Coiled

[Aish]

In the twilight of a sibilant heart
spinning mouths
embroider a silken embrace
from the sky of impersonated longing.
Eggshell gestures
barter cankered covenants
as the snarling flint of skin
grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger.
When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?

[billy]

i think sibilant a great word, i used to think it had something to do with brother or sister hehe. it does go well with the poems title.
there is lots and i mean lots going on in the poem and as individual lines i like what's going on, as a poem it feels a bit much
to get my head round without having to start again in order to get back on track.
i really like;

grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger.

i want to read the last word as dagger. i feel i have to read it as dagger, yet i know i must read it as danger. works, great line that works well with the last.

i'm not sure the format is doing you any favours.

thanks for the read.

[Erthona]

There are some nice, but disjointed images here. I don't really follow how one leads to the next. Some phrase make no sense at all to me. I get that you are more or less trying to use a snake and the shedding of it's skin as a metaphor for something, but the introduction of such phrases as

"spinning mouths
embroider silk embraces
from the sky of impersonated longing."

you confuse me completely. I have no idea what spinning mouths refers to, for silk to embrace, it would need to be "embroidered", unless you are trying to say that "sky of impersonated longing" is what is being embroidered on the silk.

There is also the mixture of snake and spider images that don't seem to mesh, at least in anyway I can see. To me calling the spider's spinnerets "spinning mouths" seems a major stretch, or to infer it is a metaphor for something for me is beyond obscure.

For me the rest of the poem is pretty much of the same material, which also appears to tightly woven for me to unravel much in the way of meaning. Obviously at the end the "key" to the riddle is presented:

"When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?"

But even with that I can still make no sense out of what precedes, outside of this being some form of love making either real or perceived, emotional or physical. Poetic interpretation is generally one of my strong suits, but I will concede that this piece leaves me confounded.

On the technical side, it does have a fairly smooth rhythmic quality when read.

Dale

Oh yes, if Billy is meaning format as being center justified, I would concur that it does the poem no favor, or course that is my opinion of all center justified poems, except concrete poems which can generally not avoid it.

Dale

[grannyjill]

I lost the thread (no pun intended) of this after 'embraces' - I saw the opening as the act of spiders cocooning their victims...but, the remainder sounds good but has no meaning that I can see.

But, I always struggle with esoteric poetry - well, actually, I don't struggle because I tend to give up and just go with the flow in verses such as this.

[Wildcard]

Hi Aish,
I usually have a little trouble with metaphors and the like, but this is wonderful. I removed the formatting for the purpose of crit. I hope you don't mind . . .

In the twilight of a sibilant heart
spinning mouths --I read this as kissing as the forerunner of the tangled web relationships and encounters consist of
embroider silk embraces
from the sky of impersonated longing.
Eggshell gestures --'eggshell' is a nice image of the fragile nature of interpersonal affairs
barter cankered covenants
and the snarling flint of skin
grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger. --favorite line! 'lustful danger' is great imo. Very original
When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?

And the close was done well. I did have to read this a few times to get a full impression, but I routinely have to do that because I am slow-witted

Also I do agree that the formatting is adding nothing to this poem. JMO of course.

Thanks for sharing.

[Philatone]

hello aish! some things I thought, though they should be taken with a big grain of salt...

..to a degree, I am with the others on the formatting. If it captures "coiling", then why not do more of it? I'm imaging a shape that goes more in and out than what I saw; playing with line breaks could make it more consistent and even, but I'm hesitant to disrupt the lines you purposely crafted

In the twilight of a sibilant heart
spinning mouths ... if this is talking about spiders, then I do agree with Erthona, seemed a bit of a stretch to link the mouths to the biology of a spider. i'm not 100% convinced yet it is; the more I read, in fact, the farther I go from that conclusion--heading towards something closer to mark's view on it discussing relationships
embroider silk embraces... originally, I saw coccoons here, hugging what's inside. now, i'm leaning more towards a sense of delicateness
from the sky of impersonated longing. ..this line lost me
Eggshell gestures "eggshell"'s describing the "gestures" as fragile?
barter cankered covenants..this line, if discussing relationships, is fantastic
and the snarling flint of skin.."snarling" is powerful; gives this line some teeth
grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger. ..I'm seeing a desire for an escape, whether of people or emotion; agree that this line may be the poem's treasure
When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?

..interesting close, giving each person the same characteristics. i have nothing to say on it

need some more reads of it; the "impersonated longing" line still is beyond me. do feel I'm getting closer to an understanding, though how far I've gone from your intentions i'm not sure at the moment...

[Todd]

Hi Aish,

It's nice to read you again. Let me give you some comments below. Hopefully, they will be helpful.

I read this through a few times, and I must admit that I'm not sure I'm connecting with it properly. I'll try to give you enough feedback so you can see if you accomplished what you intended to. Here goes:

Starting with the title, I think of first a snake (reinforced by sibilant in L1). When I take the last two lines into account I think of a snake perhaps swallowing itself. In the context of a relationship (which the poem lends itself to), this could be one of those images stating where do I end and you begin. So while I could have thought of coiled like a python and its prey, the images seemed to speak to two people being interwoven together.

