Sunday, July 27, 2008

Dawn Could be the Most Beautiful Ending

In the tiniest of gesture lies the shallowest acceptance
Though I've paced the squiggly line drawn around me
From all obtuse and blank angles
somehow, the guilt stirring for a game I've fairly played churns
Burdening my ears shut with a pale orange buzz
While keeping the door ever-so slightly cracked

Never be my shaping
I beg you, be your own contour with pastels for which only those eyes can dream
Go through it!
I refuse to lower the horizon on woven sails
sewn with the need for an ocean large enough for unconditional gusts
This, I understand…as naively I am being portrayed

I wanted to be gentler!
I am only following the script for which was written,
passing the time locking myself out…
Even so, I am not hollow

Susie E.

4 comments:

Jonathan said...

"Though I've paced the squiggly line drawn around me
From all obtuse and blank angles
somehow, the guilt stirring for a game I've fairly played churns
Burdening my ears shut with a pale orange buzz
While keeping the door ever-so slightly cracked"

To me the squiggly line suggests the barriers you've raised around yourself, the slightly-cracked door symbolising your willingness to let your guard down, but not too much, too soon.

"Never be my shaping
I beg you, be your own contour with pastels for which only those eyes can dream
Go through it!"

But then this part seems to be you telling someone else to leave through that door, to define themselves by themselves rather than attempting to do so by reference to you, or imposing their ideal of you on you.

Mark_W said...

Susie,

Indeed. Apart from Quetz’s comments on “Never by my shaping” above, I was particularly moved, by
I refuse to lower the horizon on woven sails
sewn with the need for an ocean large enough for unconditional gusts


To me, as, (I think,) with Quetz, this poem suggests the tension involved in any relationship in finding a balance between compromise and the hope of sailing an unconditional ocean with someone, unheeding of where the gusts may lead...For me, what’s particularly moving is the suggestion (I think: I may of course be dead wrong!) that the scripts and portrayals we make and define each other by are what in the end prevents this unconditional sailing, rather than the people themselves. Certainly there have been times when I’ve wished I’d been confident enough to “be my own contour” rather a shape that I thought someone wanted me to be…

Aho! Very nice one, again…

Mark_W

Susie Q said...

Jonathan and Mark_W,

Very interesting interpretations! ;) You both grasp the essence of this poem but have both carried it into pleasant twists for which I am elated and intrigued.

The fact alone that I have two fine gentlemen with astounding intelligence and talents for writing reading my poems makes me feel honored and the punch to keep writing.

Jonathan,

I found it quite stimulating that you thought the squiggly line was a barrier that I had constructed. When I wrote this I had intended to exude a barrier, but a barrier I have blamed on others. However, I had to go back and reread my own words which clued me into my own personal nuances or contributions to the said barrier...damn the psyche!

Mark_W

Only you can pick out the most complicated verse! I so dig this about you! You have a gift of breaking down what most people would never think could be broken down with pizazz (I love that word and use it so rarely--I get to use it...woo hoo...shh, I know I am a geek).

Your fondness of the bit pertaining to the sail is again my favorite part of this scrawled poem. You are dancing all around my intent...but again you hit on some real core issues I am having with this said situation making me dig even deeper into myself. Damn YOU!!! LOL. Of course I am just kidding!

Thank you both!

Mark_W said...

Susie,

Thanks for the kind words - though it's people like you and Quetz that have the talent for writing!

Only you can pick out the most complicated verse! I so dig this about you! You have a gift of breaking down what most people would never think could be broken down with pizazz

I do try and be difficult if possible ;) [And you're right, pizazz is a splendid word!] I've always thought (it's a case Richard Dawkins makes so eloguently in Unweaving the Rainbow) that wondering about why or how something works can only make things more beautiful, not less, and the great thing about poetry is that there are potentially as many different reasons "why" or "how" as there are readers...