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Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
Since Janszoon mentioned "arsonists," I'll go ahead and mention "formaldehyde!"  Nasty stuff, that.
SATCHMO, your first poem reminds me of the movie "Natural Born Killers," which I like a lot because of the horrible ferocity and sadness in it. I am confused, though, why these people in love in your poem would do such destructive acts like bombing establishments. What is their motivation? Maybe I'm taking it too literally? They sound so justified in doing what they are doing, and I don't understand why. |
The poem deals, partly, with the dichotomy of creation and destruction (artists and arsonists), life and death, the sacred and the profane, and pretty much just the unification of opposites, there is an overtone of sadness which is juxtaposed with the idealistic notion of being in love, which anchors the more passive positive side of the equation. I used violence and death as a metaphor for the passion of being in love and the transitory nature of all things, which is kinda' the same thing that comes across in
Natural Born Killers, and of course, there is a sort of nihilistic euphoria that balances it all out too. They're just some concepts that I was playing with at the time that I wrote it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
Your poetry reminds me of the spoken poems of a man, an oral bard, whom I met here in Iowa. He performs poetry for people on the spot, making it up as he goes along, which gives a random feeling to some of the word choices and combinations, similar to your "unicorn games in your basement" in your final poem. Of course I have a sexual translation for what that means, but I'm not sure if you intended that! :p:
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It was the product of me lying in bed half asleep about 6 months ago and making up some silly song in my head as I'm prone to do. It's not hard to miss what the implication is, but it's definitely not a huge fixation of mine, or a serious poem.
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Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
Do you have a strong, specific, intended meaning when you write these, or are you more interested in opening people's minds by using unconventional images?
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I just like playing with words and using alliteration, allusions, the connotations that certain words are saturated with etc.. A lot of what I've written has been for performance, so much of the emphasis is on the tone, pace and rhythm of delivery. Usually in situations like that, unless someone in the audience is paying very close attention and knows a lot about what I'm alluding to, they're not not going to catch much of the symbolism or allusions that are in my poem. For example, formaldehyde is used as an embalming fluid. For it to be "second-hand" implies, not a rebirth, but a re-death, again a concept that works with the life/death dichotomy. Most listening to it probably wouldn't catch that, especially considering how quickly and forcefully the poem is delivered.