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cycles of misunderstanding
by Amos Last
i’m looking at you now
in your windswept hair photo
black and almost white
where you’re looking somewhere over my left shoulder
one eye higher than the other
and your lips folded in relax
somewhere between a smile and an oath
you know
i talk to your photo
well it’s all i have to see you now
but really i listen to your words
as if they were written carelessly
on the back of my heart
you maybe don’t even know what you wrote
but i read it just the same
thinking that perhaps you did
deciphering the flux between us round
comes to this
let me take your hand
slightly out of view in your short sleeve dress
and hold you awkward distant
somehow close
where we could either one
move that way near or back
in a semblance of comfort
or dance
the way we did before we would count
the syncopation of one two and three
four and five then six
forward back around again
but the music was always wrong
and we would fall away
to shadows
why is it we hook ourselves with words
so well so strong
so bound together tight
til we have to tear away
leaving each a part behind
to heal or more to remain raw
until we come this way
to find ourselves again
01/22/2014 Posted on 01/22/2014
Copyright © 2024 Amos Last
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 01/22/14 at 02:15 PM Love the set up/construction here. Thought provoking message carried throughout. |
| Posted by Paul Lastovica on 01/22/14 at 08:33 PM glad I dropped by pathetic today to see what's new; otherwise I might have missed this. Visualist that I am, the look of it reached out to me - the words held me captive. Nicely done :) |
| Posted by Dane Campbell on 01/23/14 at 08:53 PM I've never used format as a way to amplify meaning myself, but you have done so here ably and admirably. It imbues the poem with a sense of separation between the persona and the subject of the photograph. This wouldn't matter, of course, if the work itself wasn't stirring or well written. But it is, and quite. Particularly brilliant is the description of lips being "somewhere between an oath and a smile." Well done. |
| Posted by Jim Benz on 01/24/14 at 12:57 AM I like it when format and words speak so well to one another. |
| Posted by Quentin S Clingerman on 01/24/14 at 09:14 PM Fascinating construction perhaps suggestive of the message, most suitable title. |
| Posted by Elizabeth Shaw on 01/25/14 at 05:51 PM You bathe us in the dance and your words sooth in warmth and wisdom ever light |
| Posted by Laura Doom on 01/28/14 at 07:01 PM A poem in three dimensions, at least... |
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