Highway
This next poem was not a success, which is why I never submitted it anywhere. But what's interesting is why. As I've noted, I have a decided love for - some might almost call it an obsession with - structured poetry. I wanted to master every form, including the various forms of the sonnet, and one form I hadn't played with was the Petrarchan sonnet, and so, when the first two lines of this poem came into my mind, I decided to try to write one.
Disaster. Well, not quite disaster - I think a few lines of this are ok - but overall, the poem feels forced to me: forced rhymes (and a couple of rhymes that are just absurd), forced meter, forced images. And part of the problem was that aside from the first couple of lines, I really didn't have a point.
It was a good writing lesson: technique and structure can only do so much for you. Which is why I include it here. And I haven't quite given up hope on mastering the form.
HIGHWAY
It happens on the highway heading home.
Low streams of dusky smoke blaze into gold.
Beside us, cars slip by, empty and cold
the sky twists and shifts and forms faery foam -
A goddess bends to take it for her comb.
Not that we see this, not we who have sold
our souls to our desktops, which we are told
is worth the lost sunsets we do not roam.
Someday we may die here, out on the road
watching the cars slip by, empty and cold.
Or perhaps we shall die watching water
shimmer and swirl in sunlight sallowed
by raging fires. We might feel paroled.
Or not. To us other things burn hotter.
(July 2000)
Disaster. Well, not quite disaster - I think a few lines of this are ok - but overall, the poem feels forced to me: forced rhymes (and a couple of rhymes that are just absurd), forced meter, forced images. And part of the problem was that aside from the first couple of lines, I really didn't have a point.
It was a good writing lesson: technique and structure can only do so much for you. Which is why I include it here. And I haven't quite given up hope on mastering the form.
HIGHWAY
It happens on the highway heading home.
Low streams of dusky smoke blaze into gold.
Beside us, cars slip by, empty and cold
the sky twists and shifts and forms faery foam -
A goddess bends to take it for her comb.
Not that we see this, not we who have sold
our souls to our desktops, which we are told
is worth the lost sunsets we do not roam.
Someday we may die here, out on the road
watching the cars slip by, empty and cold.
Or perhaps we shall die watching water
shimmer and swirl in sunlight sallowed
by raging fires. We might feel paroled.
Or not. To us other things burn hotter.
(July 2000)