getting outside is a hard game
getting outside is a hard game
by Aaron Boothby
Like trying to fit a knife
into the crevice of a mind
that doesn’t want to move
while a storm boils whispering
inside wine dreams and fever
inside the right shoulder of heartache
inside dark water pipes and inside other visions
that would preferably be forgotten.
Mind like a flaming wheel
pushed down a hill
just to see what will happen
and eyes remembered from a man
several years ago
startled when we drove by
tossing fireworks out the window
onto a quiet suburban street.
Life’s ‘routine’ and rigmarole can very well put one on the ‘inside looking out’ as if trapped in tunnel-vision dreariness. This poem speaks and instructs on the difference between the in and out and alludes thru keen similes at beginning of poem and in middle to what spark or firework (in this case) might awaken one. Perhaps i’m trying to ‘fit’ the poem’s theme a little too nicely within this framework.
I marvelled at the poet’s choice of words which seemed so contrasting (soft and cacophonous) in expounding upon the mind itself: “while a storm boils whispering inside wine dreams and fever inside the right shoulder of heartache inside dark water pipes and inside other visions that would preferably be forgotten.”
Peace and turbulence/in and out/out and in/…there are dichotomies which cause the earth to spin in our lives and we are all poetic scientists uncovering the natural laws by which we know ourselves.
The poem ends with a powerful image–that of a man minding his own business lost in his own world suddenly startled by fireworks tossed from the poet in a ‘drive by’–something we can picture in our own minds and smirk at. The double meaning is alive and well.
thx for sharing!