Gingerbread Man, or
How I Got Away
How I Got Away
Drawn to the wreck
rubbernecking your
rubbernecking your
everbleeding heart
your crippled soul, a young
fool still I expected that the vast
disassembly of you, out of control
scattered and laying
in parts,
could make me whole.
And so you did
if pain itself is a completer
of a circle that can’t
be finished any neater.
So you did
know the way
know the way
to make my heart whir
like a clockwork toy
until time came to pay,
to load the gun, barrel by barrel,
against a fast sloping night feral
with teeth. You screamed
against a fast sloping night feral
with teeth. You screamed
like a caught thief
broke like a gingerbread boy
stumbling on your crumbly leg,
button eye glazed with fears
button eye glazed with fears
your fingerless mitt, so round
and soft,
raised uselessly, too late
at the oncoming bears,
making lovely bait.
April 2012
Posted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub
Posted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub
Image: Gingerbread Man, by Danny Key on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons License
Ah yes, the womanly belief that we can be savior. Sometimes the pain takes us down farther into ourselves where the real healing happens. Once again your juxtapositions are haunting, the toy and the danger, sort of like most of those old children's tales that have been cleaned up to be danger-free to the younguns.
ReplyDeleteoy i fear for the gingerbread man...but i imagine the hot wolf saliva is already dripping down his candied face...i def pick up on the savior complex...and it goes far beyond women...sadly we get caught up in it and often go down with it...when we run out of bullets...
ReplyDeleteThis is so darkly powerful.
ReplyDeleteReading again...
"....a fast sloping night feral with teeth".......this POEM has teeth, girl. Wowzers!
ReplyDeleteGosh...that ending is dark & scary. I was transfixed by this...poor gingerbread man...
ReplyDeleteVery cool--scarey! Relationships tend to eat one up, and the other. I love the mitts and feet and poor crumble though sense that perhaps there's a bit of passive aggression in this gingerbread man.
ReplyDeleteThe opening stanza feels particularly strong to me though. This is a very universal sort of phenomenon, very very well-expressed here. K.
This particular cookie should consider being eaten by bears a merciful end, actually. But as always, one's own fault for answering the doorbell, yes? Many years ago now, but as you say, the phenomenon is by no means unique. Thanks,K.
Deletei wasn't afraid of gingerbread men before i read this..... a dark and powerful write hedge..somehow started a slide show of all kinds of brokenness in my head...ugh..fine write
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Then my work here is done. ;_)Thanks, Claudia.
DeleteI agree with Claudia so many images of brokenness whirling in my brain..I think being female predisposes us to a savior complex..at least it is so in my life.
ReplyDeleteI ALWAYS felt the gingerbread boy got what he deserved... And applauded the fox for doing with the cookie what it was made for! ;)
ReplyDeleteWe love a bit of ginger, don't we? And then it loses it head and floats nonchalantly in your tea, waiting for it's saviour. Love the analogy, loved the poem.
ReplyDeleteMy oh my...now someone's in a dark little mood, aren't they Joy? The breaking is profound, and unsettling...a distinct look at the more horror-like elements of relationships, to be sure. Or at least, the ones that don't quite make it--the ones that get themselves all gobbled up. Potent...
ReplyDelete...and quite possibly tasty.
Here's the spice and the rub. Bad boys never are as "cute" as they seem even if they set our hearts to whir. This work full of imagination, wordplay, intelligence, and insight. Thought provoking piece and also satisfying. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteDancing on the dark side of one's soul make one feel edgy but, captures the readers attention. The gingerbread boy crumbling now, to get that imagine out of my head. Cleverly written.
ReplyDeleteI read this one several times and smiled more each time. I think so many of us know a gingerbread boy or have one in our past. It was oddly satisfying to read of his demise!
ReplyDelete"I expected that the vast
ReplyDeletedisassembly of you, out of control
scattered and laying
in parts,
could make me whole." Wow!
Yeah - gingerbread man have an inherent quality of creepy freak dont they? - love that...made me excited when i read the title and the pic and then you etch out a tale that makes me itch in that way you know you cant scratch - shhiiiiit - i live for that feeling and you topped up my levels goooood :) - still chuckling at your comment... proper good too! - cheers hedge :)
ReplyDeletewow....your word play is ace.... there is panic and chaos...gingerbread...you are a creative hedgewitch. :)
ReplyDeleteWoulda thought the Witch would have a whole gingerbread house to lure the innocent for devouring, not just some crumb who always wanted to be upon your lips. My guess, that was a mere gingerbread boy. And he just told you to go gingerly to annoy! LOL
ReplyDeleteI often find myself enamored of your language before I get to the content of the poem. I'm learning to read you aloud now, and really like that, and want to read it aloud again now....
ReplyDeleteWOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By far one of my favs of yours. Pure excellence in presentation.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the time a missionary friend sat down with the native Heathens of the village--for dinner!
ReplyDeleteMy German grandmother made Gingerbread MEN. I remember sitting aty a table, waiting patiently for one of them to get up and walk...and talk. I was somewhere between age of 4 and 24.--grin!
You really, REALLY write good, Ms Hedgewitch, Ma'am!
