There is no sky.
no air, no skin.
Behind grey metal,
an engine turns.
A sharp, twisting,
ball of acid in the gut.
The handle. A hand.
The garage door gapes.
Inside: like stone -
your open mouth.
The world is forced
through a monoxide pipe
crushed to the size of a pin,
never to fully recover again.
|
Sinister!
Written by Katanga (1129 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | I find this sinister in the extreme, and I've come back to it several times this morning, trying to work out exactly what's going on.
It reads like a personal experience - I hope it wasn't?!
One query: why 'no skin'? I think I get the idea that inside the garage there's no air or sky, but the skin puzzles me.
Maybe I've misread the whole thing? Intrigued!
Cheers!
John |
Written by NathanRoberts (277 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | Hi John,
Yes it was a personal experience. I don't want to say too much at this stage, I'd like to see if people can work out what is happening from the details I've given.
What do you think is happening?
| Forgive me
Written by Katanga (1129 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | if I've got this totally wrong, but it reads like you discovered someone who had committed suicide in a garage, using the hosepipe-from-exhaust-to-inside method.
In which case, how awful for you, I'm sorry.
If not, I'm embarrassed by being melodramatic.
All the best,
John |
Written by NathanRoberts (277 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | Thanks John, really appreciate that.
Yes, that's exactly what happened and no need to apologise. It was my mother, though I didn't want to overweight this particular poem by adding that fact. 17 years ago, now...so the world has recovered to some degree.
I was trying to capture how one moment can shift your entire life on an axis - before and after.
The first stanza, which you queried, refers to those moments when all background detail, even your awareness of your own body disappears...everything slows down, almost out of time, and the scene progresses in frames (hence the short sentences/stanzas, clipped language).
It's also as if you are slightly outside of yourself, watching the scene being acted out...hence 'the handle. a hand' rather than 'I opened the garage door' or something similar.
A similar thing happens during serious accidents, it must be something to do with the adrenalin levels. Those frames seem to get burned into your memory too. | Rob!
Written by Katanga (1129 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | How dreadful for you . . .
I can empathise, but only partially. My father tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists - he was a doctor, so he knew exactly how to do it. He very nearly succeeded, and only lived afew more months, dying at 63.
That was 35 years ago, so very distant now, but I don't think I could write about it.
A very brave post, if I may say so.
John |
Written by NathanRoberts (277 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | Cheers mate!
But didn't you approach it in one of your poems? I seem to remember you mentioning about your dad in relation to something you'd posted, but it might have been in the comments or intro. Have you tried writing about it? It is difficult, because you don't want to debase the memory, for one thing. I sat on this one for a couple of months before posting. | Ah Yes, Rob!
Written by Katanga (1129 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | I did write about him in one of the 'by heart' ones - about beetle hunting near a cottage etc, but I didn't / couldn't address his suicide attempt. Yes, I did mention it in the reviews.
You kindly reviewed it and said you'd been sitting on one for some time, trying to get it right . . .
The result is obviously your poem above, and to my mind, you have got it right - a very powerful piece.
Cheers!
John |
Written by mia_ms_kim (951 comments posted) 16th July 2008 | What John envisioned was exactly what I thought. I thought you captured it very well, that slowing of time as if time is suspended and fluidity of motion gets fragmented into a static pieces of cut film in your mind. I am sorry about what you must have gone through.
I didn't really get the "crushed to the size of a pin," line. Are you describing some sort of suffocating feeling where your lungs seem to collapse by the shock? I don't think it's something people who haven't experienced similar traumas can relate to.
I did wonder many times about people who go through personal trauma of this kind, and how they recover and what their recovered world looks like.
My mother who went through war and saw terrible things, don't suffer from it. I think when we go though collective suffering, it's less traumatic. So I wonder when we suffer a trauma alone that is essentially "unsharable", its weight can crush.
I myself feel traumatised a little whenever I come across a personal piece like this. I guess one never completely recovers from such things, but perhaps we heal to a degree to walk with a limp - to borrow the words of my pastor.
Anyway, your poems often make me think hard.
Mia  |
Written by Josie (2718 comments posted) 20th July 2008 | | I cannot think of a worse experience than to have found someone you love has killed themselves. My husband lost his younger brother in a terrible accident, and I know how awful it was for him, but to know that someone you love just didn't want to share this world with you any more must have been awful. How well you did your poem, but how sad! | Nothing more . . .
Written by Katanga (1129 comments posted) 20th July 2008 | . . . to add.
Somehow poetry, the reading and the writing of it. is cathartic, and I respect all who read and write it.
'Nuff said.
Respect, Rob!
Much more to come from you, I hope?!
John |
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