Tuesday, June 19, 2007

One Hundred Thirty-First Entry

Working harder on my new manuscript project, BAD VIBES. Though partially inspired by reading about Charles Manson, and partially inspired by a bad mood, these poems are my attempt to address the subject of evil, a "force" in the world that I strongly believe doesn't exist. What I believe is more frightening when witnessing an "evil" act is not what we would believe to be evil, but the absence of it. Therefore, these poems aren't going to be goth or anything, I'll be playing my game of poetic avoidance just like I did with the VS poems, which a fellow poet recently pointed out to me were anti-definition poems, a concept I hadn't really thought of but that is surprisingly apt.

Here's my poem:

MUTINOUS SPIDERS

I have invoked a powerful gin-goddess.
Child exposed under rockslide to undue pressure-
here's the real trouble, intentional meeting by the Founders-
trapped in the malaise of the swamp, cigars alight
in the distance to taunt me as the trappings of men,
pilgrimage all for naught, pariah becomes king-
shirts lifted in lieu of flags, as foretold by Bostradamus.

Digital cracks become worse, face of internet demon.
Intelligent whispers don't sound intelligent, and I lead
my phalanx astray, anxious young braves dying bold
to fill out the color palette. The mythology to come
is a supreme apathy-some success with the college tour.
Celebrity is the mother of invention, each of my cadillacs
has been implanted with a device programmed to hate you-
exposed in your thriftiness, threads like vile little hairs
from your clothing, refreshment is the mother
leaving her children in the trunk dipping towards
the spillway, and this is our spillway, and I intend it
to spill.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not quite sure I see how the Vs poems are "anti-defintion"... Lucy, you've got some explaining to do!

steve roberts said...

well, by choosing a title such as Book, for instance, i used that as a jumping off point. But I didn't try to hammer on the whole "book" image too much, in fact I barely mentioned it, and after a few of these poems, I didn't mention my starting point at all. My whole "point" wasn't to avoid definition, but that was a chief theme in the poems.