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anarchypress — Postpartum
Published: 2005-09-02 08:02:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 1875; Favourites: 42; Downloads: 106
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Description
PostpartumHeartache has nothing to do with the heart. It crouches in the
center of the chest. You don’t fall out of love. A switch is thrown.
The light fades.
You wait at the end of the fireworks show. Will there be another
encore?
You’ve thought, This is it, before. You try to make it come back,
make it hurt the way it used to, try to bring it into focus, feel the
heft of it. Were you ever really in love at all?
A dampened orgasm. A stifled sneeze.
You replay things in the cinema of your mind and search through
your love notes.
Human babies die if you don’t hold them.
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Comments: 90
Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.
~Michael
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i quite enjoyed this, i found myself being able to relate to it. Great job. *favs* (after a long day of work, my knack of the english language is restricted and i can't come up with better words for this beautiful piece of work and i apologize for that)
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Thank you, Steph. I'm glad.
~M
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You're Welcome!
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I like this verse very much, it's wonderful:
You wait at the end of the fireworks show. Will there be another encore?
Your poem captures the feeling very good, so good it almost hurts...
-x-
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Thank you. I'm glad you liked it. And thanks for the 
~M
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You've gotten so many comments on this peice that I almost don't want to write my own opinion but feedback is always good. I really enjoyed this peice, all the way through and the end hit me like a brick. The symbolism is great, like love will die if you don't keep nurturing it. But thats not what hit me. The fact that you said human really got to me. You could have just said babies but you described them with human. Maybe you didn't mean this at all but it totally got me thinking about the spiritual aspect. Like a human love and infatuation and things of that nature do die without nurture but God's love is eternal. (1st Corinthians 13:8) No heighth and no depth can seperate us from it. Yeah, this peice is cool for getting me thinking. Thanks.
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Thank you, Rachel. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
And thanks for the
~M
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I'm not sure I quite follow this, but it's definately powerful.
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The more imagery you bombard me with the better, so excellent job with that ("dampened orgasm", sweet). The last line needs to be able to clarify a bit more than it does. The whole "holding you babies" thing is an interesting line, but is a little bit too far out there to be just far out enough.
Also (and this is personal), I find that questions in poems work a lot like ellipses in that they open up a little too much interperetation to the reader and remove some of the point the poet is trying to get across. I'd suggest something along the lines of "...fireworks show, hoping for another encore."
Anyways, excellent poem, and I will now go read more of your gallery!
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Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Many people have commented similarly about the questions in my poetry. Asking questions (particularly of myself in a meditative poem such as this) is simply a part my style. Done well, I think it can be effective. (I'll leave it you to decide whether I pull it off.) Perhaps it's a weakness of mine, but it's a part of how I go about things.
~M
P.S.: And I'm not the only one...
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
~Blake
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true, and there are always exceptions, you are correct.
Your use is fine, you don't have to change it. I just personally think it would sound better in conjunction witht eh line before. But I'm not the poet, and Idon't think I could right this near as well as you have.
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I agree with alisonia--the poem is great up until the last line. I can see where you're coming from it trying to juxtapose a "seemingly random" line into the situation, but I still come off feeling like it's too random. The firewrks analogy is brilliant though!
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I really like this poem! I enojyed the style, the imagery, the hope, the desperation... I disagree with other comments on the thinking the line "The light fades" is superfluous. I think it fits in nicely, tying together the lines before it. Great poem!
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Thank you, Lilly. I like the line, too. There is more than one way for a light to go out.
~M
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You're quite welcome 
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You have a lot of comments...This poem is really depressing. Great job writing it, normally the prosey styles bore me, but this is one of the few I read without losing focus. I hafta agree with whoever above me said that the "A light fades." line is too much. I think the imagery is suggested by the lines before it and describing it just cuts off a bit of space the reader had for interpretation. Like I said, though... great job.
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Thank you, Aaron. And thanks for the critique.
~M
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I really love this - it's excellent in every way. I see there has been some debate over the closing line, but I have to agree with you. I really think that last line bring your poem home more universally, and more poignantly. Also a certain air of desperation.
There are so many people trying not to die.
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Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
~M
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That was very good. I'm not big on the form itself, but the words, the images created in my mind were hard hitting.
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It's a prose poem. It doesn't really have a "form." I was going to go through and break up the lines, but I decided I liked how it read as prose.
~M
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Thank you, Michael. I assume you were in need of a good thwacking...?
~M
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ok omg. this is so amazing...the beginning paragraph/stanza, the lasssssst line...mm...and then i believe my favorite would be
'You replay things in the cinema of your mind and search through
your love notes.'
because well yea...we've all done it. ok...most of us have. alright-i have.
anyway. LOVE it. favvving it. ::claps like you can hear::
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Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
~M
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I really like the pace of this and the subject matter. The question you ask is great and even better is your answer.
I see two line breaks that are a bit unstatifying to me. Lines one and seven end on "the" which is a bit awkward to me. I would suggest "crouches" for line one as the break and "feel" in line seven-- of course this may cause problems with the image of the poem and these suggestions are just personal preference so might just be pointless. Ok so reading over it again I have a final thought. Since obviously you are male the title seems a bit of a strange choice to me (not bad but strange) the limits of this are obvious since postpardum depression (as it applies to babies and the end idea of the poem) effects only women-- I think what you are trying to do is connect that idea with the feeling of ending a relationship but part of me thinks you should acknowledge the fact that you don't actually know what postpartum depression is like-- I would maybe explore the idea of the baby being inside and then being taken out/ which is really the main difference and only thing that you can't actually account for in yourself--
everything else I think is well represented in what you have. Of course this is really less of suggestion for change as it is a thought prompt (maybe just for me but hopefully also for you) obviously this got me thinking--hence fav
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Actually, the “line breaks” for this piece are not line breaks at all. This is meant to be a prose poem. But I don’t like the way the browser stretches prose for a foot-and-a-half across the screen, so I insert line breaks where I would like the edge of the “
Regarding gender, I tend to bend gender boundaries a lot in my poetry (and in some of my fiction as well). There are facets of my mind and personality that are feminine, and I have learned to embrace those as a writer. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, “A great mind must be androgynous.”
~M
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oh.
this hurts too much to talk about right now.
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Thanks for the
~M
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thank you for the words, michael.
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I will have to return to this place. This is wonderful. I love your phrasing, and the ending is superb.
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Thank you for the comment and for the fave. I'm glad you enjoyed this piece, and I hope you do come back.
I liked the few poems you have up (even though you made me look up the word, "caliginous"). Do you have more to share?
~M
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I have many old pieces that I am not at all happy with. My gallery used to be huuuuge. I am sort of starting over, but am having difficulties.
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All right. I guess I'll just have to wait...
~M
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