This is one of my weirder ones in terms of content. I thought it up a week or so ago, while leaving a subway station and walking by the edge of the platform. It's the kind of poem where the words just jumped out of nowhere, and sometimes I just let them lay there because I know it's just my mind being annoying and other times more words come, and this was a case where more words came. Of course I didn't write the poem down immediately, so I had to get those first 2 lines down and remember what the image and tone of the rest of the thing was supposed to be, and it's definitely not a perfect poem, not something I'd ship off to the New Yorker or anything, but I kinda like it. As always, please leave some criticism; since this isn't something like love where you immediately know how you should start feeling about it, maybe let me know what you do feel or what you think it means? Hell, I'm not even sure of that myself, but it'll be a fun game...or not, the fact that you read it is nice enough.
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Staring into Subway Tunnels
by Matthew Stalbaum
Staring deep into the cavernous
Mouth of the subway, I feel
The weight of an entire city of
Abysmal darkness sitting stale
In the air, as the beast roars
Through the unbreakable blackness
And the stars of its eyes glisten
Madly as suns of dead-beat fathers
On a drunk, and the ground shakes
But falls still, and somewhere in its
Caves the monster lays and moves
Only softly, only softly, so quietly,
And I feel lonely again.
Somewhat disjointed in the progression of the metaphor (roaring, and then soft? what happened in between), and a few of the images are cliché ("stars of is eyes")... Not sure where the "Madly as suns of dead-beat fathers / On a drunk" is going... BUT I really like the rhythm, and how the poem's concise form echoes the brevity of a subway ecounter. I think it would be more powerful if it were sparser, like -
ReplyDeleteStaring deep into the blank
mouth of the subway, I feel
the weight of an entire city
resting in the stale air. and
...
Yes. hehe.
Yeah, finally, someone brave enough to give criticism!
ReplyDeleteI'll toy with the brevity, the suns and fathers thing was something that I just thought up, probably better for another poem, but I wanted stars in there so the tunnel would seem like the endless night sky, I'll tweak the image so its not cliche, and I'll explicate a transition between the roars and the quietness at the end, I just needed to get to that last line...thanks! These comments really helped, :)
The imagery in this is great, Matt. I sort of related to this to life for me right now. I took the tunnel to mean the pathway of life, and the darkness of the tunnel to be the uncertain future. The future is a dark and scary monster! And it's very lonely because no one else walks the same path as you do.
ReplyDeleteLet me know what you meant it to mean, I'm curious. S'very good though.
This isn't a critique...but I really miss you, and I thought you should know. :(
ReplyDeleteWoah, almost forgot to respond! Miss you too Rachel, I sent you a message on facebook, respond!
ReplyDeleteEmily, I like your interpretation! Honestly, I didn't have any specific meaning, mostly just the idea of that dark tunnel, the monster, and the loneliness at the end. I figured so many things in life correspond to all of those images that there could be any number of ways of looking at it. Glad you liked it!