cat sunning itself in pure bright
luminous checkered floor
i forgot time yesterday till it
became today
shifting sleeping positions from perfect
to perfect 10 minutes before alarm
first cup of tea steeped
for 5 plus 2 sugar splash milk
movie into spotlights sprayed over grains
of wooden floorlined cats
dress yourself the way
mother wouldn’t
drink vanilla silk soy milk
with oats & more cereal
pavement sparkles with rising sun &
weekends broken memories
adjusting indoor & outdoor temperature
& lighting
spots form after moving out of sun
into bedroom dimly lit
soundtrack of alarm clock radio starts
“institutions like a big bright light”
social radar shows
shy eyes & untied shoes
but it is your assignment you
have to do it
a new haircut & trip to
thrift store for secondhand comforts
its nice of you to show up
and grace us with your presence
not conversationalising between classes &
never just stopping by
how was your break and how
are your little brother and sister?
twenty cups of tea later i still
feel cold inside
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4 comments:
christopher, this is a sad poem. your little two-liners are a nice form for making small points and adding to the feeling of loneliness. next time i see you, i hope i remember to ask how amy and greg are.
this is a sad poem, indeed. but the last line is kind of over-the-top sad. somehow, it reads like "this is a perticularly gloomy day in the life of chris tiefel." through the first portion of the poem, the imagery of the cat ties the separate elements together, then the sun takes over the role of image connector, but then you abandoned that idea, and the rest of the poem is kind of floating free, without much connection until the end when the tea comes back into play in a particularly "emo" fashion.
my favorite image:
the sunspots in your eyes in the tenth stanza.
and i really liked the tea line...
i guess that one goes to the trash bin or maybe save it for a sad away message day...no it has the ring of myspace all over it...
i am going to cut this one down alot & add more cats
i didn't really mean that you should trash that whole line. it has some ideas worth keeping, but there's something about that's just too intangible and unrealistically vague--which is pretty much the mantra of the sort of hyper-confessional poetics that it rings of.
come to think of it, the warming action of the tea is a nice contrast to your stanzas about sunlight and temperature. i would just go about it in a different way.
keep the cats.
keep the sunlight.
work the tea in-between.
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