the mad

[rowens]

[youtube]SSaPD_40cw4[/youtube]






only the women are loved.
with men, it's only the madness,
in and of its self that's used.—
and we are literary, too.
but you don't write it down
or even think it, any more.
it's just a desperate kind of feel...

yes, only women bleed.
and are loved, their bodies,
for it.
their emotional souls are held close.
'but he doesn't care about my mind.'
well, there's more to you, that bleeds.
—this ink doesn't come from my body.
if i held you like a squid, with many arms
like an octopus?
you'd only love me for my pen.

not this madness that is a part of me.
not this root that grows a life
beyond us.—
madness is a kind of land,
of its own religion, of its own logic.
a pain to make the doctors see;
and a Hell to make the lover feel...

so this is the boat we share...
love is a mental illness,
where the waters that keep us afloat
are what keep us from the rest of the world.
—and in your mermaid logic,
you still pretend to drown in a place
where, together, we could be perfectly at home.

if others can see the many arms
of my mind, because
even my floating wreckage is washed up on the shore,
won't they be able to see the mirages
of your deserted dreams
when they well up in such dancing eyes:
that only the soul of a mad lady could form
a vision in such a time?

as ours?
is this 'together' part of the shape
of another world than this one we share?
if both of us are mad,
which one of us is sane?
—is this the land of Cana?
or are you wearing the atheist's ring?

[rowens]

Now with audio...

[cidermaid]

Hi, me again...promise i'm not stalking you. I just seem to keep comming across your stuff when i have a few moments.

This one sort of felt like it needs a serious edit. For me i did not feel that the first two or the last stanza belonged in this poem, but then i really liked what you had to say in the mid section of S3, 4 & 5. I particularly liked the images in S5 and the continuation of the aquatic based words, as a medium to express the fluidity and instability of the workings of the mind, made the whole thing really work in my opinion.
Some excellent lines in there. Thanks for the share and as ever I enjoyed listening to your intended presentation of your work.
AJ.

[rowens]

Why do you not like those stanzas and think they don't belong?

I like my poems to smell bad. That roots out the nonbelievers.


I can show you where I'm coming from.

The insane are the most difficult to satisfy. People can kill off the American Indians, and put the blacks in the White House. But the insane don't want to be thrown a bone, they want the hands that feed them. They might be crazy but they're not stupid, they know them bones don't have any meat on them.

But the crazy people can't stand each other. They drive each up the wall, and across the ceiling. But in the end, they're all each other has.

That's what's going on here.

[cidermaid]

Why do you not like those stanzas and think they don't belong?

I like my poems to smell bad. That roots out the nonbelievers.


I can show you where I'm coming from.

The insane are the most difficult to satisfy. People can kill off the American Indians, and put the blacks in the White House. But the insane don't want to be thrown a bone, they want the hands that feed them. They might be crazy but they're not stupid, they know them bones don't have any meat on them.

But the crazy people can't stand each other. They drive each up the wall, and across the ceiling. But in the end, they're all each other has.

That's what's going on here.

I guess i just particularly like the strong feel of connected images in the middle three stanzas. It is not so much that i don't like the first two and last stanzas. They feel like a seperate poem in their own right to me. (and they tell the story you have described above in isolation from the middle three in my opinion). This might just be me in my lack of connection / understanding to the subject.

As you are laying down a bit of a challenge to ask to be satisfied on what i do and don't like the easist way is to show you ...so If i was to make bold with how i would work this, I would do something along these lines:-

Only women are loved.
with men, it's only the madness,
women bleed.
and are loved for it, their bodies,
their emotional souls, are held close.

'But he doesn't care about my mind.'
well, there's more to you, that bleeds.
—this ink doesn't come from my body.
If i held you like a squid, with many arms
like an octopus?
Would you love me for my pen?

not this madness that is a part of me.
not this root that grows a life
beyond us.—
madness is a kind of land,
of its own religion. Of its own logic.

So this is the boat we share...
love is a mental illness,
where the waters that keep us afloat
separates us from the rest of the world.
—and in your mermaid logic,
you still pretend to drown in a place
where, together, we could be perfectly at home.

If others can see the many arms
of my mind, because
even my floating wreckage is washed up on the shore,
won't they be able to see the mirages
of your deserted dreams,
when they well up in such dancing eyes:
that only the soul of a mad lady could form
a vision in such a time?

And ours?
is this 'together' part of the shape
of another world than this one we share?
Where the lure of the mermaid
Is cast from within the boat.

I am sure that i have most likely completely missed the point and the deeper meaning to your work and i mean no disrespect in what i have presented above. Just some off the cuff ideas to show you what i liked and disliked..Because I though you were asking for me to qualify my comments and this seemed like the easy way to do this.
I really like quite a lot of your work ( I frequently don't completly get it and some times I'm completly confused, but i like the real and honest style of your writing and the ring of truth that i find expressed in a lot of your ideas).

AJ

(I've got to go out now but will look in again on this first thing in the morning before work so see how wrong I can be!)

[rowens]

You take out the parts that lament the loss of the woman's burning religious and artistic creativity?

Rather than the fearful position of accepting her higher needs, she simply goes back to the same old stale "female role".

And she deserves to be challenged and provoked. Fervently.

