The poem I wanted to write for you

the truest truths remain incomprehensible, I guess Unrevised

The poem that I wanted to write for you

should be figured in a paint drop,

something between Pollock before coffee

and Blake with dishevelled hair

in the middle of the night, awoken

by the owls who are not what they seem;

the poem should contain the free fall

between my anxious toes on which I stand

to look over the bridge or kiss you,

for all the bridges on which we ever stood

never fell and the water, the water

was violently streaming upwards,

for it knew where it came from

and forever tried to go back and turn

sticky like the honey you brought from your mountains,

and the poem should blur itself like winter trees

that speed beside us or words that mispell

dreams,

within dreams,

within dreams,

within dreams,

within us,

no, the poem should be hard to get

like expensive blue mornings

and hard to move like Doig's boat that neither

swims, nor sinks,

yet philosophically taints the mood of the water

and it was pretty damn good mood

for it had made you draw again and again and again

and again and again a yellow plant

in that red heart's boat,

on which we were both Chaplin

for that patch of laughter,

unfinished should be the poem

like Coleridge's Kubla Khan

or da Vinci's Gran Cavallo,

unfinished and empty of full stops,

just maybe an endless amount of comas,

like ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

which were just like the coma you get

from your head bumped into the bed

during hardcore love,

it should be a silence poem,

yet

full of I-scream-you-scream

incomprehensibility of orgasms

that turn everything into green gardens

of chaos,

and oh, the poem should have a few blank

spots for secret cats that

found themselves purring in

the heart of mad-missing-you-nights,

your Janus-faced muse with spread legs

should be the poem with no keys

that I can take back in erased

paragraphs of finding the worst in us,

for raw hearts give birth to both

fire and fire and

what I find in you,

I find in me- that purity

of free fall between the brush and the canvas,

unfinished-yet-perfect-middle-air-moment-of-desire-

eternal-

between-reality-and-imagination-

between-detail-and-abstraction-

between-your-most-intimate-soul-

contracted-before-you-knew-yourself-

and-after-the-splash-on-the-canvas-

before-every-flaw-and-yet-not-flawless-between-the-tender-

intention-for-thunder-of-Bacon-to-scratch-his-painting-

and-turn-it-into-masterpiece-almost-like-our-intense-urge

to-grow-in-those-

my-your-our-green-fields,

and the poem I wanted to write for you

should be spiritually beautiful like dead man

with his-my-your-Indian-arteries as road maps

and should sound like it too, and yet existentially beautiful

like every birth I bloomed with you,

it should forget and remember everything

like the sand on our beach and like me,

for all my desires were imprinted in the traces

of what has not yet happened in the universe,

still contracted in its beginning

all the verses with which I claim

that miracle of

loving you,,,,,,,

 

 

 

The poem I wanted to write for you,

I want to live

 

Reviews

[Marie Anzalone]

You have a lot of courage posting a long piece here. In this age of twitter feeds and snappy status updates, we have lost the patience for longer works. Short and sweet, we are told, is best. But I will tell you three things. First, the most perfect love poem I ever read was one of Neruda's numbered works, and it lasted several full pages of watercolored brilliance, and poignant sadness. Your voice is different, but this piece wants to be like that. Second, short poems seldom have depth and seldomer paint the story in swaths. This has depth, this tells the reader much in it sprogression. Not long for its own sake, but long anough to say what needed to be said, each line, important.

Third: this is not yet great. It wants to be. I don't know why it misses just that tiny bit. Something about breathing space, perhaps. I am a love poem, she tells me, I need time to contemplate what I just said, before I say the next thing. Even if, just like falling in love, my words are fast and jumbled and I am trying to fit that feeling of wanting to fit the universe on a platter to hand you and tell you again and again this is not what I meant to say, at all. (Eliot).

The comma/coma is clever, but comes across looking like a spelling mistake.Suggest letting them be near cognates instead of trying to force one word to serve two meanings. Jedi Mindtrick taught me that, as it was one of his specialities when he still was active here.

This is very good, dear writer, and the ending is lovely. Your risk of imperfection paid off- this reader was able to read through until the end, and loved loved loved your imagery and metaphor. Saludos.

[Marri]

Dear Marie,

thank you very much for this thought-provoking, elaborate and truly attentive review. It swirls and twists and has secret rifts where knowledge and advice hide...I must thank you deeply for that: for reading first and reading a second time with your heart and your readiness to help someone improve their writing.
I must admit bettering my writing was one of the top reasons to join writer's cafe and here, in this review, I find the craved hight for my personal jump towards something better. I value every criticism and advice and I will re-read this review with both patience and humility to learn from its genuine look at my writing attempt.
I hope you know that your words are appreciated and the respect with which you treated my try at a love poem would be mutual as soon as I get a chance to read something of yours.

Thank you very much for your help! It was needed and certainly reached me!

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Marri- I am glad you appreciated my review, and my taking the time to give it. Did you know it helps us as reviewers if you take a few seconds to rate our reviews after we give them, too?

[Marri]

no, i didn't know... do you mean the constructive thumbs up?

[Marie Anzalone]

yes... we get rated as reviewers by how many people found our reviews constructive

[Marri]

well, I would press it twice if I could

[Steven]

What a ride, Marri. Impressionist, for sure. I wouldn't change much, personally. Just a tightening edit in places where you sense what was in you did not unveil itself onto the page purely. And I LOVE that hyphened section... Wow. This is long, but not verbose, and that is a world of difference. Great write. Moved me...

[Marri]

Thank you, Steven, poetic and touching, would be hard to express what light streams through the holes of my imperfect (constatation on recent events) being! Warm summer rain feels like such words, refreshing and encouraging for new beginnings :)

[Steven]

Lovely :)

[Denham Cole]

There's an aweful lot of allusions here. And similies. The passion is evident. But it sure started off great - the first 10 lines...

[Marri]

thank you, I will definetely sit to work on it, haven't reached the courage to come back to it and revise (wc always helpful here to point out weakness), so will work on the allusions and similies and try to tame it a little. Thank you for reading :)

[Denham Cole]

i liked your bit about secret cats, too. nice touch.

[Marri]

thank you, around here people do let their cats to wander in the night, oblivious to the fact that they have been cuddled...ah, the cats and their secrets haha

[Jack...]

Wow, so much love and life flows through this poem. It races and it coasts, taking each turn with smooth accuracy. You wish I feel has come true because this poem...lives. Very nice.

[Marri]

thank you, Jack, it's incomprehensible for the details to it belong to him and me, and perhaps will remain forever decoded in memories, but I thought I haven't posted anything in a while...and need to break the spell and come back to this source of inspiration-shared-and-given....it's the only thing I have written in a while and is on the back of his happy-birthday-card but hopefully still counts :) Glad that I have some free days coming so I can dive into some of the writing here, yours on top of the list!

[Jack...]

I am certain it will make him smile and remind him he is a lucky man to have you.

[Marri]

ah, yeah, luck, we are all monsters sometimes