Thank you Steve--and now I want one of those cookies--but only if it's not moving. ;_)
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMy insane tablet going comment crazy....as I was trying to post....love the depth to this.the flow and embedded rhyme perfect to the read! ~ Rose
ReplyDeleteThanks rose. And believe me, OLN commenting can make your fingers go crazy, let alone your devices.
DeleteMommy says I'm not spozedta play with you anymore. She says you're vie-er-lent and that we weren't spozedta execute our treats. But I will sneak over anyways.
ReplyDeleteMeet m3 by the big tree with the glowing eyeballz and we'll hav sum fun. Bring yer mommy's makeup.
DeleteSad
ReplyDeletewith a side
of satisfaction
!
Wow. This is really powerful.
ReplyDeleteThis is excellent work. I love it when a poem takes a well-worn metaphor or character or situation... and then turns it on its head, so that as a metaphor it becomes more discerning, more relevant, more powerful.
ReplyDeleteOooh, this is a good un. Do you stick pins in your gingerbread men too?
ReplyDeleteOnly to hear them squeal.
DeleteStrong write Hedge. Great tone throughout, atmospheric comes to mind. Great discussion on pain, and it's effects. The breaking of the leg, ouch. button eyed glazed with fears, great line. Love the baited ending as well. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteWow, does this ever resonate with me! Have a gingerbread situation right now...have done it before...when will I/we learn...this is not a cookie..we didn't bakeit, break it or make it. Better to leave the oven and the bullets alone. Thanks for sharing this one!
ReplyDeleteThe uses of disenchantment are almost as many as the devices of enchantment, and here the fractured sense of the fairy tale ropes the trope of the breaking gingerbread boy cleanly. What mama bear wouldn't be enticed into the pain-snare of "The vast disassembly of you" ? And when the infernal watchworks turn, as they must, what an unsurprising surprise that love would suddenly become "a fast-sloping night feral / with teeth." Gingerbread men walk and talk like dudes but break like little boys, eh. Neatly and finely woven with the internal rhymes and a casual meter that makes the hike horrific beginning to end. We've read the fairy tales, know the conclusions, yet are always so personally affronted when the usual sick crew of djinns vulture round at the end. - Brendan
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, B. You nailed it. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my; some just don't know all you need is a gift or two--heart, courage,etc--from the Wizard to link arms and make it through the dark woods.
DeleteBrim full with surprises, especially the ending. Like always,this poem is many layered and resonant with a satisfying complexity.
ReplyDelete"broke like a gingerbread boy
ReplyDeletestumbling on your crumbly leg,
button eye glazed with fears
your fingerless mitt, so round
and soft,"
No fun being him, especially when the time came to pY. An interesting way to tell the story of how things crumble. Scary image, too. Grim but realistic throughout, with good lines. Nice work.
Sadness and direct insight into past love always leaves us aware of what could have been, a touchstone of where we are now. The gingerbread man as metaphor is very suggestive of the sweet, but also carries that strange pleasure we have as children of tearing someone apart, if only a simulacrum. It is strange the pleasure we take in that, and I imagine there's some linkage to ancient rituals that deal with wicker men or some such thing. Love can tear us apart as much as bring us to oneness. Excellent work, as always.
ReplyDeleteand through the fool all things are possible. i dig it.
ReplyDelete'drawn to the wreck of you'- i wonder how many of us have tried to do this in our lives - try and save someone- try and make someone compete again...at the time are we foolish? Or doing something positive...can we love those that are broken? Maybe if they're broken their pieces don't fit with ours- because I guess we're all broken in a way....
ReplyDeleteyes, that's the unspoken here, that the speaker is also broken, though hopefully less so, and looking for the fix...good to see you, Stu--yours was excellent.
DeleteThis feels so familiar. I think you've shined a light on a secret little spot in us all we'd rather not admit to having.
ReplyDeleteI read the other comments, and was surprised to see mention of a "savior" theme. That sent me back to read the poem again to see how I'd missed it. I'm still missing it. To me, it sounds as if, had the gingerbread man not already come to a crumbled fate, the speaker might have been all to happy to hurry that along.
Perceptive of you, PK. In the opening stanza, I try to make it plain the person looking for a savior is the narrator, who is bitterly disappointed, the remainder of the poem explaining why...*but* and it's an important *but* once the poem leaves the pen it belongs to the reader--I think many have tried that role themselves, and it struck a chord. Thanks for reading.
Delete"if pain itself is a completer
ReplyDeleteof a circle that can’t
be finished any neater."
Uh-huh.
a dark and powerful write, fantastic !
ReplyDeleteThe pace speeds up as the intensity builds... I especially like the second to last stanza.
ReplyDeleteWell done. Dead on about those relationships that are detrimental and yet we're drawn into anyway. Great use of the gingerbread man to show how we expect much and get it in ways we didn't expect...by the pain these broken people cause.
ReplyDeleteThat 2nd last stanza had me salivating ;)
ReplyDeleteoh wow... this is so wonderfully intense, the photo made me smile immediately, just yesterday, for some strange reason, i was chanting run, run, as fast as you can...
ReplyDeleteyou have spun a fabulous version here.