You sing nocturnes.
I melt the moon in hive-broken honey
And drink the potion in the instant's infinity.
I know a sweetness that drives me nuts,
When my loins burn with an wolfish lust.
Don't tell me of a moon-soaked night
I call up the witches out of sight.
Don't tell me of sleeveless women born that night
Who starve me with half a diet.
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4 comments:
I've been staring at your poem for quite sometime and been thrown into a state of utter confusion and captivity. The words are whirling around me signifying something at one time and turning into another in the next moment. But, I'm having an uncanny feeling of sensitivity without making anything out. That's what the beauty of poetry is; you can't understand it, you don't have to, yet you feel its indescribable effect in your body, in your soul.
You're an extremely imperative entity in the rhapsody asking to sing and not to tell this and that. Your poem starts with a grave lyrical tone, almost classical. I see a kind of glowing desire like the unspotted moon melting into the golden potion which you drink and glow. You become the moon. This lyrical thick melting desire breaks into a thin shallow tone when the sweetness drives you ‘nuts’. Driving somebody nuts is something that is never classical, not even lyrical, but flippant. And in the next line the whole tone inverts and you turn yourself into a sadist with ‘wolfish lust’ having sharp teeth. Interestingly, the position of ‘t’ and ‘s’ also inverts themselves in ‘nuts’ and ‘lust’. It prepares the readers for the arrival of ‘witches’ and ‘sleeveless women’ in your remembrance of whom you don’t want to hear. You ask not to tell you of ‘a moon-soaked night’ which gives me a feeling of wetness instead of a burning-glowing figure. Perhaps, you don’t want to ‘call up’ things of ‘that night’ from your personal history book; you don’t like to recall the chronicle of starvation. You just want to listen to the nocturnes and glow and glow.
I’ve got a lot more to talk about the poem. I’m still wondering—I promise to write more once my world calms down after this earthquake.
shourabh pothobashi
Shourabh,
Your response is extraordinary. You're waking me up. That is what is meant by a good pupil: he draws the mentor out of his deep-delved burrow. I'm so amazed that I would call your writing a classic piece, my poem apart. I can see you have an extraordinary language and style (no flattery intended! I'm your trusted teacher, I can't damage you.) I'm really very happy to see a fine mind in you. The amazing thing is how speedily you responded with a high-strung style. THANK YOU. AND AGAIN THANK YOU FOR YOUR TERRIFIC IMPROVEMENT. Now I feel that at least one student I could make, and my effort is not entirely wasted, as I had thought once upon a time.
Cheers!
The type of critic I am going to give here can be termed as fever criticism (practically I have a high temperature). We should begin with the way the words used in the poems. The small poem looks like a postmodern zoo of most unlikely words. The latest animal is ‘that drives me nuts’. But, the poem opens almost classically. This phenomenon can be called ‘double-coding’ (a term mainly used in architecture to denote the presence of modern and postmodern elements at the same time).
In the second line of the poem the narrator makes ‘a potion’ of moon and drinks it. Of course, we are not told the purpose of the extra-terrestrial potion. But we see the effects of that potion. This ‘metaphysical Viagra’ makes the narrator’s ‘loins burn with an wolfish lust’. This is the first and the only image that the narrator agrees with and calls it ‘sweetness’. In the next, we find ‘witches’. Perhaps they help the narrator to find lovers. The poem finishes with ‘sleeveless women’ who ‘starve’ the narrator ‘with a diet’. This incompleteness in the reason the poet wants to forget the whole episode.
This is a good poem, and it needs time to appreciate it. So, tomorrow, I may say something wise about it…
Abul,
We're always extra-curious about erotica. Because it is strange to most of us. Centuries of mishandling has dirtied and soiled it into something nasty and noisome, advisedly avoidable. Aphrodisiacs are needed by those who are contributors to this literature of voyeurism and fetishism or name any other prism of isms. Now I turn you over to Foucault.
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