Blind Review Friday.The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)
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This weeks submission comes from a Clevelandpoetics - The Blog reader.
Michael
She watches from the east window with despicable eyes
sending forth loud, dark caws...
Wherefore art thou?...
I am kin to the insurgent pundit,
half the life of the traitorous shrew...
...and I am not a Capulet,
but she wonders wherefore.
The drumming of her disapproval
resounds above the band,
daring me to go on
royally snubbed.
The queen is wincing...
contorted with wincing...
sick with green plaque in the hull of her romance...
wincing.
But I go on pretending not to see.
Blind to the face of life unlived
perched in a towering place of spite.
Weary of adagio stumbling
and piercing eyes that dagger.
Dazed and confused by the contradictions
of love unloving.
She shakes her head with dramatic exaggerations
and I grow just a little bit weaker.
Weeping inward like wilting ferns.
Brown edged and sun-burned.
Void of strength to face one so skilled to scorn.
Skilled by natural instinct that accommodates neglect.
Dare to dance beneath the rain of hate
and shower of pelting resentment?
I can see her...
Saw the exact moment her smile fled the scene of my impune infraction...
the same moment I waxed internal
and turned my unsung affections to songs.
She so loudly wonders why
when I rend the veil of my mysteries
and the masses come running.
They come clamoring in
with no refusal of truth
and they, the gathering witnesses, applaud
while she, in maddening heat, hurls stones from her cloud.
Face turned away,
she is so shamefully moved that she wails with disappointment.
Looking to behold her faded beauty,
I find her revolted by her crowning king
and I whisper...
Jump.
Come down from the seat of your heaven.
And Just....
Jump.
7 comments:
i absolutely love the ending.
I find it a little confusing... I don't actually know what it's about.
(Like TM, though, I guess I like the ending)
Anonymous ... the title might have helped ... "Michal".
Yes! I must admit I liked a lot of this but didn't totally get it. Knowing the title really brings it together for me. Michal was the daughter of King Saul and wife of future King David in one of the biblical books of Samuel. She helped David escape from her father's men, who wanted to kill him, by letting David "down through a window." But she stayed behind and and was "divorced" from David (and unhappy) for years, until after Saul's death.
Without biblical knowledge, a full appreciation of this poem might be elusive. But that's not a bad thing. The same could be said of of a classic like Milton's Paradise Lost.
Like the others who've commented, I am particularly fond of the ending.
Yes, this one definitely suffered from having the title left off. Thanks for the exegesis, JC-- that helps illuminate the poem.
I don't think it is confusing at all. I think it's clever and well written.
It obviously makes a number of allusions to perhaps biblical ideas but I think more directly to Shakespeare..
Titles are sometimes deceptive.. I think the title was left off for a reason... doesn't need the title to have told it's story.
There are 3 layers of meaning to consider:
1. The Biblical reference to David & Michal used as a backdrop for unbalanced love and the insensitivity of wives.
2. The Shakespearean reference as a allusion to the balcony used in both Romeo & Juliet and David's story. Balcony - exalted positions and stolen authority / Woman looking down.
3. The piece in its entirety as a metaphor for the latent eotional abuse of men in relationships and the persecution of male vulnerability.
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