Surviving Underground

[Sorella]

Anemone,
You and your rhizomes are doing great, thanks! Blue on blue, lovely flower pomes and more.

Impressed and delighted :-)

Sorella

[prooftheory]

I'm not sure whether to read Bluebell Chant in the context of the Lucy poems. They give the color blue a completely different association. It seems like exactly the sort of thing the flowers themselves would chant. Interesting poem.

[5th column]

Hi there A!


Lucy's Garden: So gentle, such tenderness evident in the writing. The initial choice of image, of the guinnea pig is a great choice to take the reader back to childhood and the closing image of the painted tree reeks of the desperation of Lucy to make things grow. There's a lot contained in the poem that I'll back to read post NaPo.

All things spiderish A lovely triolet. You have a talent for forms that I can't help but mangle.

Lucy Turns Blue: I couldn't make out whether Lucy had suffocated? More matter of fact than the rest of the thread.

Addressed to the Occupier: Has the attention to the everyday and the vision to lift from it a poem.

Litmus: Ah, the nest chapter is revealed and we breathe a sigh of relief. More metric rhymishness well done.

Bluebell Chant: Now that's just showing off!

[W.G.McLeod]

Everything is so wonderfully atmospheric and low. The toilet making is amazing.

Hellebores – ‘dubious rainfall’ … ‘lukewarm I shake, a flesh bouquet behind a plastic screen.’ is a dreary way of seeing the bright side comparing oneself to poisonous flowers.

The man in violet deck shoes – A haunty passerby not really seen ‘no torso seen, his head is missing too or faded’.

Woven – Something about this reads like it is grief stricken.

[Claire]

anenome,

I haven't read them all, but your thread is very compelling. Litmus is good, short but compact and dense. I like the title. Lucy's garden and Lucy Turns Blue are an interesting pair.
...blue lips pursed,
a shock of copper curls round a waxen
doll face,

-a very vivid image.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Anenome,

Lucy Turns Blue at 6 months. This reads like the sort of bad dream where the worst that can wrong does. N is reassuring herself, somewhat unconvincingly, that she is on top of everything makes the ending even stronger.

blue lips pursed,
a shock of copper curls round a waxen
doll face, unable to fix her.

is very strong image.

Addressed 'To the occupier', is fun. Loved "frequent flyers", the image of the envelope's filmy single eye, and the plain brown envelope / anonymity connection.

Litmus Yay! a limerick. An underrated art-form, but I'm a fan. I think I find this one funnier if I didn't still have the image from Lucy turns blue in my head!

Bluebell chant A trochaic springtime triolet. This works well - it would be hard to read it without chanting. Loved "tongue the iridescent light"!

Great stuff. Keep 'em coming!

-Matt

[anenome]

Sorella, prooftheory, Neil, WGMcleod, Claire and Matt, thanks so much for the continued comments and fluffing, so days are harder than others

At night she dreams of horses

Not heavy metal cobs, the curb-chained kind,
disloyal as ex-boyfriends, the sort that bit
deep into flesh then jumped back in surprise
as if waiting to be struck. No, these were greys
pale-eyed and elegant, who'd rest their muzzles
on her shoulder, tacked in bitless bridles
or rope. And riding was cruising Sundays -
Goldwing, Midhurst on the A272,
leaning into curves and bending air
to catch that sense of freedom; noiseless miles
of smooth, extended trot. In liberty
they'd move as one a cloud at dusk or dawn,
positioned in their silver mist, alert,
occasional pink nostrils thrusting wind.

[Janet]

Lovely horse poem, anenome. Such magical creatures and you capture their essence, the feeling of liberty and freedom so well. Their grey elegance and pink nostrils are nicely combined imagery, Goldwing has a nice ring. Brings back fond memories.

[anenome]

Thank you Janet for extending the fluff

13

'Sing now muse I won't be scared, she's wearing
flowers not snakes up in her hair tonight'*

There's nothing more depressing than a day
that promises light, reneges and then declines
to offer more than dark's relentless way,
there's nothing more depressing than a day.
The muse is seething snakes again, they sway
in tightened coils restricting further lines.
There's nothing more depressing than a day
that promises light, reneges and then declines.

