2004-06-02
A Misunderstood Poem

hearing: I Drive A Lot - Starflyer 59 (and if you mean it a lot...talking just to waste my day...)
reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot
wearing: mhmmmm I have my composition book on my lap...

Due to the delicate nature of the poem I wrote, I am going to do something possibly slightly unartistic, and give forth an explanation of it first, to dispel any uneasiness or confusion ahead of time

It began as I sat, gazing out my window, settling into the...lush sounds of Starflyer 59's Dual Overhead Cam. Thoughts of the chapter I had just read in Middlemarch drifted in and out of my dreamy conscious.

One line, from out of nowhere, barraged my thoughts.

"A tableau of the sort which Renoir would envision"

I didn't understand. I hardly knew Renoir and his paintings. I have never made a study of art, so certainly not any Impressionism.

Yet, structures for the continuance of this line into a poem, insisted on constructing themselves and trickling through my mind.

Dreamy folds of lilac and blush starlight in the form of drapey dresses laying delicately on the perfect ivory skin of fairly shaped, chesnut locked women, mingling in lush English country gardens with their dashing suitors began to mosey through my mind. Exquisite architectures of wide, vague metaphors of passion, poverty, world, and woe, dashed across my senses.

A relation to Renoir was lost (not that I could really have had one in the first place) and the shadowy pronoun of "a great painter" replaced him.

I then shifted the poem's focus and drew a few draughts from the well of my own emotion to colour and flavour the poem.

Note: Not a mirror of my own situations, not a painting to express them, merely the emotion I feel, was found to be useful in rendering the imaginary situations of fantasy characters whom I am not acquainted with, accurately.

I am still too shy of trying to paint effective portraits of real situations, despite my strength of feeling.

I prefer to pour it out in creations of elysian companions of fantastical aspect, wholly under my jurisdiction.

I am their creator.

I am their goddess.

I am the poet.

This is my poem.

A tableau of the sort which a great painter would envision and deign to paint

With the ceiling laid bare and the stars well arranged

A pretty girl's soft skin as she reclines in the flowers

Her innocent heart poured out among the jade

A tender caressing of words soothe out of a lover's gentle tongue

To set the night afire

Poised and bound away to the corners of the earth

Staring from their seperate destinies to the wasteland inbetween them

To banish it with a kiss

Then steep the packaged care in a pool of bliss

And shed the hard exterior

Laying cold a naked amour to bathe 'neath the flames

And warm the shadowy reaches of their hitherto frigid souls

As they surrender up their selves to this impassioned slaying

Yes, several very minor changes have been made since I first posted this. Most notable though, is the change of line five. There were some mistakes in transcription, and minor alterations to previous lines which affected it. It has now been restored to original wording.

before & & after