08-16-2012, 12:16 PM
I faced my demons one by one,
saw them for what they were
and banished them with mental magic
until I came face to face with my own mortality.
The tense I think should be changed if you keep the stanza. "have faced" "seen them"... "Mental magic" does give the endearing tone to set you as a child, but we get it agin later. Perhaps if you want to keep an introduction we might have a stanza approaching the subject as the child rather than the man who survived from the child.
Death and his side-kick panic
blew through my pop-pseudo-psychology
like an eighteen wheeler blows through summertime
mirages out on hwy 180 between Hobbs and Seagraves
where my dad would drive from home to work and back.
He worked at the chemical plant where the “Mexicans”
—sitting among waves of heat rising off concrete—
made a lunch of hot black coffee and jalapenos.
The stanza does establish the father as tough and working class. It does establish a location for both of you but there is an uneasy emotional jumping about in tone. Death is serious business but sidekick is flippant in tone. Death does more than blow through "psychology." "Psychology" is an impersonal description of impact. "Illusions" or "hopes" are more personal words, and even a child takes death personally. The details of the location are not personal either... numbers and two names. The quotes on the Mexicans removes us one step further to the poet parenthetically commenting on social bias just for one word. Even the concrete details of the coffee and peppers is describing a further group of characters wandering in. I wish the whole stanza to be more about the individuals, more endearing.
It wasn’t suppose to happen the way it did,
she was suppose to be there to support him
when he had his first heart attack
and keep him alive until Denton Cooley
learned to do cardiopulmonary bypass surgery,
by stealing from the leg and giving to the heart.
I think we get a bit more personal in the tone here (not as much as I would hope) but the last line is certainly excellent.
She wasn’t suppose to die
having a meaningless and unneeded hysterectomy.
I couldn’t help him, I was only five.
What did I know of the panic that gripped him every night
lying there alone trying to sleep and seeing his own death staring back.
Emotional raw meat wondering at every chest muscle twinge
if this was it, but was too John Wayne tough to ever admit being afraid.
I think this stanza should start with you, your emotion since you have already established her accidental death. "I couldn't help him..." is a stronger opening and sets a good contrast to the ringing final line of the previous. Then I would replace the "meaningless and unneeded" The lines could run something like " She wasn't supposed to die/ senselessly, from an unneeded hysterectomy." Then back to you "What did I..." The back-and-for the gives some tension to two movements that are a bit flat and matter-of-fact on their own. Speaking of hyphens, John-Wayne-tough needs them to clear the ambiguity that is otherwise present.
Today, I have an intimate relationship with death and panic,
waking up from an asthma attack in the dark of night
feeling like I am drowning and wondering
if I will ever catch my next breath.
Knowing makes me no more able to help him then,
than I am able to help myself now.
"Dark of night" is a tired idiom, especially to wake in. Maybe some sort of tactile adjective or ominous adjective for the night. "knowing" also glosses over a lot of life lived in the presence of death. I'd drop the word altogether or expand with one or two lines that describe how you are like him... to draw a parallel. Then the simple statement "I am no more able.." takes on some of the power of helplessness like a child.
He needed her and her optimism,
the “everything’s going to be all right” mantra,
but she died out of time, drowning in her own fluids
due to an allergic reaction to magic ether juice.
So instead of being reconciled by her to a better reality
we were just two small helpless boys alone in the dark,
trying to make it until daybreak
when there would be enough distractions
to allow us to escape—for awhile—
the darkness in our minds.
"Mantra" is a projection of the poet's speech onto their world. Parents in this time and place would have a "whispered prayer" or a "loving phrase," but mantra puts me into the body of a man at a desk thinking about parents. I get the idea of being endearing again, but "magic ether juice" shoots me back out of the poem once more. If you must, then "magic ether" is enough. The last line also needs "from" at the beginning to make the phrasing less archaic. The stanza is good, but not really as strong as the middle. Stealing from the leg for the heart is stealing the thunder for the middle and is setting me to believe that you are going to have a solution of some sort, or an idea that will allow a mental refuge that allows us to take courage from you. It doesn't go there. In all it is touching, but you seem to have an emotional detachment that makes me feel that you are holding back... that you feel a lot more strongly about this, but you aren't going to share that with us.
saw them for what they were
and banished them with mental magic
until I came face to face with my own mortality.
