Tags
'when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a House of Leaves moments before the wind', And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have., Hand hold held, Mark Z. Danielewski, Poetry, self saviour service, sonnets of faith and devotion, survival tic-tacs, The knot, Troubled cure for a troubled mind, woes beside
An ode to survival stretched between two beings which resonates back and forth. It also doubles as a rope ladder to oneself in the mirror when all seems lost, for there’s more than one of you in there you know? – *raps a trillion skulls* – and self-preservation can often take us by surprise with its underlying strength.
*Chances are this layout won’t work very well in mobile phone mode – complain to the management. Extra thanks to Mr Pink for access to Classic mode again.
Where First We Met
Fear not.
For should philosophy,
Draped in the soul-battering,
Psyche-shattering sheets
Of existence’ inevitability,
Some day take your hand
In apathetic hinterlands,
As you squat, listless,
Hollowed out;
Should she
— Emanating her tantalising
Potential for true reason,
Raw rational answers —
Lead you
— Eyeing blueprints
as you sync and imprint,
gravely engrave —
To stir and finger foundations,
Loiter along hallways,
Tread worn, wormy boards,
To follow her upwards,
Drifting on through aeons
Of endless shifting attic walls,
Static, shadowy corniced corners
Emitting guttural utterances
Dank with desperation
Paired with soft hisses of defeat,
Onwards to lunge,
To Plunge
Through weathered windows’
Pained panes
With their precipitous ledges
Of temporal absurdity,
Only to find yourself
Walking backwards
Into your cerebellum’s cellar,
Spiralling down ever-darkening
Neural staircases with
Violently-scribbled banisters,
Your eyes mirroring
Their vicious erratic antics’
Double-handed stabs . . .
. . . Hold fast.
For no matter how far you stray
From your here and now
Into reams and sheaves:
The deranged foundations
Of a House of Leaves
Mortared with misinformation
— Your personal hells
Toiling, tolling bells —
You shall never
Be truly trapped
Within that caliginous,
Twisting cerebral darkness,
Turning slowly on a hot spit,
Hope obscured.
Lost.
No, never lost.
For should your hold
Be relinquished,
Your nexus
Be disconnected,
Let slip its grip on sanity,
Too tired for future final hurdles
Which always appear
Higher than the last,
Then I will find you,
Catch you
As you blink,
Sink
Into the unavoidable
Void . . .
. . . And bring you back to heal.
For between the two of us
Sits a knotted thread,
Intricate and fast,
Tied from one élan vital’s wrist
To another’s ankle:
Hand over hand
Herculean as Heracles.
A back-breaking successful Sisyphus
Seeped in pure patient passion
Shall I be,
Reeling you back,
Winding you in and up,
To clamber out.
I will cover you
As you flee the dome
To a dominion of freedom.
For I shall never forget nor regret
The Devil and the wild blue seas
Where first we met.
Esme's Cloud 
This is stupendously good work, Esme. What at first may appear aesthetically (that is to say, visually) quite fractured, arrythmical, in the process of reading turns into a superbly . . . how to put it? . . . visceral, tactile, palpable, gracile, acoustical, physical experience. Like surfing wild tides as they turn, perhaps. It is quite challenging, I must say, in terms of the demands it makes upon the reader in absorbing the syntax’ meaning; but the challenge, once accepted, is well-rewarded. Sometimes, complexity is the only way, it seems? It needs bravery to make the attempt (I mean on the author’s part), so I commend you on that as well as for achieving such a spectacularly succesful result. Well done indeed, and many congratulations on this very fine piece of work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In a nutshell – it’s long, odd and weirdly shaped but worth it if you can get past that. Yes? Hahahahahaha. A ‘visceral, tactile, palpable, gracile, acoustical, physical experience‘ – I’ll take that happily, wrap it up in greaseproof paper and nibble at it with joy for a few weeks at least. beams
I don’t expect many people to read it on here as it is a long one to be honest, and I myself am no fan of long poems, however, needs must and this is how the words demanded to lie, plus there’s a large nod to the book – House of Leaves’ about it, therefore it had to mirror the disjointed journey within the tome. Possibly more a one for fans of the book. Syntax. Hmm. I don’t like being taxed for my syns at all – falls about. True mind. The thing with poetry is one mustn’t always lead someone by the nose through the meaning, it’s akin to let’s say as an example two paintings: One is so fine in detail it looks just like a photograph. Skill, yes, but mechanical skill. The next painting is of the surrealist movement – imagination set free. Everyone knows what’s going on in the former, which is fine if that’s your bag, and there will be lots of people who love such work, the latter will have many meanings to many people, all of them different and a minority will love the fact that they can’t work at all, not a bit, what the artist was transmitting as a message. You have to know the rules to break the rules with art of any kind I think, because the bending works so much better when you do.