In the twilight of a sibilant heart--I do like this first line. I like that twilight is called out. I take this to mean that we are at a point of decision as twilight is a demarcation between night and day. It also could imply that something is about to end. Sibilant ties in nicely with the title and reinforces the image. I take this to be a way of stressing that the heart is deceptive while also introducing sound into the line. I am a bit concerned with many of your prepositional phrases throughout the poem (not this one)--more on those later
spinning mouths
embroider silk embraces--These next two lines make me think of spiders more than serpents. Spinning mouths would make me think of entrapping another with our words like a web. The embroider silk embraces though sounds sort of genteel. It doesn't have a trapping sense to it. I wasn't sure how to take these lines as a whole because they seemed to be removed from your title so I wasn't connecting them together.
from the sky of impersonated longing.--Here's one of those prepositional phrase constructions I was mentioning. This may just be me, but I'm wondering if you can find an image that could take the place of that construction. It feels a bit too manufacturered to me (if that makes the slightest bit of sense). I'm also having a hard to time piecing the correct meaning together.
Eggshell gestures--This is pretty nice because you get the sense of a coiled snake putting pressure on an egg. The couple is concerned that at any point they could break the tenuous balance they've established
barter cankered covenants--now I'm getting a garden of eden image from you cankers from an apple tree, the exchange that comes from it, and the covenant of (I guess it would be "works"). You always seem to blend a level of mysticism under your narrative--that is if I'm on the right track with that line.
and the snarling flint of skin--I keep wanting to replace and with as. There is a part of me Aish that wonders if you need snarling. You have a lot of modifiers in this and the next line and it feels a bit weighty.
grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger.--Here's the third prepositional phrase that stood out to me. I wonder if there's a way the very action of the whetstone could imply lustful danger. The idea of grinding in common vernacular could imply the lust. I'd just like to see the image to carry more of the weight.
When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?--I very much like these final lines. They tie back to the circular sense of coiling. I especially like the idea of a broken hunger. The one downside to this ending for me is that it seems so much stronger than a lot of what's leading up to it. I would almost consider reworking the poem into a repetition of these types of circular statements. In short, It would be interesting if the poem would coil more. That said again, I really like the ending.

I enjoyed the read. You could take this in a lot of interesting directions. I hope some of that ramble was helpful.

Best,

Todd

[Aish]

I cleaned up the format since the resounding consensus was it sucked

First I want to say there is no spider imagery. If it comes across that way it kind of bums me out. I am all for individual interpretations, but no. NO spiders. All snake.

The orobouros is a coiled snake eating its own tail. It is used in alchemy and often when you see a depiction it is along with the caption quod me nutrit me destruit (that which nourishes me destroys me). The double orobouros, two snakes entwined together, devouring each other, was the starting point for this piece.

Todd is quite correct in ascertaining twilight as a demarcation, and not only can hearts be deceptive, but our very natures as human tend to be as well. Amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus - Love is rich with both honey and venom.
spinning mouths
embroider silk embraces
from the sky of impersonated longing. = artful speech weaves ardent embraces from half-truths and exposed desire.

Todd's reply regarding 'barter cankered covenants" is also spot on with my intentions. I am replacing 'and' in L7 with 'as'.

The end is not really a riddle. The ending is a culmination of the double orobouros - the parties involved in the relationship are BOTH the lover and the knife, i.e. honey and venom.

If there are any other suggestions with how to deal with my prepositional phrases I would certainly be open to them.

[Leanne]

Aish, I'm on the fly here as I'm cooking breakfast, but I'll definitely come back as soon as I can. My immediate suggestion to get rid of spiders, though, is this:

In the twilight of a sibilant heart
spinning mouths
embroider a silken embrace

silken implies slipping softly, whereas silk alone is almost always taken as a symbol for spiders (in cliche land at least!)

Really, I'll come back.

[Aish]

Done.

*waiting with baited breath*

[Leanne]

In the twilight of a sibilant heart
spinning mouths
embroider a silken embrace
from the sky of impersonated longing.
Eggshell gestures
barter cankered covenants
as the snarling flint of skin
grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger.
When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?

OK, I spotted your explanatory comment but I'm trying to avoid it and I'm not going to do the line-by-line here, because a linear reading of this is not actually going to work for me at all. It's the impressions that bounce around which give it strength, as each new image plays off something before and shifts it, in a way acting to accentuate the coil.

The combined imagery of the knife and the serpents led me to think of the caduceus, which carries so many wonderful connotations including deception and writing, but you mention the orobouros, which of course I probably should have thought of, even though you use twilight and I'd normally associate it with dawn. That in itself is significant to me, as twilight is in the devouring process rather than the point of renewal, so that places the poem deep in that conflict, as well as hinting at Jung's "feedback" since twilight is the precursor to dreams.

"Impersonated longing" indicates the artificial, perhaps trying to live up to the expectations of what "longing" ought to be, the voice intellectually aware that she should be feeling something more socially acceptable, perhaps. This is further highlighted by "eggshell", a very thin veneer, fragile, over the egg or origin/essence. "Cankered covenants", vows turned malignant but still intrinsic to the flesh. "snarling flint" I am not so keen on, I feel the snarl is out of character with either snake or dagger. Flint is very primal though, it promises a spark, it is brittle but may be easily shaped into tools. I'm not sure if it would be too overblown to try "sparks upon" instead of "grinds against".

The final two lines tie the metaphors together very well, and of course the answer is both and neither. It's symbiotic, or perhaps even parasitic, depending on the viewpoint at any given time.