Ah, the blessed month of April. Fraught with windstorms, snow flurries, ice slicing up your cheeks, your red calves quivering in the wind and longing for sunshine and a good pair of shorts, and a month full of 40% off poetry discounts at the BYU Bookstore! I keep missing my office hours because I'm so distracted by the 40% off display table. It's okay. No one comes anyway. To kick of poetry month (six days late) and to distract myself from the task at hand, namely writing my African lit paper (due tomorrow), here's a snarky little prose poem that I find both pretty and fairly amusing in its own special way.
Metaphors
It is pleasing to know there are so many metaphors in this world. And I'm told the number is growing all the time. Last week an Asian newspaper reported that an immense metaphor surfaced just off the coast of India and was creating quite a stir. Christians and Muslims forbad the faithful to gaze upon it. Hindus showered it with flowers. Buddhists claimed it had been there all along. A single metaphor can upend the world and soon everyone is wearing orange or speaking in falsetto or weeping in the streets. Before they present themselves to mankind, most prophets spend years gathering metaphors in the desert, which is like an orchard where metaphors flourish without a trace of rain.
-David Shumate
Showing posts with label poem of the day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poem of the day. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Famblyfamblyfamblyfamblyfambly.
My family is playing a game where you put cards with words on them down on top of each other in order from largest to smallest, like universe --> Asia --> China --> cemetery. Let me tell you something. This game is lame. Because everything has to be logical. This is what I put down:
Hollywood --> Springtime
Pear tree --> Rainstorm
Alleyway --> Doorway --> Galaxy --> Nun
This is more fun when the card game becomes a fantasy story. Like say you're in this magical fantasy realm and you're sitting on a hill under a pear tree and it's only raining on you. I can see this in my head. Or say you're in an alternate universe and Hollywood is like its own galaxy and it's only springtime in Hollywood and everywhere else it's all dark and drab and everyone is fighting all the time to try to get into Hollywood where it's pretty but they can't because there are big tall gates and only some people can get in sometimes. The end. Do you even know how much more fun that makes this game? But one Shaneus would have none of it, and thus was I ridiculed. Sigh. Life is hard. Probably I am crazy. Does this make sense to anyone else but me? Probably not.
To conclude with a lovely poem by Pablo Neruda:
Twenty Love Poems: #20
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
Write, for example "The night is shattered with stars,
twinkling blue, in the distance."
The night wind spins in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.
She loved me, and at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.
What difference that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered, full of stars, and she is not with me.
That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her.
As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.
Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite space.
I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.
Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these the last verses I write for her.
Hollywood --> Springtime
Pear tree --> Rainstorm
Alleyway --> Doorway --> Galaxy --> Nun
This is more fun when the card game becomes a fantasy story. Like say you're in this magical fantasy realm and you're sitting on a hill under a pear tree and it's only raining on you. I can see this in my head. Or say you're in an alternate universe and Hollywood is like its own galaxy and it's only springtime in Hollywood and everywhere else it's all dark and drab and everyone is fighting all the time to try to get into Hollywood where it's pretty but they can't because there are big tall gates and only some people can get in sometimes. The end. Do you even know how much more fun that makes this game? But one Shaneus would have none of it, and thus was I ridiculed. Sigh. Life is hard. Probably I am crazy. Does this make sense to anyone else but me? Probably not.
To conclude with a lovely poem by Pablo Neruda:
Twenty Love Poems: #20
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
Write, for example "The night is shattered with stars,
twinkling blue, in the distance."
The night wind spins in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.
She loved me, and at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.
I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.
What difference that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered, full of stars, and she is not with me.
That's all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her.
As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind that would touch her ear.
Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite space.
I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.
Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these the last verses I write for her.
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