I haven’t posted any poetry in a long time. I’ve been writing, though, and here’s something from earlier today:
<b>Black Mistress</b>
Oh, I see you Black Mistress: I see you
Who bide silent and touch the naked nerve
With twinges, who suck the sweet ruddy hue
From sunny faces and feed on the verve
Of generations. Oh, I know you well,
You principal of pallid joys, who curve
Our dawn-ward gaze to the dim dingy hell
Of half-existence; who are the slight flinch,
The death-love, the worn-out and wasted knell
Of the old church bell. Do you dare to clinch
Me once more? You caught me over and over,
Taught me well; now I scarcely feel your pinch.
I’ll haunt you as the savage hunts the panther –
Hell-bent to pierce my doom ere it pierce me.
One of things which I miss (since I visit RPGC so infrequently these days) is your poetry. What I love about this one is the way that you construct the antithesis/synthesis of death and love, which I read as the Freudian Thanatos and Eros, and the dread and awkwardness of the state of liminality. Your excellent use of enjambment helps to emphasise that, I think, since it makes the rhythm rough and choppy.
Thank you. This rougher rhythm is something I haven’t used in a long time, but I think it fits the mood of savage-striving. I’ve read very little Freud, but the idea of a love principle versus a death principle is intriguing, as is the idea of some twisted union of the two. The interaction of these two principles has, more or less, been the subject of everything I’ve written the last few months. I haven’t been posting those poems, but I should put up a few here.