Lessons in Failure

We've stood there looking like aimless crows,
both of us wet and listless, 
under bright yellow plastic sheets
that only pretend to protect;
We've stood there drinking tea,
a dark brown ocean of overboiled dreams,
so sweet that sometimes it made our teeth hurt,
while it rained down all around us-
walls of water that trapped us together.

Now you watch as I walk away from you.
And even when you just stand still,
it's like you're walking away too;
we are equidistant from the heart of it all.
The mirror was where the bodies once met.
Illusion, maybe, all illusion.
We were opposites, inversed.
And now who's to say 
who's real and who a shadow.

I stare at the old man who sells balloons in the park.
Stare at him hard,
so that he'll give up the wisdom
withheld in his wrinkles. 
They say there's poetry in all of this,
I only have to look deeper.

But mostly, it is a stutter in my throat,
I gulp 
and it's lost like an aborted bubble. 

Author's Note

Please Comment.

Reviews

[Matt]

I've been reading through this a few times and think I will have to come back to read it more. I feel like there's more in there that I'm not quite picking up on understanding. Though it reminds me of those moments when you meet someone often and want to break the ice but always end up going away without a word and feeling the regret of a lost opportunity. That's how it makes me feel anyhow. I especially like the overboiled dreams and the way it ends abruptly with an aborted bubble.

[Mouli Banerjee]

hey. :) I suppose the good thing about poetry is that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. I had meant something different when i had written it, but now that i read your review and then went and re-read my own poem, your interpretation makes total sense too. :D so what i had intended was that this is a realisation of a breal up, the dead end of a relationship. the clue is in, for me, "The mirror was where the bodies once met." the intimacy seems like an illusion now, now that they are both drifting apart and they want to say a lot to each other, but words fail them.

[Matt]

Ah yes, I can see that now I can understand the opposites and shadows part too. I'm never too good at grasping what others are getting across but I'm very glad to read something that makes me think.

[Mouli Banerjee]

:) i think that's the case with most of us...

[Laminators Dubai]

i really liked the massage in this poem. the dark side is just too good.

[zainul]

Crisis in relationship depicted vividly with metaphor and imagery.
Love these lines:
"Now you watch as I walk away from you.
And even when you just stand still,
it's like you're walking away too;"

[Mouli Banerjee]

thanks so much! :)

[zainul]

Your poem is as beautiful as your sweet smile.
It has many dimensions.I thought it would be wise to read and reread it and afterward listen to your own explanation.