"The Garden"
From out of the night you came, your hand making to clasp,
And the funeral proceeded in my eyes as you slipped inside.
I gave my body to you in between the glistening blades.
You touched the side of my head, and it meant nothing at all,
And every hope I could scrounge fell away like ash from our lips.
![[-]](https://gayspeak.com/images/duende_v3_local/collapse.png)
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Chiaroscuro
I. The Swans (Yellowstone, 1999)
The light of early January
binds frozen cataracts
in amber.
Beneath, white down
brandished over black water,
the two arc their bodies
in the caldera’s steam, silent.
And I want to be the rock subsumed,
to stir beneath the surface
and dissolve in the heat--
a plume rising
from the earth--to have them
in the core of me.
II. Thomas Tallis: Spem In Alium (Hope in the Other)
We sing shadow
into polyphony,
our voices like astral
bodies, an eclipse
shedding silhouettes
into the atmosphere.
Each obscures the other—
And at the apex
the corona augments,
becomes brilliant: sun
reflected in the lunar surface.
We fear the abandoning
light, and reach
for an emblem
of the earth.
And in the dark, not knowing
the orbit of the Other,
align ourselves with an exhaled breath.
•
As I said, your work is quite good, surprisingly so for you age . . . though, there is a strong poetic tradition in Ireland, which might account for some of it. You are very good with imagery and your vocabulary is well used. One thing that you might think of working on is sound. This includes cadence, rhythm, and also the quality of sound each word holds in itself. A good way of doing this is by reading the poem aloud to yourself. If you find a word a bit out of sorts with the rest of the line, stanza, or poem, attempt to find an alternate that has the more desired quality. The last poem I posted comes from some of my early writings, from around when I was your age. My poetry tends to take on a more transcendental tone. This is representative of the type of poetry I began reading. Where I grew up there were few openly gay people, and I found my connection to my sexuality through literature.
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Wintereis Wrote:As I said, your work is quite good, surprisingly so for you age . . . though, there is a strong poetic tradition in Ireland, which might account for some of it. You are very good with imagery and your vocabulary is well used. One thing that you might think of working on is sound. This includes cadence, rhythm, and also the quality of sound each word holds in itself. A good way of doing this is by reading the poem aloud to yourself. If you find a word a bit out of sorts with the rest of the line, stanza, or poem, attempt to find an alternate that has the more desired quality. The last poem I posted comes from some of my early writings, from around when I was your age. My poetry tends to take on a more transcendental tone. This is representative of the type of poetry I began reading. Where I grew up there were few openly gay people, and I found my connection to my sexuality through literature.
Thank you. My inspiration usually comes from listening to certain sounds and imagining sensations. I have been taking the whole sound into account. My poetry used to all be randomly slotted together in terms of sound and rhythm (as you can see in my posts from about a year ago -shudders-) with interesting imagery as its only redeeming feature. I had to discipline myself and shave them down. I am still learning. I should also mention that my poetry is meant to be read quite slowly.
I generally don't like Irish poetry, apart from my friends' output - Eavan Boland? BLECH! 
I liked both your poems, particularly - like you said, rather transcendental, but you make it work, no histrionics. I adore the first stanza concerning cataracts frozen in amber - fanatastic stuff! I can tell though that they are your earlier work. Hopefully I will continue to hone my wordcraft as well! 
•
"God"
You collect at the back of my throat,
Necrotic and warm like a baby spilling forth,
Your face in the light of the television,
That, that must be what God looks like.
•
"A Man In Bed, Lost Like A Touch"
She bled him out like words from her mouth.
But he is the one that had put them there,
And he has own, his suicide porn.
Lives like clustering dots beyond the pane,
He connects their ebb with his eyes.
And he’s on top of the world.
•
"Some Time Earlier This Morning"
I'm just the Earth, shredded of its seeds,
I crack beneath the morning light's weight,
Every indentation could so almost be you.
Oh, how taut what once was is,
What's left is poking through.
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"Enemic"
I hollowed myself out for you,
My lips the sweetest bidet.
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