First toss...

[Ruindil]

You'll notice that this ends at part II. I'm working on III. There will be five sections when its finished. Those familiar with T.S. Eliot will quickly understand why.

Each section is intended to stand alone as much as they assemble to form Voltron, or perhaps Devistator...What was the name of that Power Ranger thing? ...You get the idea.

Anyway...

Thoughts, questions, comments, criticisms... All are welcomed, expected, and appreciated.


I.  Upon discovering My Waste Land…9/21/07

Her silence is a small death-
A miniature execution of
So many dreams that remind:
The Myth of Meritocracy
Is as absurd as True Love.

We are both just human
-Though I am closer to a god-
Barren of visceral power
And a Fisher-King in
Every practical regard.

She knows she’s let me down
And that was after she let me go.
Her tears are filling my eyes
Maybe because I’m the one who is hurt-
But she knows I will not cry.
She cries enough for us both.

And in each tear that forms,
I endure another small death.
My life lost, in the water
Her eyes shed.
And after this ancient ritual,
Perhaps I’ll rise again,
Because when she at last
Stops crying,
 I’ll say all that can ever be said.

“I will always love you”

But We,

We are already dead.

II.  Welcome to My Waste Land
1/14/09

I
Arose here, and found
I
Seceded from linear existence-

Somewhat diminished but
Transcended all the same-

Figurative; in literal's position:
Dante's Inferno
And so many levels of Hell…

When Purgatory became an option
I traveled too boldly there.

Steps made brazen by the Burglar
From Under-hill
Eventually led to Nan Dungorthin.

I
Physically traveled no farther than

Car could drive.

   I should set sail-

Raise my own fleet

And make conquests of
        Homecomings: 
I just have not left Home.

I once wrote on
A portrait of the Prodigal Son,
Rembrandt, circa 1668-

My absence was never physical.

My atonement keeps
Between here or here,
There or there…

One day I will travel to Greece-
I will find myself Italian-
Return Excalibur to the stone;

To the Lady-

To the Lake...

Achilles was no Champion, without Pride- and
Aeneas could never have founded Rome;
Arthur would never have fought with Saxons.

My life is in Myths you don't know

As I do.

Remember discovering The Waste Land?

It was all Purgatory,

Again,

But Harsher.

Harsher harsher harsher...

Scouring: Scraping.

Dust is too soft-

Even dust of bones-

Limestone is Calcium too.
Stone of bones and white as paper
Arid, abrasive, but felt in deliberate traces...
Fingertips in dust-

I have lived and died to live and die without ever dieing

But Living that entire time. Entirely.

Too much
I've taken in-

-Rogue without her gloves-
Empathic when encountering another
Fiction or physical or pure fantasy
As if I am assimilated by what my mind
Assimilates.

I once noticed the space between embers becoming a flame.

There is a balance to be maintained:

I am only aware.

My knowledge is Dante's Inferno
Understanding is what Eliot calls The Waste Land
Living is just awareness: 

        -I am all too aware-

It is in spaces of the Unknown that death lingers:
Duplicity, misdirection, or Lies.

Conrad's Marlowe puts it best:
"taint of death, and a flavor of mortality in lies."

I have transcended,
Certainly,
But I am yet to ascend-

Waiting in this waste land,
Writing methodically in the Dust:
Wanting one phrase,
A single utterance to
Withstand the winds of time.

I would not stop those winds.

Let them blow furiously to
Erase my writings
If they be ephemeral;
And only my dreams.

But should they be of substance,
Weighted heavily to withstand:

Weigh them heavily on the minds
That grant eternity from the brink:

                  Oblivion.

I know the works of  Billy Shakes,
Of Dante, Virgil, Eliot, Homer-

I know Joey Conrad,
Of  J.R.R. Tolkien, the mentor.

I will know every Author,
Poet-
I want
Every thought that they sacrificed to the Pen,

To the Dust:

And they are alive as I am, perhaps in a
Purgatory of their own.

   Let me linger here a while.

Scratch deep into this white-bone dust
Before my own bones are made a medium
For others who discover this waste land, too.

Then if my knuckles are bloodied-
Red ink for channels I've scratched-
The wind will only dry my blood in the dust...

Those that come after will
Surely see that stain.

Then,
When I have left myself in words

I will return to the World.
Travel out of myths, and stories to
Set literal foot on ancestral stones.

Until then, I dwell in dreams-
Beautiful and Terrifying,
Or just Difficult,
But still alive.

Life, is easy.

Yes,
I've said that many times before.
 
Living, is what's difficult. To be aware and
Utterly defenseless...

I do not know what I will say next.
 
I do not know what you might say.
   What if it is not what I hear?
Aware can still be a wrong way-

But that is the difficulty, isn't it?
It's why I prefer what written words say.
Written is not living.

Written is the same as Life.

I have dreams
Inside the dream I live
And my memories are
Memories of a dream, Remembered.
Sometimes I'm remembering while I'm dreaming still.

Oh I have discovered this waste land;
Just as I'm discovering it still.
Soon, though,
So soon,
 I will journey back-

A journey forward: Part two.

Another decade
And another
Maybe another still

I am young
Though not linear, any more.
I am old, too.

I am

I...

You, who have been led here-
Who wandered, quested, or roamed…

You are assimilated.

You will find my blood,

When my bones are dust
You will write, too-

You will write until your own red ink has run dry
And stained the white-bone dust, too-

And I will be remembered in your dreams, remembered
Just as you are now in mine. My dreamed memory, imagining you.

       We all are already dead.

How else could we have ever lived ?


…Welcome to my Waste Land…


       We're too good for Hell


***
Again, thoughts, questions, comments, criticisms... All are weclomed, expected, and appreciated.

With any luck, I'll have section III done before the weekend's end.

