Imagism = Dark Pits of Swarthy Darkness
I was going to start this entry differently, but I just saw a woman carrying around the Gospels-According-to-Anne-Rice, and have to stop a moment and ask why the world is so cruel and unjust. Whhhhhhhy????!??
Anyway, I wrote me a poem! Hooooooray! Topic being, write a poem in the imagist style. I hate imagism. But I kind of like my poem:
It'd sooner come down than stay up,
the house where Ethel used to live.
The whole frame shudders
sagging under the weight
of attic ghosts and dust,
atrophying kitchen cabinets
where blue china goes gray
smelling of the mice
poison never cleared out,
and the old woman that it did.
Photos of spectres in ivory frames
dry up the disease-speckled wallpaper,
sucking time from dead clocks
until all you can see is their eyes.
You can count the spiders to pass the years,
among the chipped spoons and
rusted geraniums in the garden
where sepia-tinted children used to play
before they all fell into dark holes
and disappeared.
Watch from dank windowpanes
the linen-shrouded cushions and armoires
in bedrooms entwined by narrow halls
and matted rugs where roaches decay
and wonder, did they move?
Six bedrooms, four baths,
(Who cares if the water's dust?)
the inheritors say to me--
Buy Clorox and call a priest
Get us 200 thousand, at least.
The funeral black's still fresh pressed,
and though the old woman's just in the ground,
the mortgage--oh the mortgage--still goes on.
***
I had to write an "Ars[e] Imagica" immediately afterward to get the taste out of my mouth--'cuz some things not even Listerine can get out--but there it is. This week's dive into the pretentious; make of it what you will.
I ain't-a gatherin' no fucking rosebuds.
Anyway, I wrote me a poem! Hooooooray! Topic being, write a poem in the imagist style. I hate imagism. But I kind of like my poem:
It'd sooner come down than stay up,
the house where Ethel used to live.
The whole frame shudders
sagging under the weight
of attic ghosts and dust,
atrophying kitchen cabinets
where blue china goes gray
smelling of the mice
poison never cleared out,
and the old woman that it did.
Photos of spectres in ivory frames
dry up the disease-speckled wallpaper,
sucking time from dead clocks
until all you can see is their eyes.
You can count the spiders to pass the years,
among the chipped spoons and
rusted geraniums in the garden
where sepia-tinted children used to play
before they all fell into dark holes
and disappeared.
Watch from dank windowpanes
the linen-shrouded cushions and armoires
in bedrooms entwined by narrow halls
and matted rugs where roaches decay
and wonder, did they move?
Six bedrooms, four baths,
(Who cares if the water's dust?)
the inheritors say to me--
Buy Clorox and call a priest
Get us 200 thousand, at least.
The funeral black's still fresh pressed,
and though the old woman's just in the ground,
the mortgage--oh the mortgage--still goes on.
***
I had to write an "Ars[e] Imagica" immediately afterward to get the taste out of my mouth--'cuz some things not even Listerine can get out--but there it is. This week's dive into the pretentious; make of it what you will.
I ain't-a gatherin' no fucking rosebuds.