. The video worked for me but I turned it off in favor of reading aloud.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mark. That means a lot coming from you, and the video is indeed now mysteriously working. WTF?? But I'm enormously flattered you preferred the poem.
Deletevery nicely put :)
ReplyDeletei'm back... new look, same old crap :O lol
The rhyme you carry makes this flow so beautifully...its quite marvelous to read aloud. an intense expression with palpable sensuality and emotion, really well penned. ~ Rose
ReplyDeleteWeighted words. That's how I feel...I feel the weight of the words you've pulled into this powerful piece.
ReplyDeleteYou have a wonderful way of creating atmosphere with your words...beyond just what is seen/heard.
That is some dream boiling in your mind's eye... you pinned it still breathing.. thank god. So easy to relate to this.. intensely physical while also having the psychological whispers in your ears.
ReplyDeleteThose details.. the skirt, the age-erased skin, the legs, the pre-apocalyptic look.. it was my dream! Wonderful.
Quieting that black wildness is your job, and you do it well with your lyrical verses, with monsters and ghouls and all manner of dark lords. It is a mysterious delight, or delightful mystery, to see how you will wield your pen against the shadows next. Wonderful!
ReplyDeleteThis is so intimate and real that it almost feels like an invasion of privacy to read it. And, it made me cry.
ReplyDeleteAAAh, miss Grace.
ReplyDelete