*The Cat Empire, Steal the Light

[Featherless Biped]

Your Red Haired Girl sounds almost glamorously consumptive. (I know she's got a completely different disease, and that TB is really more horrific than glamorous, but she's just got that romantic feel about her, somehow.) I like how you've use objects around her to suggest delicacy and decay: the incense and amber vase, the open book with butterflies, the mold.

Great premise in Lucy's Garden. And that guinea pig, "limp and corseted"--poor little thing! Another excellent use of the objects around a person to suggest features of the person.

Woven is a fine triolet, and weaves together spider and claustrophobia very effectively. Somehow I imagine the speaker's own room as very tiny. (The surrounding poems certainly help to send that signal!)

Lucy Turns Blue and Litmus work well as a pair. (They also go well with Lucy's Garden. Poor Lucy!) Lucy Turns Blue captures the speaker's helplessness very effectively by juxtaposing the bustling activity in the first half of the poem with the complete lack of visible effects in the second half. Litmus is one of those curious limericks that lends itself to a serious theme; I like the way it plays against type.

To the Occupier does well with its dextrous avoidance of "Occupant"--it suggests that the speaker doesn't really belong there. I also enjoyedthe letter-as-bird trope.

Bluebell Chant has a lovely incantatory feel. "Shade me colour, shade me hue" makes just the right amount of sense to get stuck in this reader's head.

It is a pleasure to read your poems.

[anenome]

Thank you very much for the accumulated fluff featherless, really appreciated as the month toughens!

Ivy

Each hour is lined in leaf to mark the days,
I creep, you clip, a twist on passing days

Fine tendrils blindly loop at summer walls
your spring; loose stitches on a frieze of days

I'm gleaming green and write in hopeless code;
a tense graffiti aimed to clutch at days

A blackbird builds its nest in complex vines
a husk of hair and hay to toast lost days

Too soon my limbs grow thick enmeshed with ghosts
my poison misconstrued and doomed as days

Take care anenome, time limits love
don't waste its gold on unrequited days.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi anenome,

I loved the horses poem -- lovely imagery throughout. I love the distinction between the heavy metal cobs and the gentle elegant dream horses who need/have no bid. I love also what happens if I consider the ex-boyfriends as heavy metal boys who bite deep into the the flesh and then jump back waiting to be struck. I enjoy the way the poet moves/builds into rhapsody once the pale-eyed greys are introduced. What a lovely dream in a beautiful part of the country. I hope it was a dream you actually had.

#13 I see the muse Medusa-like here, turning all and any ideas into stone (or lead!). I like the weather as muse metaphor: a seemingly promising poem is declines to appear. Nice triolet. Sounds lack you're battling your muse.

Ivy, A ghazal in iambic pentameter. Nicely done. I liked your use of your username at the end! Also "loose stitches on a frieze of days" and "I'm gleaming green and write in hopeless code" (the latter has a nice computer programming angle).

Nice to to see that you're still winning in your struggles with the muse. Tomorrow is the half-way point, and after that the end will be closer than that the start. Well done us

-Matt

[Steven]

I like "Ivy', I think the form works well, the repetition of the 'days' invokes a feeling of despair and anxiety. I also enjoyed poem 13, mainly for the imagery. It's strange, there's something about your writing that reminds me of Victorian literature, hehe, which I used to enjoying reading quite a bit.

[HowardM2]

"Lucy's Garden" builds towards a perfectly appropriate but unpredictable conclusion; very nicely done."At night she dreams of horses" captures well the sensation of movement and has a good concluding set of images, as well. Nice work.

[anenome]

Matt thank you for the continued fluffage, the dream was based on experience so even better, thank you Steven and Howard, for dropping in and for the comments

Something quite odd to celebrate the half way point..

Engaging Rubber Bands

The night we dragged her body from the bed,
removed the rubber bands and rubbed her thighs,
I remembered how, a while back I'd said
how lamb tails were removed; attacks from flies
reduced by newborn banding. Secretly,
Lucy had gathered bands, she pinged the cat
in frequent tests, wore them innocently,
I thought, in bangled dances round the flat.
These bands lay thick as snakes, the legs below
were chill and limp and out of circulation,
and we were hunters gathered for the slow
returning pulse to blood its destination.
And outside, as we drifted back to sleep,
a congregated swarm returned to sheep