This is interesting, Janet, but I feel that it needs tightening.
I'd drop a lot of the 'you's, as in the 2nd stanza.
Some of the line breaks could do more work, but then I seem to be
asking for a bunch of sorter lines; still, I think ' and the person I
want them' would hit harder if the 'them' was dropped, even to stand
alone on the next line...?
And I'd drop the 'are' in the last line.
I just want, as I read, for the seeing to be sharper, & it feels like
tightening the poem would achieve that.
Doug
On 23-May-06, at 11:56 PM, Janet Jackson wrote:
> A work in progress from two years ago,
> now getting some more work.
> Comments welcome.
>
> You are the person
> ------------------
>
> You are the person I am dressing up as.
>
> You are the woman at the hairdresser
> and the man on the stage
> and the person I want them
> to imagine, when they read
> my messages.
>
> You are full of pieces of everyone.
> You are awake at 4am
> talking intensely into a mobile phone
> in a bar somewhere in America.
>
> Then you are on your private broomstick,
> beaming yourself home and catching a nap
>
> Then you are having breakfast, just
> like anyone does, but later
>
> Then you are out, anywhere, clattering,
> prancing, gathering your pieces of everyone
>
> taking them back to your secret cauldron
> mixing them, making chequered magic
> in your stainless-steel kitchen
> in your weird old house
> with paintings by Dali and murals of yourself
> in your big black hat and boots and cloak
> with beat poets and musos and lamas and prophets
> and incense and alcohol hangin' in the air,
> y'know, you
>
> are the person I am dressing up as.
>
> Janet
> -------------------------------------------------------
> Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
> Poems at Proximity:
> http://www.arach.net.au/~huxtable/janet/proximity.html
>
> "As long as space remains,
> as long as sentient beings remain,
> until then, may I too remain
> and dispel the miseries of the world."
> Shantideva
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
The poet is ecstatic, having dreamt of this visit for weeks.
He takes Erato’s face, dribbling and wild, between his hands
and kisses her gently as if she were a runaway teenager.
Diana Hartog
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