when icarus set the sun on fire
Rilke might've been onto something...but it is too hopeful for my taste
Separated by clouds of morning creosote, impart wisdom to the skies of a closeness once tender — breath shattered in distance and shrouded by the cold. Blessèd be the holy love kept beside her lonely heart sharpened valleys and darker nights wrapped beside him beneath him within them. You who fears the tenderness of love everlasting storms heavy is the hand that bleeds in the mouth of spite childhood in the periphery, marked a shadow a memory
This piece sounded with strength in its incantation Summer, and it shred me (I loved it). During each read something ripped at my ignorance. [Ha ha too quick] It made me give a shit about poetry again, today. Deja vu. Why, how do I experience this and then forget?
One line in, you woke me with "creosote" I'd never heard it. Maybe seems a small thing but it's a high pleasure and priority feeling pulled upward in reading.
The early mental play-through was too confident with itself. Multiple meanings leapt out, but something visual I'm prone to buy too much into a story and miss things. Imagine I'm, "the clothing's brown, their faces a pale salty-white but everything’s blue and does that guy wake up?" to a writer like, "What? This poem's about my Toyota." So yeah, here's to burning down the vision and picking through its ash. Or, thinking.
Had forgotten Icarus. Obviously, that's reasonable considering he's only mentioned... in the title.
Creosote. Don't judge. In the beginning, I saw a small campfire with its modest plume. Through so few words, I was wondering about the fire at its peak and what happened. See the flame; snuffed out or burned-through? Still blinded by smoke and considering its wisdom, I crack back my head and squint up, as if reading tea leaf rot smeared along the basin of a mystic's mug.
Wait, it’s wisdom To the skies not in it... a closeness once tender. Is another relationship there in tension between the travellers and God? Wait, what travellers and why am I seeing people, are there any people? Faith lost? Oh, TO THE SKIES. Why does everything mean so many things and how come outside of poetry that drives people nuts? Are the valleys sharpened by tread or drought or… you don't think, no. Valleys round them—these visuals earlier spun me out. Dark nights as wrapped around, WITHIN, beside?
Probably for its prophetic tone, you read aloud while gigantic earthen bodies and weather systems rotated around yourself and the cross-fades of other figures in movement. Most gangster moment: when you’d dragged us forward during that "For you" section. That was gangster my g my home d
Thinking: thinking’s not all that. Before I thought to slingshot my brain matter at the wall, the writing on it already had me stitched into an unfolding grief so intense bodily that I kinda didn’t need to know anything. The first two lines now read like a scene in Final Destination to me by now. I've been on a whole journey and still don’t feel privy all the tricks and secrets. And the last section won't go blunt on me. And I'm actually going now for real really I am.
Summer! it's a pleasure to see you post. Hope all is bueno!
Had to look up the word 'creosote' and what a lovely word - thanks!
"of a closeness once tender —" This one made my heart knot up, especially the pause at the end. My breath bated.
"Blessèd be the holy love / kept beside her lonely heart" this one made me feel like a God. I placed myself as the holy love and a warmth to someone's loneliness. And it's also quite sad, makes me think that even with 'holy love' she is lonely. What use is being a God if nobody prays? right?
The second to last stanza. This called out my current mood towards relationships and love between people - not even romantic relationships - all relationships. The fear of love comes from a fear of vulnerability. And if love is to be love then it needs to be a tempest! The bloody hand as a physical manifestation of the power words can hold.
Made me fell things and made me remember some good times, the bad ones were also welcome.
Hope the baby doing great! and you! and Ian!