While they bake in clay ovens
this jug to hold the baby,
this one for
water.
They want to know the
Persian name for Moon.
Lovers, liars and other
alliterative companions,
hold word to
salt.
Sighting three-fourths of you
Poets are speechless drunks.
Peace, like lipstick she
smothers upon her face,
lapse within the
kiss.
From her drips quarter lune
and its oven-fresh light.
From her drips quarter lune
I don’t think Led Zeppelin quite had this in their mind when they wrote “watch your honey drip, can’t keep away”.
Hi! It’s been a long time since I’ve been here. Your blog is looking swell as usual and the poem is replete with images as always. Hope you are doing well.
This one missed me by 200 miles!!!
:(
This is really one of your better poems.
The second I read that bit about Persian for Moon – the images all fit together. So well. You should try reading this one out. It has a well-formed rhythm that would go well with your voice.
Pliss be clarifying this:
“Peace, like lipstick she
smothers upon her face,
lapse(s?) within the
kiss.”
Otherwise it is a very good nocturne, stuff I like reciting to kids a lot.
Also, I know bandwith sandwith can be expensive and all but from my aesthetic standpoint this page’s Google/Content ratio is way too high. Let that one right under the logo go. *grumble* *grumble*
km: LZ far beyond our reach. Far.
First Rain: Come by more often – won’t you? :)
ammani: Given the distance between the earth and the moon – the 200 miles is quite alright. No?
Anon2: Thought between lapses and lapse. Somehow became fond of the latter more. maybe it reads better with the former.. One ugly google image thing removed.
Nice.
I like the last lines and the hold word to salt bit.
I don’t like “smothers upon her face” – you smother x with y, not smother y on x. I’m also a little uncomfortable with “speechless drunks”. It doesn’t go with the tone of the rest (drunks is too casual). Perhaps ‘drunk and speechless’?
Also, I second Anon2 on lapses – lapse sounds better (probably because of the word play on ‘laps’ which goes so well with the water-y feel of the poem) but it’s also bad grammar.
very nice. I’m not one for free verse – it mainly goes over my head. But this one was lovely!
Falstaff: Lapse is also a noun you know. Drunk and speechless felt like a phrase – and a weighty one. But perhaps drunks with an adjective is too flaky … must think about it.
As to x and y – depends highly – on what the poet and the reader think of as x, and think of as y. No?
30in1005: I HAVE to ask you this. I know your blog is 30in2005 – why is it that you comment as 30in1005?
Neha: I guess – I hadn’t thought of it that way. But that makes the first part of the last stanza kind of fragmentary, no? Why not continue the image when you can?
And yes, it does depend on what is x and y, but in that case, why do you need the “upon her face” at all? Why not just “peace, like lipstick she smothers”?
Falstaff: Because I am not you. :)