A Treatise on Purpose and Love from One Monster to Another

This is, despite appearances, a love poem, between two characters.

 When I say this you must imagine

it to be a prayer-

None but you have the right to speak

with any integrity

upon the matter of love

and  in honor of your name alone

do I spill libations

 

For what is love, if not intimacy

if not appreciation

if not understanding

And what, therefore, is pain

if not these things, if not art?

 

And if you are feared, it is only by those

 who are afraid of sensation-

I am prepared to deem this fear of living-

dust clogging the hearts of those

who should suck the honey of existence

and yet rot clinging to the vine.

 

There are sinews in your art,

for you wake the dead.

and there is delicacy in matter

for you help the blind to see

by redefining light- there is finery

in the skins you wear

like the lace of petticoats on women

who can no longer feel the blood in their veins.

We may yet feel it for them.

 

And if god is found in detail

then we will force him down by splitting atoms

we will make him between the fibers of slick muscle

and burn him into flesh

we will carve his name with needles  in the mirrors of our eyes

and pin him to the anatomy of man

divine the secrets of existence by the revelation of butchery.

 

Our knives are thin

and what profundity can be discovered in the depths of

the mundane we will pry out with kindness and with precision.

We can remake the world in our image

one incision at a time.

And that is what it means to be a god. 

Reviews

[emmajoy]

I've read this twice, and, found it more illuminating that most. It shows the decorative art of using words to express a virtual book of emotions in a single poem. This particular verse is exciting yet subtle... love it.

There are sinews in your art,

for you wake the dead.

and there is delicacy in matter

for you help the blind to see

by redefining light- there is finery

in the skins you wear

like the lace of petticoats on women

who can no longer feel the blood in their veins.

Thank you, thank you for sharing.

We may yet feel it for them.

[Rich Prince]

Had I but 'world enough and time', I could give you a detailed 'critique' of this poem but I'll confine myself to a few comments.
You are obviously a very talented writer. There are some very arresting and powerful phrases and images in it. It reads more like a prose poem than a verse poem or rather it moves in and out of poetry and prose (that is parts of it are more intensely poetic than others but this can be said of most poems). As to the 'meaning' of it, I won't go into that. When commenting on poetry, I invariably prefer to talk more about technical aspects: prosody, phrasing etc. As someone said, a poem should not mean but be. All I can say is that it's a very strong piece of writing.