‘It needs bravery to make the attempt (I mean on the author’s part), so I commend you on that as well as for achieving such a spectacularly successful result. Well done indeed, and many congratulations on this very fine piece of work.’ Thank you enormously for all your kind words H! I appreciate you hanging in there to the end. ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Another stunning work from our entrancing cloudy muse;
Deep nuances apparent in each word and rhyme you choose.
Who is this being so fortunate, whose rescue you commit
To proffering, with “patient passion”, should misfortune hit?
‘Tis true enough, there’s much out there, to drive a person mad;
And all across the net now, doom-and-gloom’s a full-blown fad.
But half the worth of being the ardent Sisyphus who dares
To offer help, is simply that you’re showing someone cares.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Very beautiful and kind words Infidel. I’m touched, and love that you see the caring side of this, the upbeat woven into it as it does delve dark early on. The being? Everyone that reads this in some respects are that being, and I hope all who do read the words take away, as their take, the same kind of essence you have. It makes all the hard work very much worthwhile. Reaching out is key to survival, reciprocation in truth is just as you say – caring deeply. ❤
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s an interesting response, Esme, and I do hope I wasn’t coming across as being unfairly critical, as that wasn’t my intention in the least. It appears that you’re getting at my remarks regarding aesthetic, and it’s probably true to say that I place importance of that in written work; or rather, it’s something I tend to notice. I’ve heard physicists talk of the ‘beauty’ of certain equations, as I’m sure you also have. I wouldn’t have any idea what that means in their sphere, although it seems aesthetic somehow can be factored in, even where the main purpose lies elsewhere. I haven’t read House of Leaves, but from what you say it sounds as though the author is keen on this idea of how text looks set upon the page. On your point about painting, which picture would you say this piece of yours shares most affinity with? Ucello’s Battle of San Romano perhaps? (Cheeky wink). Finally, to your other point on being long, odd and weirdly shaped, then I suppose variety is . . . (cliché alert). That said, one can perhaps also marvel at ones which are short and uncannily thin, on occasion? One such example is the only poem I’m able to recite from memory:
LikeLiked by 1 person
No, I’m just saying that poetry in particular is closer to say the art of a sculpture than a short story or novel is. They can also be tweaked but with them, you do need the syntax to be the core, poetry does not, and art, of course, is very subjective. It was a handy place for me to generally convey this to the crowds (waves at all three of them) (rather than being pointedly at you), the difference being that grammar and syntax can stifle the freedom and joy of a poem if adhered to as absolutes. As you know I am a fan of e.e.cummings’ work and you think him to be a giant steaming bag of bollocks. Hahahahahahahahaha. House of Leaves, as an object is a piece of art, it looks beautiful to many people, it’s been built, much like a house, brick by brick of text and has so many layers one gets lost within. A happy occasion for some, for others, well I know they can’t bear such a riotous apparently reckless layout. He isn’t trying to make pretty pictures with text, like say a calligram, he’s using the text as part of the story, as part of the poems within. When you spiral down a staircase you may well be reading spiraling text for example. It isn’t for everyone, but I did find it quite groundbreaking. Each to their own. shrugs I specialise in words rather than numbers but completely understand why an equation could be beautiful, it too has been built, has foundations.
As to the painting you mention, hahahahaha, no. Poems paint their own pictures but as we’re looking as potential parallels I’ll give you this – Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss – blows one his way (a kiss you filthmongers!)
That’s a very beautiful poem, I know it well too, and how warmly read by Anthony. Thank you dearie x
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Esme. It looks as if I posted my response to your repsonse to my response outside of the original thread, so my apologies for that. It seems we largely agree on the aesthetic of text-display after all. Typography’s a subtle art, and we readers seldom appreciate quite how vital it is to our reading experience; to us it just looks like another bunch of text on a page. But over the many tens of hours we may spend reading a book, those subtle choices of the typographer can elevate our experience quite dramatically. You bested me with Canova, got one (can)over the Ucello fellow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Noooo, don’t worry about placement of comments, as long as they exist and pertain to the actual post I’m a happy Cloud bunny – beams.
“To me to you, to you to me.” Fine words from the Chuckle Brothers I believe! Canover hopefully kept his leg to himself, but with skills like that a great deal is forgiven.
Thank you once more dear Hariod, it’s lovely to see you ‘pon the Cloud, you hermit, you. Esme is also a bit of a hermit right now mind and it has its perks for sure.
LikeLiked by 1 person