Sunday, September 5, 2010

Poem for The Poetry Bus


Alison.


One track played top down

Renault Fuego

Last chrysalis century


sang the song of

Lies through broken teeth

PraySatellite sisters pray

Play make-believe bombed out brothers

The future is here

Tomorrow was our lucky day


where’s your lucky day


Twisting from the wreckage not knowing where to go

Unsure of where to be

Where we could fit in this piece time

All crying for an epic matinee

A final solid

Transforming skies to freefall

Silk parachutes

Red green blue sailed boats


Those clipped town horizons slate grey

Sunday rain

daddy long legs danced

pebble-dashed hope till death

hung it’s cloak on your frail shoulders

With concrete reality


Well here’s your lucky day


Pissed on the stairwell

madness could break you,

into you, china doll

Helicopter ride

Burning barrels barter a silence

That won’t descend

Surrender no option

These could be days or years

A veil of tears explode in doubt

Seconds rent life from time

Reality’s corners lit

To and fro corner to bar to..


That can’t be bought back

So cheaply sold the bullet

The best of you blown away

Like dust from a butterfly’s wing

16 comments:

Helen said...

This is wild and wonderful! Don't think I could read it too many times ... MY lucky day.

Dr. Jeanne Iris said...

I get a sense of the metallic reading this, TFE. My favorite line, 'Seconds rent life from time,' resonates as a somber dirge.

The Weaver of Grass said...

That last verse Eej - it has such resonance for me - I want to frame it and put it on my notice board.
Wonderful stuff.

Niamh B said...

Sad poem TFE, lots of music in it, the last line is brilliant, I love that image of the lost butterfly dust.
Great

Pure Fiction said...

Those clipped town horizons slate grey
I can't get over that line. What a sad poem, tho. Your link is up

Carolina Linthead said...

TFE, the last line hit ME like a bullet. The whole piece resonates with the "butterfly effect": the consequences of actions, individual and collective, the price paid, "the best of you" being blown away. I am. Powerful stuff, very Ginsberg, a great read!

Batteson.Ind said...

"the best of you blown away like dust from a butterfly's wing".. fucking YEH!... *excuse the obscenity, but in this case I think it was called for!

Batteson.Ind said...

ooh.. also the verse with the slate roofs.. reminded me of dylan.. the welsh dude, not the folk singer!

Heather said...

Full of angst and sadness. Heavy but wonderful.

Kat Mortensen said...

Really great, TFE! Love the intermingling of religious references in a pastiche of a sort of 80s heyday. The "butterfly wings" are such a delicate and contrasting image agains all the harsh, vividness of what comes before.

Kat

Peter Goulding said...

My God, there's a whole novel in there. Leaving Cert students will be dissecting this in a few years and wondering what you're on.

Titus said...

A feast of allusion and image, and like Jeanne Iris, a harsh, metallic edge to it - then the sublime beauty and sadness of those final lines,
"The best of you blown away
Like dust from a butterfly’s wing"

You are the dude.

ArtSparker said...

Legends of the (urban) fall.

Anonymous said...

So much of the poem is allusive via a series of powerful but fragmentary images. I'm reading more 'Oliver's Army' here than 'Alison'! Are we back in a lost corner of another republic here?

Jinksy said...

daddy long legs danced
pebble-dashed hope

Very evocative of a short lived life...

Karen said...

Lordy! What a mash of imagery and sound and sad sense.I love the last line, too, but it's the twisting from the wreckage and the freefall that are haunting me.