17 November, 2006

Muyil

Muyil

The jungle has eaten the city.
Only roots are left behind,
crossed with pathless trails all
leading beyond this shore.
This slim sandy green spit, stretched
into a dock over cleared blue.

These planks, rough-hewn, uneven
move under my feet. They feel
grey, bleached by sun and time.
I walked past time to get here:
crumbling in places, grown tall
in others, stumbling into now.
This spot where time stills
into a salted breeze
playing the marsh reeds

I long to dip my toes
and wonder if night brings mist.

2 comments:

LentenStuffe said...

Twiffer,

You have a great ear. It's not too often one actually hears poetic turns of phrase and fine choices like you make. It's an accomplished voice and already seems so much at ease with itself. I say this only because of my own sense of revelation at how good you are.

Which of course makes me wonder about you: have you put your poems on PoetryFray? If so, under what nic? Have you published? And what the heck do you do with yourself? Honestly, Twiffer, you're a bit of a conundrum: here you are with this fine skill and you've never let on or hinted. Or maybe you have. Anyway, this is going to be a joy and a treat, like the discovery of a new landscape. There are what? 20 poems here you've put on in the last day or so! Jysus!

I loved your images in "Muyil", especially of the jungle overtaking the city and only leaving the roots, the best place to start over. And there's some very memorable phrases like "stumbling into now". Wow!

The poem has a wonderful sense of timing and pace, you ease into your transition, walking the planks in more than one sense to arrive at that awareness or realization at the close, a seemingly flippant sense of wonder but beguiling because 'dipping one's toes' takes much more than the merest decision to do so. I liked the ending, its uncertainty and openness, without the resolution but poetically resolved nonetheless, for the shapeless image and gesture may very well be where the truth lies anyway.

I guess what I'm say here is that you have a very natural poetic voice and it lilts over your terrain exclusively in ways that ensure a poetic apprehension of your images.

I'm looking forward to reading the others here.

twiffer said...

well, hopefully the rest won't disappoint (since you started with one of the better ones). these were kicking around on my hard drive, and i placed them up here cause august was going to do his poetry blog thing. some of them have popped up on the p-fray over the past few years.

published? no, though perse has suggested i try. but i'm not as prolific as this blog would make it appear.

glad you're enjoying though. thanks.