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Poetry Magnum Opus

Bridges


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As we walk across clock hands my

shadow and I are reunited, after

crossing St Ives bridge. Their is

a tunnel at the end of the light

as the moon like a fingertip opens

glass, placing the bridge against

the eyes of the night, sleepers cross,

some slouch heavy with dreams. Ambling

through St Ives next morning pedestrians

are like type writer keys as rain falls

on them, I find words to resurrect the bridge

sunk deep into my heart, but there is no-one

left to cross.

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pedestrians

are like type writer keys as rain falls

 

What a marvellous image.

 

Typo- There is

 

best

 

badge

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abstrect-christ

A sad poem about the narrators loss of self or emotional identity -- haha i can relate on a bunch of levels.

 

Nice small poem.

Pinhead

"Unbearable, isn't it? The suffering of strangers, the agony of friends.

There is a secret song at the center of the world, Joey, and its sound is like razors through flesh."

Joey

"I don't believe you."

Pinhead

"Oh come, you can hear its faint echo right now. I'm here to turn up the volume.

To press the stinking face of humanity into the dark blood of its own secret heart."

"There's a starving beast inside my chest
playing with me until he's bored
Then, slowly burying his tusks in my flesh
crawling his way out he rips open old wounds

When I reach for the knife placed on the bedside table
its blade reflects my determined face
to plant it in my chest
and carve a hole so deep it snaps my veins

Hollow me out, I want to feel empty"
-- "Being Able To Feel Nothing" by Oathbreaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBPy3xNwwL8

"Sky turns to a deeper grey

the sun fades by the moon

hell's come from the distant hills

tortures dreams of the doomed

and they pray, yet they prey

and they pray, still they prey"
-- "Still They Prey" by Cough

https://soundcloud.com/relapserecords/sets/cough-still-they-pray

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  • 2 weeks later...
David W. Parsley

Hi Barry, I enjoyed this poem and its perplexities very much. I like the way you bring a specific place into the poem, helping to anchor the more surrealistic imagery and symbolist language. The familiar motifs of moon, dream, sleeping, clocks, and eyes are here again, but they do not repeat within the poem and are refreshingly juxtaposed with startling action such as that of fingertips.

 

Fingertip action is clearly important to the poem's atmosphere and meaning, but I am still deciding just what is being symbolized. I get an exciting sense of some original insight pondering over a working that is not quite fate or the medieval conception of cosmic/divine "machinery". Even the sleepers crossing are not all participating in any common action, even something as basic as dreaming, but they cross just the same.

 

I also admire the inside-out treatment of a well-known near-death experience:

 

 

... There is
a tunnel at the end of the light

 

Nice word-play in the style of Dylan Thomas, arresting the reader with the reversal of terms as well as deftly provoking one's multiple associations with the root phrase, the nearness of death and its mystery (another recurring theme for you, but not explicitly mentioned once - brilliant!).

 

I spent several days deliberating over this poem, taking time to google and bing on the bridge and its setting. I even looked to see if there is actually a tunnel (hey, you already showed that there are literal elements here, why not this one, too?). If there is one, it is not mentioned. But the bridge figures in a number of separate articles and there are plenty of images showing swans swimming along the arches, perhaps some gulls. Most fascinating is the existence of a chapel in the middle of the span, one of only four such bridge chapels remaining in England. The simply adorned windows evoke an echo of the glass in your poem. I am left with a sense of possibilities, of titillating enigma and spiritual potential weaving through your images.

 

It is a fine poem (please fix the typo pointed out by badger) honed of excess verbiage and clear of repetitions. A nice achievement, distilling that sense of alienation well expressed by abs. I will return to this poem. If anything else occurs to me, I'll drop another comment. For now, I like the poem's tone and deep potentials.

 

Thank you,

- Dave

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