oto.

 

 

 

I grew up believing that Pygmy's

were little short Americans who,

fed up with cultural materialism,

hid away in jungle overgrowth

 

dressed in what remained of

the animals they beheaded. That they promised

each other, around a still flickering

fire,

 

to kill themselves before returning to

Chicago's south side or Detroit's east

side. Not now. Not with the taste of

the simplier life so fresh.

Not when clean death suggest

a drifting  from human to agglomerate

flower cluster;

 

where the dead are not passed away

but departed to the unskeptical land

of dieties and truth tellers. That  land where

only serpants die off. Not the daily

processionals of young boys

 

clawing at their neighborhoods

in the brightest blues and reds/

defending the motionlessness of

the impure air, waving 45's

at some mythical  foul future; promising

 

revenge in the tinniest of candlelight vigual's/

Yet for so long

I understood, reluctantly,

this concept of borrowed space; I mean,

the precepts of being mad. That

 

poetry, when done with aggression,

takes up such little space

to write it.

Reviews

[Corset]

I'll have you know that this years resolution was to become the biggest liar this town has ever seen, and I will too just you wait and see. But before that happens I have to tell you, you are a scoundrel and a curr and I absolutely think this part of the poem should be in Redbook, under the how to slap your man hard where it hurts.

dressed in what remained of

the animals they beheaded. That they promised

each other, around a still flickering

fire,



to kill themselves before returning to

Chicago's south side or Detroit's east

side. Not now. Not with the taste of

the simplier life so fresh.

Not when clean death suggest

a drifting from human to agglomerate

flower cluster;



where the dead are not passed away

but departed to the unskeptical land

of dieties and truth tellers. That land where

only serpants die off. Not the daily

processionals of young boys



clawing at their neighborhoods

in the brightest blues and reds/

defending the motionlessness of

the impure air, waving 45's

at some mythical foul future; promising

revenge in the tinniest of candlelight ( vigil's?)

(where can I get a mythical foul future? can I have one too? I need a bigger gun, do I need a bigger gun? I should get a bigger one)

[shutbudholdsabee]

The flow of your line breaks is flawless. You've fit many themes into a short amount of words, criticizing the tribal violence of a city's gangs while contrasting it with the comparative purity of the wild and violent jungle. The difference lies in the city's "motionlessness of the impure air," and that stanza is my favorite for showing that inner city violence is a distortion of the tribal, mythology and honor rotted into a "foul future". But the importance of the poem lies in the connection to the battle over space and the last stanza placing poetry in a space above this plane. I love the point you make but "poetry takes up so little space to write it" hits a wrong chord in my brain. The only improvement I could suggest would be to condense that to follow a sentence's logic?

I think in the third stanza you might mean "suggests" and in the second to last "candlelight vigils", but I might have missed something you did intentionally- I only nitpick a poem when it's this close to being perfect in terms of language.

I will definitely be looking into more of your poetry, which is a beautiful expression of true conflict that many of us never see.

[Matching Socks]

Great write Dana, really enjoyed this one and where it took my thoughts.
Respecting both life and death, and opening our minds to understanding both.

[writing mojo]

So true in this pumas aurora of an inward volcano trying to speak...I love the ending and the cooling affect this dana scape left to the fallout of a foreshadowing thought provoking to different degrees..excellent

[W.k.kortas]

The notion of the tribal on so many levels, of jungles African and imagined and urban and real, the colors of gangs, dead boys and serpents...how do you do this? We tick-tick-tick our little lines, like Masters' Petit The Poet, and here you are roaring.

[Horizon K.]

...this concept of borrowed space; I mean,
the precepts of being mad. That

poetry, when done with aggression,
takes up such little space
to write it...


This makes me think of all the kinds of space there are-- some taken, physically occupied-- we pay for it, fight for it. Yet even that space in the heart-- immeasurable, is something fought for, unshareable-- we fight to be sure it is an oasis of our own... But poetry, ah... There is all the space in the world, for each can write and read and love, as many poems as we have thoughts... I must admit though, there are always poems-- sometimes, one-- that we love best...

I love your closing here Dana, and how you take us across the tapestry of human struggle, to arrive at poetry...

[Tree]

You tackle that plight in only the way rushin can, encircling the subject matter with such imaginative introspection, such creative logical deduction, (should those three words even go together?) That the reader has no choice but to fall into the waiting arms of your last verse; then, to start the journey over again, I re read it.
There is, really, when you rip apart the facades of our society, only one thing that will always remain. Tribes. Many many different tribes. A friend of mine who recently stopped by to visit, wanted to go for a run. I had this route planned out, not only to challenge ourselves physically but to show her things she might other wise not be privy to. To make a long story short, I was going to pack a small caliber weapon, it would have been prudent to do so, but she argued that she didn't think it was a good idea and wanted to know why I had weapons in the first place. And you know what I said? Because it's the truth. I hate guns, but can't stand that mentally disturbed people can have access to them, and if society were to break down, as it did in 92/93?
68/69? I or anyone close to me will not be victim to an ethically / morally corrupt individual, just because his tribe is armed, and my family, isn't. It felt weird to say that to her, because, I wasn't even sure why I was hanging on to them.




nice work here, D