Song With Coda
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Song
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our voices
heard as echoes
over the windless
barren planes of speech
hope
someday to find
the end of the sentence
before they die
of no one to listen
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our eyes
seen as mirrors
reflecting dust
images of past mistakes
hope
someday to find
the quiet surface
before they are blinded
by no one to see
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our hands
used as tools
to wander aimlessly
over face & thighs
hope
some day to find
some other warm body
before they wither
from no one to touch
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our emotions
felt as fears
repressing old guilts
in search of absolution
hope
someday to find
the final tenderness
before they smother
from no way to express
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Coda
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even
as my voice cracks from calling
hands bleed from grabbing at straws
eyes are blinded in the search
emotions are blocked by futility
I will cry out
reach out
search out
forever
until I find a way of touching you
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Jan69
This is one of the earliest pieces in the collection & as such is the most revealing of young-man excess & emotional melodrama. Nicely over-written with more force than I possibly felt at the time. It’s difficult for me to see any specific influence beyond nameless prog-rock lyricists. It makes me think of the dance pose of reaching out to some imagined horizon for the unobtainable. Sound & fury signifying the need to impress readers with the use of language 🙂
I wanted to write a poem that would make someone fall in love with me. I wrote many variations with this subtext in mind, which knowing it was an impossibility. Language can lead to connection but isn’t a magic spell.
It is another of my imposed structure pieces ‘our noun verb noun etc’ that gives each verse a pattern of theme & variation. The theme being the search for something or someone & the inner obstacles that have to be dealt with to find it. Reading it now I cannot say what the object was then – other than sounding deep & philosophic about the plight of the love lorn. Another of the closet subtext pieces where gender is avoided.
It reflects my fears of ‘no one’ because at that time there was no person who was the focus of my affections. I had lusts, longings for some but the urge was physical not emotional. Then I still believed a relationship was the way to fulfillment. Today I know relationships can be fulfilling but real fulfillment is a spiritual journey 🙂
TOpoet 