Pierrot
by MobiusSoul (Member) - published: September 23, 2007
Word Count: 217 Word Bytes: 1634 Viewed: 302 times
Category - Poetry
© Copyright by MobiusSoul

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Of late
you’ve been suddenly seized
with sincerity,
Seized with the impulse to hold me
til breathing is stifled.

Always outclassed on the tennis court,
I’m as inadequate fielding your eulogies
Meager returns falling woefully short
of your eagerly volleyed hyperbole.
Darling, I’m sorry.
Instinct mistrusts protestations
made more to convince the protestor
than win the convinced protestee.

Yet your hands on my waist
and your head on my chest
(that unknowable fragile bulletproof head
with its prickle of stubble through silk)
In their weight and their warmth
these feel honest enough:
I’ll buy false guarantees
from your body my love,
in the dark.

Though in darkness your eyes thrash
as fierce and fast
as two tadpoles constrained before birth
under thin jellied lids.
What is brewing beneath?
Conjoured up by what troublesome tweak
from your pale puppeteer
in the childproof vial?

Your lord-of-misrule puppeteer,
who dabbles at night
through your mannekin mind.
Who sets you a-fire and a-jerk and a-blaze
with a chemical chiaroscuro
I’ve no way to follow.

Is he really to blame?
Does he hold all the cards
in this poker-eyed puppetry-game
I don’t know how to play?
Who am I to mistrust?
Is it him, is that true?
If you can’t pick the sucker at cards,
so they say, then it’s you.

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Comments

The following comments are for "Pierrot"
by MobiusSoul

"suddenly seized with sincerity"
alliteration at its finest there...

hard pressed to pick a favourite line in that… at the moment it’s the phrase “chemical chiaroscuro”, but only by a hair’s breath…

these emotional processes are so intensely and meticulously observed it’s almost scientific, on the one hand, on the other there’s this rich descriptiveness that’s almost unwieldy… I like that, I like unwieldy, and I like the way unwieldy combines with acute observation, not least because Self is observed as acutely as Other… if that makes any sense at all [had way too much coffee]…

I’m going to come back to this, and my well comment again when my critical faculties are in finer fetter… It’s good to read you again, been much too long.

( Posted by: AuldMiseryGuts [Member] On: September 24, 2007 )

comment
I really liked how you ended this one; I've never heard that saying before. Don't know if you just made it up or not. An interesting read, all-around, however; definitely worth coming back to this one.

( Posted by: ghostpoisonsturgeon [Member] On: September 24, 2007 )

MobiusSoul's Pierrot
"Of late
you’ve been suddenly seized
with sincerity,
Seized with the impulse to hold me
til breathing is stifled"

I love this first stanza, what a GREAT opening to this poetic story poem (it seems to me) that leads me through an intense inner view of poets eyes transferred to word. You've got some great images going here. I really like the puppeteer and the tadpole metaphors.

It's great to read you work here, and I am looking forward to more.

( Posted by: TheRealKarmaTseringLhamo [Member] On: September 24, 2007 )

Pierrot
Yet your hands on my waist
and your head on my chest
(that unknowable fragile bulletproof head
with its prickle of stubble through silk)
In their weight and their warmth
these feel honest enough:
I’ll buy false guarantees
from your body my love,
in the dark.

Perfectly penned. Eloquent and honest. As said above, great metaphors and use of alliterative.

( Posted by: chinadoll [Member] On: September 25, 2007 )

More
I very much like this -- as I like all your work -- but I have the feeling that this is slightly less than the final version; ie, it still feels a bit drafty. There are some very lovely bits that are moving and interesting and gripping, but (for me) they don't quite all hang together... yet.

There are a few too many metaphors dancing around here, perhaps. Puppets, poker, tennis, tadpoles. None of them bad, just... again... not pulled together enough to really make the whole thing ring. And the sometimes-rhyme was confusing to my tongue.

