All 1 entries tagged Splot Moth

Clumsy Experimentation is my Game.

So, as part of my ongoing rough-draft stream extravaganza, here is a very, very tentative early draft of a poem. Please be gentle with her, she is undergoing surgery. I have included some notes and links that might help anyone interested in subject/context, but try not to read biographically into it, it hurts my feelings. I feel nervous enough posting this as it is.

References have been very carefully chosen. It's probably not meant to be read aloud- I tried to write it to be read, like a secret diary entry, rather than said. Perhaps that is a mistake and all poetry is meant to be spoken aloud, but the is the purpose of certain punctuation and formatting contrivances is to make it difficult, to express something that would be difficult to confess. There's some other rule I imposed on the formatting as well, about linking directions and alignments of texts to each other and to areas of thought, but it's too hazy and unrealised right now to explain coherently. Anyway, here it is:

TITLE???

What small monster is this?

Scraped from a cauldren, Thing,

     Some lovely bean, some token of bliss?

     Some treacherous creature            /sly delight/

Some weird

          Frankenstein       or scattered dream?

Some [moroi alp-begat mære] entwining membranes about my heart

Some shame

Some splot, perhaps.

                                     I greet you:

It is either you or me, splot

       Cancer, minnow, lizard, embryo, prison.

Some vampire

Some single eye tossed between sisters

Snipping hair from my head

      Painted in Rorshach shades of black and white.

I am not ready to wear blue for you.

I cannot wear white with you  

                                                    [Nor black for you]

I cannot sup the poisoned dugs of state

for a splot.

Perhaps, you say, in morse-code kicks

-no-    twinges aches, blackened tongue hacked coughs disgust disgust

              Perhaps you say I am a        chrysalis

                                   dirty husk cocoon.

What then, splot-moth?

What do you become?

My current issues with this are: I don't like the beginning, I feel it jumps in clumsily and too soon into the repetition.

I feel as if the repetition of "some" is at odds with stanzas three and four where the word does not appear, but at the same time the word is distinctly linked to describing the splot, not the subject of these stanzas. I might add on a new stanza at the end once again relating to the splot?

Unhappy with question marks

Feel it should be more obscure. It generally hints towards one reading when in fact several are supposed to be possible.

Ummm meter?? Never understood this. Realise there's a rhyme at the beginning but I do not carry this all the way through- does this make it a bit of an anachronism in the poem?

I worry about it sounding feminine.

Tried to hack away some of my tendency towards floral description- is it now too bare?

Is it even any good???

Possible titles:

Splot (obvious)

????

Links for the Lovely

I try not to use wikipedia to inspire me, but I do find it is much better at plainly stating things than me. So here's a bunch of wikipedia pages if you're interested in allusions and stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself

http://lib.byu.edu/sites/sc/files/2009/09/The-Thing.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alp_%28folklore%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_%28folklore%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moirae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria

It's been a really pretentious day for me.

Kirsty Judge : 05 Dec 2010 17:33 |  Tags: Draft Planning Poetry Splot Moth Terrible |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem