Since there have been few outright riots to protest previous doses of verse in the blog, I’ll try one more installment, a sort of free-form Petrarchan sonnet called “Shaft.” I’ll let the poem speak for itself.
ShaftThrough a die one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter drawn
Cold when drawn, emerging smoke-hot, a metal strand.
This and a thousand others woven tight together,
Attached to an electric winch and to a car.A hole is bored through sheets of blueprint cap.
Created then, a steel and stonework frame to fit,
Straight up and down three hundred feet, the pit,
The womb of emptiness, becomes a fact.Then blindly humans enter, wary men.
Yet blind. Ascending viciously, they viciously go down.
To rise, to fall, on vicious errands.Iron cord in an iron-bound vacuum.
Iron consciousness, inflexible and dull.
Iron all (vicious), iron (vicious) all.
I hope you didn’t hate it too much. I would have been maybe 17 when I wrote it.
Related posts:
Robert Nowall says:
Somehow, the first and last lines have stayed with me since I first read them…
January 22, 2010, 12:11 pmThe Barefoot Bum says:
I’m a huge fan; I’ve read a score or more of your work, and you’ve never failed to satisfy. Still, with all due respect, I cannot praise your talent and skill for poetry as I do for your prose.
January 22, 2010, 8:49 pmRalan says:
I quite liked it. I wouldn’t like to show the poetry I wrote at seventeen.
January 23, 2010, 4:47 amDean says:
This is much better than anything I wrote when I was 17.
January 25, 2010, 9:30 am