Snap
The cartridge bumps
(An odd
Sound)
Into the firing
Chamber
Hits,
Then…
Nothing,
Free,
Weightless,
Wrong,
Dead.
I’m beginning to notice a focus in these poems: Death. I think I need to focus on making these poems more surreal and less and morbid.
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Author: Jonathon
Would rather be out swimming, running, or camping. Works in state government. Spent a youth reading genre-fiction; today, he is making up for it by reading large quantities of non-fiction literature. The fact that truth, in every way, is more fascinating than fiction still tickles him.
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Well, that’s the cool thing about writing: you can see what some part of you is thinking or feeling. I like your writing process–the page, the apparent amusement, the focus on key words. Nice. Bound as you are by the choices of one page, you might have gone on to ‘steady’ or ‘down’. But ‘Dead’ makes a finale, even though it’s Death Lite, so it’s got structural advantages in its favor. But structure and style didn’t trump content for you, judging by your subsequent dissatisfaction.
“Oh Death, where is thy sting?” For this reader it wasn’t morbid so much as off-hand. Since we’re invited to experience falling into a surprise death, I’d have liked more seriousness, more ‘weight on your back’.
Have you seen Bob Fosse’s classic fantasy of death, ALL THAT JAZZ? It’s all about timing death, and set to music and dance: premeditated, intentional, incremental, sudden. The character is in complete denial of the inevitable despite wake-up calls from every quarter and death fantasies galore. He gets the death he’s flirting with, yet ironically death comes as a surprise.
The actor who portrays Fosse, Roy Scheider, gives a 20-years-later commentary to accompany the latest DVD. One of the most frankly autobiographical movies ever made–that brought the famous choreographer a shit-load of criticism for being ‘too self-centered’– it still rings with unblinking courage. Scheider explains how the two worked in tandem to create a unique allegory of illusions surrounding ‘how we die’.
Vida or mors really seems to be the essential question of philosophy: being or nothingness. If you expanded the surreality, you’d at least have more vocab to use. And isn’t that an essential aspect of vida: there’s a lot more to work with?
always enjoy occasionally visiting your site