Thursday, February 11, 2010

Allegory II

So my allegorical poems were not allegorical.
They were extended metaphors.

I have been stuck on this stupid entry for WEEKS because the poem that I REALLY wanted to write, which really IS an allegory,

is
not
cooperating.

So I am posting a spludge of lines that may one day consent to be wrestled into an acceptable poem.

And THEN

we are trying Alliteration.

I like Alliteration. A lot.

2 comments:

  1. i.
    I had some acquaintance with Happiness,
    that airy creature.
    Joy, I thought, would be another fairy
    who'd flicker through the house awhile,
    then leave, capricious.

    ii.
    When Joy came inside the floors shook and screamed beneath the weight of her. The mirrors shivered, and the pictures fell off the walls and huddled on the floor.
    Joy was a great huge queen. She was a tower. She was a woman big as ten women.
    She moved like elephants. She moved like planets. She moved like solar systems.
    She walked with a swivel, her hips big as planets. Every step traced celestial circles. Every step was a dance.

    Joy moved like a dance played basso, largo
    every quaver was a dirge-slow rumble.
    When she walked on the earth the earth sang back at her.

    iii.
    I had some acquaintance with a certain fairy, a flicker I called Happy. Waiting for Joy, I waited for another airy waif. But Joy came in a great huge woman, vaster than ten women, a queen crowned only with the great height and the weight of her. She was a wide-hipped woman! Her legs were like towers. She never walked in. She danced like an elephant. Her hips – those hips! – circled like planets with celestial swivel. Oh, she moves like a dance, but a dance played largo, every quaver held a thousand years. She moves like a polka played ponderous as dirges. When she opens her mouth whole cities fall in, and she laughs a deep bellow that pulls up the ocean in uproarious billows, that shakes earthquake rumbles and stirs up the jubilant sea. Rocks fall down mountains, clattering, rejoicing at her laughing. She swallows up cities with her laughing, that queen.

    iv.
    the smell of cinnamon, honey, coriander.

    Joy that makes your skin melt,
    paints gold inside your bones.

    v.
    She swings her hips (O queenly, stately) in a jubilant rotation
    With a celestial, planetary rotation, orbital, gravity
    The pull of that joy imperial as gravity
    She speaks, worlds wheel around the weight of that Name.
    In a midnight dancing
    Planets, worlds, cities, universes
    Falling (orbit around) into the great Name she was calling (singing, naming)
    She lifts her little finger and the mountain ranges dance (quiver, shiver)
    she’s no halfway, she’s a large liver
    Joy makes the bottom of the world drop out:
    skyscrapers could crumble at her laugh’s basso rumble

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