~Ruin's player guy

[Acacia]

I'll spill first blood, then.

Ruin, I found this poetry a bit stuffy - hard to swallow, you know. The words are words, but they don't seem to incite any deep, tumultuous feelings.

I think, maybe what I'm trying to say is that there is little humility to the tone of the poem(s). I'll be fair and say I didn't read all of it, because I didn't. Also, to be fair-er, I'm not a big fan of poetry, so it might just be me being a jerk.

Still, much love and thank you for being brave and going first.

[Ruindil]

Thanks Aca,

No need to apologize for your honesty, it's all I wanted =) I realize the piece can come off as pretentious.  Again, it's far from finished, which is why its here. My only question to you is where abouts did you stop reading? I think I can guess, given what you said about the lack of deep, tumultuous feelings, but I could be wrong, and you perhaps read further...and then the parts that I think are more...invested, may not be. Same goes for humility, which is actually a large theme of this poem. I am languishing in this waste land until my writings acheive a certain worth.

"Waiting in this waste land,
Writing methodically in the Dust:
Wanting one phrase;
A single utterance to
Withstand the winds of time.

I would not stop those winds.

Let them blow furiously to
Erase my writings
If they be ephemeral;
And only my dreams.

But should they be of substance,
Weighted heavily to withstand:

Weigh them heavily on the minds
That grant eternity from the brink:

                  Oblivion."

 
Whether I accomplished that intention or not is why this was posted at all. If I lose your attention before the question can ever be raised, well, then I've obviously failed.

My thanks again for your time and opinion, Aca =)

[Acacia]

My only question to you is where abouts did you stop reading?

That's kind of a hard question, really. I think it might have been the second verse that I stopped 'really' reading and after that I pecked and skimmed. Sometimes, poems start out one way, but end another.

Reading this second one you posted - I think the issue I have is the use of I, me, my ect. It's all me, me, me -

Even here:

She knows she’s let me down
And that was after she let me go.
Her tears are filling my eyes
Maybe because I’m the one who is hurt-
But she knows I will not cry.
She cries enough for us both.

You're talking about someone else's guilt and her crying in front of you (a very vulnerable, pitiful way for her to be), but on every line you're talking about yourself. ME, ME, MY, I'M, I, me, me, me. What about her?

For part II ... I'm sort of lost here. It's perhaps too choppy and disoriented and while anyone who's graduated high school will understand most of the references you've made, some of them are still too random or obscure for the common reader to completely understand (at which point, each reference becomes this odd black hole of understanding that only seems to suck at everything else you've written and distract from 'the flow').


I really hate writing critiques - I feel like I'm always being an ass. Sorry if I am. I <3 you.

[Ruindil]

Aca,

Stop Apologizing.

=)

Really, I appreciate your honesty. It doesn't mean I particularly agree with your opinion... but your opinion (and any one elses for that matter) is the only reason the work is here. I should have assumed that a woman would wonder what the girl was thinking, or feeling. For me, I have a fairly good idea of what she was thinking because, well, I was there. That being the case, the Poem is concerned with my waste land, not hers. Now, some might guess that she was crying out of guilt, but guilt of what? What if it wasn't guilt, but loss? What if it was just tears for a tragic ending to what had once been romance? ... I could slow the poem's pace and introduce the character of her own consciousness, but it detracts from the point of the piece, which mostly has to do with the Fisher King, that motif of a sterile and impotent god who is reborn and restores fertility to both himself and his lands.

"And in each tear that forms,
I endure another small death.
My life lost, in the water
Her eyes shed.
And after this ancient ritual,
Perhaps I’ll rise again,"

I have made myself the Fisher King in this section, and I'm dieing, which of course leads to me beginning part II in Hell, and then quickly purgatory. The "We" that is referenced does not actually apply to her dying as well, but rather, it applies to the "Us" while we were together. Again, I could have made that far more explicit, but I prefer to leave such things vague. Then the reader is able to apply their own biases and conceptions of what is going on. Now, it's true, most High School grads would understand The Tempest referrence, or perhaps even realize that I called myself "closer to a god" only to establish the Fisher King motif, but I think fewer people would understand why I'm doing that.

I've done enough writing to know that a good 95% of it is garbage, and out of a thousand lines I might find fifty that coherently fit to make a truly good piece... but knowing people's opinions usually helps to whittle down material that is perhaps extraneous. I could go through each stanza and explain why I chose each allusion, why they are placed where they are, and how they relate to the piece as a whole, but doing so what detract from the point of poetry to begin with. Knowing which parts did not interest you, excite you, anger you, or otherwise stimulate you helps me to decide what is important enough for me to keep whether people like, or understand it, or not. Or, if something is me just using words cause they're fun to play with...which generally leads to me remembering to be a Grown-up and to put those toys away.

Point is, don't ever apologize for your opinions. Really, I could even care less about "constructive criticism" these days. People get caught up trying to say something nice or helpful and they often don't know how to fix it themselves, so its just easier to hear the honest opinion from the outset.  In fact, since you're the only person out of thirty something views to actually post a response, I thank you even more heartily.

I'll keep your thoughts in mind about it all being from my perspective. I doubt I'll change anything in the first section, but perhaps I can introduce her character later in the poem and display her feelings there. The joy of having five sections to work with. hehe.

Thanks again!

[Acacia]

I made a blog and forgot about tk - oopsy-poopsy!

I could go through each stanza and explain why I chose each allusion, why they are placed where they are, and how they relate to the piece as a whole, but doing so what detract from the point of poetry to begin with.

This is it, I think. I like being told stories. Poetry often involves too much thinking - not that I don't like thinking, but... Hmm, it's like the difference between auto-pilot and cruise control.


... That might not help. :/