Once again, the lines are too long for the format, so I've done it as an image (click to bring it up larger.) The text, with broken lines, is below the cut:
This week was "a novel prompt": Make a list of 10 or so words - the final words from chapters of a book of your choice - and then write a 10- to 20-line poem using those words.
My words: you, release, today, transformation, asleep, anymore, language, grace, rest, religion, here, palm, from Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia.
I'm also, as you can see, still playing with line lengths.
Birch trees thicken with snow; the landscape out this window is sugared.
Everything retreats to silence. I don't love you
anymore. It's all hardened, inside these thickening limbs, these stiffening
joints. Hardened to ice, inflexible and cold.
I've become brittle, sharp, and empty. My dreams are wisps, ghostly
and vacant of feeling. They pass through me like
breath on a freezing day. There is no space in me for religion, for rest,
for grace; no hope of transformation. It is all
illusion. You, my passion, my love: illusion. This body -- I stare at the palm
of my hand -- illusion. I am always asleep.
This language, so thin, so transparent: illusion. I release you now. Today,
I release you. You, this day, this release: illusion.
i am working just this moment on a piece about the hole inside of us,,, the one that we fill with love or people or drugs or money or...... yes,, that hole.. the very one that reared its ugly little head in this piece... this was so well done..
Posted by: paisley | 20 December 2007 at 10:59 AM
I like the line breaks. And the words. It's strange how empty spaces turn hard. Very nice!
Posted by: Tumblewords | 20 December 2007 at 04:27 PM
I love this! It reads so well and the longer line lengths do it justice.
Posted by: Linda Jacobs | 20 December 2007 at 06:38 PM
This is really beautiful. I love that you opened it with the vision of birch trees. They are such a strongly rooted poetic image, and then end with illusion.
This makes me think of so many illusions:
love, beauty, self, relationships, art. So great.
thank you!
Posted by: slynne | 21 December 2007 at 06:58 AM
You poem is sheer beauty!
BTW, the URL option is back in blogger!
Posted by: gautami | 21 December 2007 at 08:37 AM