As always, I'm a bit hesitant to give critical feedback to one whose work I enjoy so much; I don't mean to discourage, you know that, eh? But only to tweak and to let you know I'm reading carefully. There's a lot going on here that intrigues and delights me; I'd love to see it after a bit more smoothing.

If I'm not being troublesome to you, and this is a piece you want to work on more, let me know and I'll bat it around with you.

Good to see you back.

( Posted by: andyhavens [Member] On: September 25, 2007 )

Pierrot: Andy & others
Thanks to all for reading and saying kind things.

AMG - the self-and-other observation or interplay is indeed key (I hope). Unwieldy, I'm not so sure I like, although this was never going to be neat 'moment' poem.
Ghost - the poker-related saying has been around a while: I vaguely think it was used in the movie Rounders, for example?

Andy: correct, this is rather 'unfinished' (for a fairly specific reason, I fear). Popping back in here and receiving several prodding messages to post more, I dug up this poem from many months' dormancy. (For the kind and the curious - I haven't had anything literary to say lately, which fortunately doesn't distress me much. Sometimes I have nothing to say for years :) I'm an unashamed dilettante rather than a 'true craftsman' who persistently writes for the exercise of it. For me, the results of that struggle are always depressingly bad...)

But back to the poem. This one at least has sincerity in its favour, and I do like most of the images, although the tennis line is a poor fit and poker could be culled if I could find a way to cover those ideas under the puppetry analogy. But the last verse is rotten: tacked on in exasperation because I have no neat closure to the issue I'm trying to write about. Does anyone else get this problem? When, although you have stuff to say, you're still too mired in it mentally to conclude the poem satisfactorily? I don't actually know what to say in the final verse, so unsurprisingly, it sucks a bit. Any suggestions on all this gratefully received!

( Posted by: mobiussoul [Member] On: September 26, 2007 )

Pierrot
There's a lot going on in here, inclucing fragmentation. Not necessarily a bad thing, fragmentation, but if it governs the dynamics of a poem, I think, it needs to be on a single level. There is multi-level fragmentation here:

1- on the level of the progression of the narrative: the shift from you to I seems too abrupt from the first to the second stanza.

2- on the level of the grammatical texture of the poem itself: there is smooth reading and smooth flow, and then there's adjectival/adverbial crowding.

3- on the level of character identification: the "I" character is simple. The "you" character is complex in that he, at some point, becomes a "Pierrot" clown? But at which point? And why? Who is the puppeteer? Where did the card game come from? The fragmentation of what informs the poem here is disturbing to me as your reader. I don't get it. I'm an idiot, I know, but I really don't get this.

4- on the level of "stream-of-consciousness": there seems to be every "flow" from trickle to flood of consciousness here, and this fragments the manner in which the poem is informed.

I have to say I absolutely love those tadpoles, but then, any nature imagery works for me, in almost anything...

Well...you asked for suggestions. Sorry, Caitlin. Andy's right. It needs another draft.

Thanks for the rough ride here. And don't go away again, okay? I need you!

Lucie

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: September 27, 2007 )

Thanks Lucie
... for the painstaking critique.

I'm not sure I have a big problem with 'level 1', but I do take your point on 2,3 and 4. I think you're getting at some the same things Andy and Shannon mentioned - the uneven unwieldyness of certain lines and the presence of too many disparate poorly-strung-together ideas. Those things possibly could be fixed with work.

More troubling is '3': that you don't understand what I'm on about. It's true that the 'I' is simple while the 'you' is complex, because I'm trying to deal with the way that mental 'so-called-health' meds can mess with a person's character. Hence the puppeteer, erratic behaviour, dilemma over what (or who) to mistrust, etc. It's an issue I find impenetrable, and deeply distressing. But if I can't convey the complexity coherently here, without a prosaic explanation, then the poem is fatally flawed!

I don't have much luxury of time or inspiration at present, but if I come up with a better re-working, I'll certainly post it. And I'll try to 'be around' at least a little on the website too!

( Posted by: MobiusSoul [Member] On: September 28, 2007 )

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