Slough of Despond
I am a window onto God:
look through my eyes and see Him there.
I am the grain beneath the sod.
I am the blue and empty air.
A veil that flickers at the edge of sight
holds back the heavens from us. Some have pined
for their epiphany, as folk will do.
Now, I have met epiphany – I might
as well have stood on the sea floor. To find
the air again is work. To start anew.
I haven’t brushed my teeth in, oh, three days,
nor made the bed. I keep a diary
for my psychiatrist, and what it says
is nothing. There is nothing here to see.
Were all souls saved at last? I could not free
one insect, as I sat strait-jacketed
in my locked cell. Today though, a new me
sits here as if returning from the dead.
The sun comes up on my snow-pocked back yard,
like some sword rusted through and incomplete.
On my road back to where the sane hold guard,
night meets the day, and it deserves a seat.
Slough of Despond
Hi John
I like its unfashionable subject matter and its rhyminess(if that's a word).
Theres's a Hopkins-esqe straining towards the spiritual in the every-day. If it were me I'd just go full on old school and stick to quatrains. Enjoyed
Tony
I like its unfashionable subject matter and its rhyminess(if that's a word).
Theres's a Hopkins-esqe straining towards the spiritual in the every-day. If it were me I'd just go full on old school and stick to quatrains. Enjoyed
Tony
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Robert Graves
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Robert Graves
Hi Tony,
Thank you for the good word! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'll take a comparison to Hopkins any day of the week. I am happy that you see a "straining for the spiritual in the everyday" here - in my mania, it was precisely the everyday that was transformed into something other and new. A pregnant waitress became Shekhinah. As Eluard wrote, "There is another world and it is this one."
It's too bad religion is so unfashionable that a first-hand account of psychosis, which I think is not so very old-fashioned, gets swallowed up in that discomfort, but I think you're right - my psychosis/religion MS. typically does not fare well in poetry contests, and I think that and the rhyme contribute. I would have hoped contest judges would see here a stifled voice they really hadn't heard before, which they do bang on about. But there we go.
I like your approach of just letting my freak flag fly and putting the whole thing in quatrains. The sestet (ABCABC) is tough to change, but I've turned the huitain back into two quatrains. Thanks for the nudge!
Cheers,
John
Thank you for the good word! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I'll take a comparison to Hopkins any day of the week. I am happy that you see a "straining for the spiritual in the everyday" here - in my mania, it was precisely the everyday that was transformed into something other and new. A pregnant waitress became Shekhinah. As Eluard wrote, "There is another world and it is this one."
It's too bad religion is so unfashionable that a first-hand account of psychosis, which I think is not so very old-fashioned, gets swallowed up in that discomfort, but I think you're right - my psychosis/religion MS. typically does not fare well in poetry contests, and I think that and the rhyme contribute. I would have hoped contest judges would see here a stifled voice they really hadn't heard before, which they do bang on about. But there we go.
I like your approach of just letting my freak flag fly and putting the whole thing in quatrains. The sestet (ABCABC) is tough to change, but I've turned the huitain back into two quatrains. Thanks for the nudge!
Cheers,
John