Privacy: The New Cuckold
Privacy: The New Cuckold
by dr p fenderson
In the one pale beam
cast across cracked and
lonely planks, still tender from
the touch of quiet carpentry
the (e)motes float and cavort
One blink
and not even the brazen sun
can re-move them
to dance their fortunes
splayed for all to see
and make privacy the biggest
cuckold you ever did know
If lucid thought be that
which you seek
then spinning and tumble-dry
dusky corpses of memories
lost to murky sights
and lidded carpet rooms
are all that will greet you
Trace these patterns into the surface
of your harlequin glassed eyeview
and watch as rainbow-scented
photon gods reveal your
for(tune) to shimmy to
to hornpipe to
smoke in your
vision
obscure
But only a washtub made for
feelings wrought of iron
which has made a truce with
King Poisidin for safe passage
can travel to the other side
into tomorrow morning
Strange land that our tingled
and fancies cannot step into
barred like Eve
like Adam
forever trapped outside
frozen into this cube
“Cuckold [comparted to ‘privacy’ in poem] is a derogatory term for a man whose wife is unfaithful.”
i instantly loved the center spacing–it’s a fresh look from the conventional left-align. Pic by author, i presume, tells a lot and couldn’t go with poem better.
I’d say this poem has a lot to do with perspective (how truly alone are we? or original, for that matter) and has to do with a special moment which reveals a whole parade of emotions–namely the frustrated or elusive attainment of clarity or even epiphany.
I get the impression that the poet is in an abandoned/broken down laundromat and being surrounded by decay and dust, there is a permeating feeling, a somewhat morbid glimpse, into what we all become. We are a product of our surroundings, after all, eh? Ugliness is hard to live with. The comparison to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden and their so-called knowledge of the forbidden becomes this ‘new cuckold’ of nature’s unfaithfulness to the poet–unfaithful to what? –eventual death. We cannot last–nothing can. That is the fate of all of us.
Awesome read! These are just my impressions. As always, what i see may be totally different from the intent of the author–i am surely guilty of reading to much into a thing from time to time.
thx Dr. Fenderson!