Then,
I don’t remember having looked up at the sky much. The memory is grey
and rain filled, the fresh-heavy-quick, the sticky-damp-thick.
It had to have been blue sometimes. The summers when we ate lunch in
the seedless park. Skirts pulled up the knee, shirts opened, sandals
cast aside. Lying on our backs, shut eyed.
The inside of your eyelids is not nothing.
Later,
it became necessary. Looking up, reading the sky for the near
future. Traveling through the city, tramping its streets looking for
one to beat the last. The best aspect.
Urban landscapes and cityscapes and skylines. Like the sky alone wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t.
Once,
visiting home, there was a sunset. We sat in the
garden watching the clouds drenched with orange,
floating on a weakening sea. As the sea faded the islands became
stronger, more intense until eventually they too faded away to the
strange sound of silence.
Now,
there is no sky. My eyes defunct. But still,
I see the vast capacity of the innermost eye,
my exterior monologue on an interior surface.
I see a fat yellow sun and a blue sky in
Technicolor.
It does not end at darkness. I see not.
Pauline Mason has been writing for the past year after a long hiatus. She is a member of Fiction Workhouse and has read her work at Tales of the Decongested. This is her first foray into poetry.
9 Responses to “WHAT IT WAS LIKE • by Pauline Mason”
Comments
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May 16th, 2009 at 8:21 am
To me, this poem is prose!
May 16th, 2009 at 9:05 am
There are some fabulous images here, thank you. I have been wandering aound thinking about ‘interior monologues on interior surfaces’. Insistent lines such as ‘the inside of your eyelids is not nothing’ stay with you.
Thanks for this one. It tells a story as well as making a poem.
(I remember asking the poet Catherine Smith what made a poem. She said ‘if the poet says it is a poem, that’s enough for me’. For it to have been accepted by a poetry publisher seems to ssy it is, as well.)
May 16th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I loved this. I loved the flow of it, the rhythm, the feel, the mood.
May 17th, 2009 at 3:24 am
I loved the structure here which you can immediatetly read off as: then later once now…
“the fresh-heavy-quick, the sticky-damp-thick.”
pure poetry. Not only fabulous images but fabulous language!
“I see the vast capacity of the innermost eye,”
and ideas.
Vanessa is so right too. We say it’s a poem – a good poem at that.
May 17th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Lovely, Pauline!
I really like ‘my exterior monologue on an interior surface.’
May 17th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for your lovely comments.
Much appreciated.
May 17th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
What gorgeous images and rhythm -
‘the fresh-heavy-quick, the sticky-damp-thick’ -
loved this! Thank you.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:34 am
A wonderfully thoughtful poem.
Like other commentators I found lots of memorable lines. My favourite was vast capacity of the innermost eye.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Fair play gurrrl!
Keep it up-Paddy x