Feste's Lute

anec-donts replied to your post: Gutter Strays

this is about me

You know, I hadn’t thought of that in the context of your recent post. :)

I think there’s an aspect that could apply, but it applies to most of us. There’s a chain around each poet’s neck and the links rotate (like self-reblogging). Those links are, alternately - pride, humility, self-confidence, insecurity, arrogance, self-loathing, self-awareness, etc.

One can only hope that, eventually, these links can be reheated and forged into something close to an accurate self-image and appreciation for your own art. I believe that we should be pleased but never satisfied.

Gutter Strays

A worm proceeds
“Look at Me!
The Lowly, Wriggling
Earth Scroll Quill,
scribing deep
in Clay and Slate.”
His tragedy beneath;
bright wings are folded
clipped by
stubborn need.

Kangaroo Courtesans

“Thus,”
the macabre
swabs sobbed,
“it’s just.”

Taken as written,
this plea amounts
to pence.

Mastiffs looming
o’er assail as
spies survey
the rigging.

Great gavels grovel
and bailiffs have
no sense.

But she, an orderly,
winced through
the proceeding.

Fickle

The collapse,
once done,
spun glass
across our brow.

Quicksilver cascades
caressed her cheek.

In smoke and flame
fair faces play
through pools
of recognition
and retreat.

One is just
the same.

Neither needed
northern graces.
Identities rephrased.

Arch Text

Contorted resorts,
a gabled court—
baffles sate the blaze.

Solace for stair steps,
oak grown emphatic,
chimneys for the chaise.

Winds ascend toward
dark screen doors,
flues forsake the flame.

Fame

It falls from his eyes
with the patience
of a midwife,
like the beard from his chin —
His headstone fixed
long before
it comes to rest.

Atuned

The room is let,
the strings rent.
We fret along branches,
chord rapt,
undiminished.

Tuning

When the strings are cut
they curdle in suspension.

In this way
notes are taken,
driven crying into silence.

Consumed, augmented
self-regard,
betraying fair attentions.