Twist-off

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's the third Monday that I won't call
and tell him about the empty spot.
The twist-off wine is sweet and cheap
and it helps my half-dose kick in; pills
I didn't know I could get hooked on
so quickly. Now I have to kick them.
That's a metaphor for him, too. Later,
I will smoke a cigarette, and pass out.

[LMNO]

It was good, but I have to be honest and say that the last two lines didn't do it for me.  Not sure why.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It wasn't very good. I have two others that are even worse. I'll post them later.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This one has whole sections that don't make sense. I'll probably come back to it and rework it. Actually, as time passes, I'm really preferring my short stories and especially the kids stories to my poetry.

The idea of stopping loving him
impossible, like stopping breath
or stopping rain, or the sunrise
or the coming of winter. I flow
with the cliches of endings.

I know it will happen anyway,
the stopping. It's time itself, this
process of cessation. It ends.
Weeks later, it will seem to ease
with the agony of breathing in.

Moments and then minutes
and hours will go by, without
thinking of the empty of missing;
him. Who is only another animal
made of fluid held within skin.

The private jokes and the plans
and the ideas of art and the close
moments we shared will all fade
and in time, again, just as it did
once before, will become simpler.

And I will stop. The circles, secrets
the minute intimate understandings
will all fade into distant obscurity
and someone else will come along.
I will share my weakness, and laugh.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I think this one's the worst; flat-out maudlin. I'll probably regret posting these and delete them later.



You are my own rude grave.
I had buried myself within you
and to unearth myself from that
shallow hole was unthinkable.

A brother in sorrow and love,
you were my kindred spirit; you;
you understood everything I said.
You never took me for a novelty.

There is no way to tell you now,
nothing in the freedom you held
to be the shy, the quiet, the wild
listening bird you gave me to be.

[NotPublished]

The last one made me really sad ... I don't think its bad at all

And I'm sure I got the meaning of #2, its basically that you go through all these people and you meet someone who will just be the same, you go through the same inevitable experiences .. and it just becomes easier every time. The love isn't an endless thing.

Oh man for something that you claim that are your two shittest ones, they evoked emotions in me for sure.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well, thank you! Maybe they're not hopeless, then, and I just need some distance to rewrite them. I also think I see a way to recover the ending of that first one, because LMNO is very right about the last two lines.

Later, though.

[East Coast Hustle]

First one was pretty good, though I agree about the closing lines needing to be tweaked.

next two were not terrible, but they were still shit for the crime of being too obvious. I've never been a fan of poems or songs about failed relationships unless it was just used as an excuse to paint some imagery or as a framework for exploring something else entirely. It's too played-out and emotionally overwrought a subject to be dealt with directly and still retain interest.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I actually think they may be among the worst things I have ever written, and I'm not sure I have the heart to rework them, though I might tweak the first one in the obvious ways, eventually, to make it less stilted at the end. Some people just don't get good poetry written about them, and, horribly, less catastrophically final heartbreaks might only deserve lesser poetry.

I've occasionally thought that no love gets good poetry until it is irrevocably over. Maybe that is a good sign in this case, or maybe only a sign that he didn't make enough impact to rate better.

Although that makes it hard to categorize some of my best work.

Oh, but he did get the children's stories. Maybe I'm just no kind of a poet anymore.