See that little match-stick,
see that candle there?
See that hard-worn photograph
taken for a year?
Take them punches, boxer-girl!
Much to your chagrin,
it comes back in equal part -
hard and deep within.1
Consider bonds between us heat.
And fuel, the time we spent
sleeping close in tousled sheets -
a sky towards us, bent:
gray and cloudless, quick and fleet.
Candle-flame is meant.
to take those memories, and to eat
the message that you sent.2
Photo attachment 1: You, him - bottle of Cointreau. Bite marks on your thigh like only I should have left! Grass (both types), a camera. Wrestling. Nudity. Sex.
Photo attachment 2: You, him: carousels, cloven-footed balloon-man (whistling high and wee). Hot dogs. Ocean. Wrestling. Nudity, sex.
Photo attachment 3: There was something about a penguin... and there was cake involved. Polarbears - must have been a zoo. Causing me to mope at the keyboard: wrestling, nudity. Sex.
Photo attachment 4: It’s really just sex now.
Photo attachment 5: Please stop.3
Shouldn’t be so callous:
that password is personal.
I shouldn’t really have it,
Well, this is what I get for exploring the caverns of iniquity
(that’s slang for your hard-drive),
dirty little ...
I can't ... cuss you out.4
All photographs marked 10/18/07 for devastation.5
Now, this thing has ended:
sad, though brief and gleeful.
We were consumed by happiness, never sorrowful
and nothing meaningful;
everything beautiful, nothing painful.
Princess, that work was masterful -
breaking that, making great things hurtful.
But worse still?
I can’t hate you.
Author notes
Written on the prompt: "Romance - a laptop."
This... well, it's not romance. It's actually about something going on in my life right now, although it has nothing to do with a laptop. More like a phone camera. So I hope it's personal enough.
Thanks for reading.
A contest entry
- The Poet's Challenge: Round I by Asfand.
100 points, ended November 10, 2007, 7 entries
• next story in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 5 of 5
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chargrin, i like that word.
hm. i like it. small glimpse into the personal life of wade. -
If you don't like this, you have no soul.
OKAY! I'm going over this bad boy word for word. Mrs. William's just gave us an 'e' word for that, but whatever.
"matchy-stick..." Idk, I like the difference, but still a little juvenile to start out with. You already say little, the y is a bit too much for me. Just a tad.
I love lines 2,3,4 the meter is fantastic... sets up a good scene.
"Take them punches, boxer-girl!" Is absolutley fabulous. Honestly. I want to write it into a song or something, make it a movie line. T-shirts. The whole she-bang! I just don't get it, becaue it seems pro-girl charachter. Or is that how the poem starts, and then switches in the discovery? Yeah, I think so.
"Consider bond..." heat- okay, passionate/sexual... fine fine...
"silken sheets" I think is cliche, but mabye just b/c I associate silk sheets with rizty trailer parks and Austin Powers. Do you really have silk sheets? I hope not. This line would have been better with another adjective, b/c I stopped reading and went "ew" when I got to silken. ^_^
"A sky towards us bent." Maybe a comma after us.... idk... Ermm doens't make sense to me, per se, but I like it.
"And to eat the message that you sent.." THis is fine, it just makes me wonder.... A burned paper message? What could it be... eh.
The middle section is self explanatory, I do like the change to non-poetry because it reflects the cold, unchangeable reality of photographs and computers and...... evidence? I even love the "whistling high and wee," although it does take away from the harshness of the findings, it's cute and fun and gives the sense that the viewer is really looking at these photographs.
I like the almost pathetic sadness and quiet pleading of the last two "photo attachments." I feel empathy for narrator, and the unfairness that he can't stop looking, even as much as he doesn't wnat to see anymore.
Good good good... "dirty little I-can't-cuss-you-out" is fine, but throws off my meter. Maybe "I-just-can't..." would fix that.
"everything beautiful, nothing painful." Kurt Vonnegut, my friend?
The third line from the end, I just don't really understand at all, but it feels right, enough. I think since that the last two lines are so seperate from the rest of the poem that you should add more space between them and the third line.
I really like this altogether, and I like how it incorporates sooooooooo much.
Passion, admiration, betrayal, sorrow, technology, different writing styles, and has an overall light feel that draws in the reader's pathos.
This is definitely in my top three favorites of your work, Wade. Please don't stop.
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Brandon? Yowch. I'll comment on the actual fabulous-ness of the poem's structure and details later. Not sure how accurate everything is.... but yowwch.
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Whoa ~
The title is so creative, very well done, just because of that. Love it.
The imagery is stunning, I am in awe of what you did with the prompt. It's very deep and flows really well. The rhyming is wonderfully penned and isn't forced at all ~
Your format was great. I loved where you suddenly went to the, Photograph 1, thing, it's ruddy brilliant. Stellar poem here, I love how you protray romance, it's not juse happy flowers and roses, it's different in reality and you capture it really well.
Free rhyming is always better than forced formats, you know, great job.
I must complain on the the lack of punctuation. Commas and semicolons break or make a great poem, the very first two stanzas and the last two are devoid of any punctuation which messed up the flow.
It's upto the poet to steer and guide the reader to stop, pause, continue reading. You didn't do that. I would love to have some commas brought up there.
Another thing I didn't like was the capitalization of every sentence. It made me awkward and distorted the pleasure of the reading. Capitalization should only be used when another thought pops --
Punctuation and capitalization.
This was original as God's idea of hell that we all cheat, it's wonderful. Love it ~
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Notes:
"A sky towards us bent" - In the region where I live, 'towards' is pronounced with one syllable instead of two (like they do in other parts of the US). When I read that line, it felt like it was a syllable short.
Other than that, very very nice rhyme scheme.
"clove-footed balloon-man (whistling high and wee)" - HAH! YES! Awesome E.E.Cummings shout-out! Total props! ...Though did you mean 'clove' footed or 'cloven' footed?
Still, HAH! Greatness.
...........
Nice poem. I like the storyline behind it, and how the laptop gave away all her secrets when the guy hacked in.
I also like how you didn't stick with the same rhyme scheme after 'discovering' the attached files.
Oh. And I like the superlong title.
Good job.
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