Then there's the problem of love.

The higher and deeper needs.

[cidermaid]

You take out the parts that lament the loss of the woman's burning religious and artistic creativity?

Rather than the fearful position of accepting her higher needs, she simply goes back to the same old stale "female role".

And she deserves to be challenged and provoked. Fervently.

Then there's the problem of love.

The higher and deeper needs.

Told you I would get it wrong
This is your poem and I clearly do not have the same experiance and depth of expression on this subject.
I love many of the lines in this. (But I still don't connect with those lines that I took out...I just don't see the higher sensitivities that you attribute your female charicter with..... I place the female in this piece at the same level as the male (as opposed to on a pedistal) and this is in a world of displacment and diassociation from what is generally termed "normal"...but I like the idea within the text that questions what is normal. This was how I was reading this, i'm obviously going on a different road trip to the one you had intended
I should probably let it rest there...I just think the sky is a different colour in my world. (currently grey and wet!). The woman in my reading is in lala land of pretence, where she is not taking any responsibility for her actions or behaviour... i would be more likely to give her a slap, than encourage her to get in touch with her higher needs. I suppose it depends on what your idea of a female role is. A female role that is traditional, in my world is one of strength, inteligence and charm. A pioneer, who is as likely to whip a pistol from her knickers at the drop of a hat and (probably) has the constitution of a concrete cow...yet has enough grace to allow her man to take care of her and can transform into a vision of lovelness when the occassion calls for such.
Sorry - You will have to give me up as an unbeliever on this one.
Catch ya later (need to go to bed, brain went on ahead half an hour ago)
AJ.

[rowens]

I'm an antagonistic writer. You're not wrong. The converations about the poem make it better for me. Whether people like the poem or not. Whether I'm talking about my poems or others' poems. Whether I like them or not.

---

She doesn't have the higher sensitivities any more. She was told they were crazy. So she gave them up. But the man wants her back. But she'd have to be crazy to come back, you know? And have those old accusations of being crazy pointed at her again.

[newsclippings]

I can't listen to the audio yet because people are sleeping, but when I read I noticed the way you made words float off and into each other from line to line. In some places though, it seems a little forced, which could be the effect your going for, it just feels wrong in my head.

[serge gurkski]

Now with audio...

[Leanne, don't read this. ,-)]

Love text and recital.
My favorite lines are:

madness is a kind of land,
of its own religion, of its own logic.
a pain to make the doctors see;
and a Hell to make the lover feel...

so this is the boat we share...
love is a mental illness,
where the waters that keep us afloat
are what keep us from the rest of the world.
—and in your mermaid logic,
you still pretend to drown in a place
where, together, we could be perfectly at home.


Would like to reblog this poem on my blog, if it is ok with you.
Mini-nit: I would find your poem even more powerful without this:
of its own logic.
It does makes sense to me. Just a question of cosmetics. ,-)

cheers

Serge

[rowens]

Bad is fine, if it feels wrong. For me it wouldn't work any other way. Some poems work that way for me, most of them do. Their shape and feeling are carved out in me. They make more poems possible.
They make lots of things possible for me. Hopefully, I can make other poems that people like better based on feedback and criticism. That is how it works best for me. I prefer to use your feedback to start from scratch in new poems. Because so many of my poems are so connected to me in such fatal ways, good, bad and ugly, and even foolish. That's the way I write. I like to be pushed.

[Leanne]

This thread has been split and moved to the Pig's Arse -- it was getting quite a bit off topic /admin

[serge gurkski]

;-) damn ma'am.

[billy]

balderdash woman,

there is no getting it wrong aj. it's your POV, that it will now and then conflict with what a poet thinks or doesn't think, doesn't come into it. the important thing is you have a POV ><

Told you I would get it wrong
This is your poem and I clearly do not have the same experiance and depth of expression on this subject.
I love many of the lines in this. (But I still don't connect with those lines that I took out...I just don't see the higher sensitivities that you attribute your female charicter with..... I place the female in this piece at the same level as the male (as opposed to on a pedistal) and this is in a world of displacment and diassociation from what is generally termed "normal"...but I like the idea within the text that questions what is normal. This was how I was reading this, i'm obviously going on a different road trip to the one you had intended
I should probably let it rest there...I just think the sky is a different colour in my world. (currently grey and wet!). The woman in my reading is in lala land of pretence, where she is not taking any responsibility for her actions or behaviour... i would be more likely to give her a slap, than encourage her to get in touch with her higher needs. I suppose it depends on what your idea of a female role is. A female role that is traditional, in my world is one of strength, inteligence and charm. A pioneer, who is as likely to whip a pistol from her knickers at the drop of a hat and (probably) has the constitution of a concrete cow...yet has enough grace to allow her man to take care of her and can transform into a vision of lovelness when the occassion calls for such.
Sorry - You will have to give me up as an unbeliever on this one.
Catch ya later (need to go to bed, brain went on ahead half an hour ago)
AJ.

[serge gurkski]

Billy: the important thing is you have a POV

yup! ;-)

[rowens]

Sometimes my point of view is my point of view. Sometimes my point of view is arguing from the speaker in the poem's point of view. Sometimes I am the speaker in the poem, sometimes I'm not.