war is obsolete.
war is obsolete.
by meghan tennison
this beach dying my blood inspires
silenced audience, absent eyes.
cackling shakes my fear of facing your
torn, brown and white buildings.
my own structure is too stressed out to
babysit its owner.
turning the town’s dial
from fierce,
weightless jewelry
to innocent,
squeaking tugboats
to draining,
redundancy
i re-start this game every pause when
the earth trips over its spinning.
it only ever stopped accidentally, but
legend has it that, if you try with shine,
you can stop it
on purpose
our weight pulled our wishes over the edge and
stomped us to sleep.
breathing compressed breaths and
struggling to open one eye, we catch only glimpses
of a world so diamond.
careful,
coma’s teeth might catch up to you.
waking up from this breed of sleep is like
feasting on a million tigers with your powerful, godlike mouth,
forgetting everyone’s face and name,
writhing as their meat digests, like
claws roaring in defense,
striking at your paper belly.
stepping on spiders,
shadows of wasps circling mine,
background’s trees bellow ghostly tongues.
unable to register their depth,
we recycle our final layers into
future dreams.
Death to you bureaucratic certainty! The enacting of assumptions decided by the dead and disinterested is no way to whittle down to refreshing vibrant accidents. The ticking of the clock resounds to match your heart beat only when you are young. Once you get older than that beat, your pulse just falls in line. No one can endure dripping water torture for ever. Eventually everyone joins the flood.
I liked this poem immensely.
This whole poem is packed pretty tightly with tropes and altered phrases. I like the way it plays on ‘paper tigers’ in the sixth stanza. Stuff like “background’s trees bellow ghostly tongues” kind of overdoes it though.
I’m still trying to figure out the connection of the title with the poem itself. As far as trying to figure out the poem itself, forget it. Nothing grabbed me the first time I read it, so why should I bother reading it a second time? I’d have to say this piece was pretty boring.
PS: Halifax’s critique has potential for a pretty decent poem.
Yeah, he’s doing ‘bounce-back’ poetry as comment, like poetic tennis-words read, reflected and translated into your own making like light thru kalaidoscopes twisting assortments into new seeds…creation begot by creation, the ultimate compliment as evidence of inspiration. Though sometimes i’m inclined to believe he may be on crack cocaine. lol.
Well, yeah, there is so much in life that comes natural to us but that is not, arguably, natural for us to deal with in living the life God wanted us to live, or the universe if you believe that way. …And war is one of those unnatural things many would agree.
There’s ‘what should be’ and ‘what is’, in other words. Are we truly the better for our sufferings or are we done-in by them? What does not kill us can make us stronger (Nietzsche) if we have the right psychology/mindset to deal with it…but war is truly too much for most… …’unable to register their depth, we recycle our final layers into future dreams.’ hmm. perceptive. nice goin’ Samoan.
I stopped smoking for Jesus a long time ago…now I just kind of smolder.