The tense I think should be changed if you keep the stanza. "have faced" "seen them"... "Mental magic" does give the endearing tone to set you as a child, but we get it agin later. Perhaps if you want to keep an introduction we might have a stanza approaching the subject as the child rather than the man who survived from the child.
Death and his side-kick panic
blew through my pop-pseudo-psychology
like an eighteen wheeler blows through summertime
mirages out on hwy 180 between Hobbs and Seagraves
where my dad would drive from home to work and back.
He worked at the chemical plant where the “Mexicans”
—sitting among waves of heat rising off concrete—
made a lunch of hot black coffee and jalapenos.
The stanza does establish the father as tough and working class. It does establish a location for both of you but there is an uneasy emotional jumping about in tone. Death is serious business but sidekick is flippant in tone. Death does more than blow through "psychology." "Psychology" is an impersonal description of impact. "Illusions" or "hopes" are more personal words, and even a child takes death personally. The details of the location are not personal either... numbers and two names. The quotes on the Mexicans removes us one step further to the poet parenthetically commenting on social bias just for one word. Even the concrete details of the coffee and peppers is describing a further group of characters wandering in. I wish the whole stanza to be more about the individuals, more endearing.
It wasn’t suppose to happen the way it did,
she was suppose to be there to support him
when he had his first heart attack
and keep him alive until Denton Cooley
learned to do cardiopulmonary bypass surgery,
by stealing from the leg and giving to the heart.
I think we get a bit more personal in the tone here (not as much as I would hope) but the last line is certainly excellent.
She wasn’t suppose to die
having a meaningless and unneeded hysterectomy.
I couldn’t help him, I was only five.
What did I know of the panic that gripped him every night
lying there alone trying to sleep and seeing his own death staring back.
Emotional raw meat wondering at every chest muscle twinge
if this was it, but was too John Wayne tough to ever admit being afraid.
I think this stanza should start with you, your emotion since you have already established her accidental death. "I couldn't help him..." is a stronger opening and sets a good contrast to the ringing final line of the previous. Then I would replace the "meaningless and unneeded" The lines could run something like " She wasn't supposed to die/ senselessly, from an unneeded hysterectomy." Then back to you "What did I..." The back-and-for the gives some tension to two movements that are a bit flat and matter-of-fact on their own. Speaking of hyphens, John-Wayne-tough needs them to clear the ambiguity that is otherwise present.
Today, I have an intimate relationship with death and panic,
waking up from an asthma attack in the dark of night
feeling like I am drowning and wondering
if I will ever catch my next breath.
Knowing makes me no more able to help him then,
than I am able to help myself now.
"Dark of night" is a tired idiom, especially to wake in. Maybe some sort of tactile adjective or ominous adjective for the night. "knowing" also glosses over a lot of life lived in the presence of death. I'd drop the word altogether or expand with one or two lines that describe how you are like him... to draw a parallel. Then the simple statement "I am no more able.." takes on some of the power of helplessness like a child.
He needed her and her optimism,
the “everything’s going to be all right” mantra,
but she died out of time, drowning in her own fluids
due to an allergic reaction to magic ether juice.
So instead of being reconciled by her to a better reality
we were just two small helpless boys alone in the dark,
trying to make it until daybreak
when there would be enough distractions
to allow us to escape—for awhile—
the darkness in our minds.
"Mantra" is a projection of the poet's speech onto their world. Parents in this time and place would have a "whispered prayer" or a "loving phrase," but mantra puts me into the body of a man at a desk thinking about parents. I get the idea of being endearing again, but "magic ether juice" shoots me back out of the poem once more. If you must, then "magic ether" is enough. The last line also needs "from" at the beginning to make the phrasing less archaic. The stanza is good, but not really as strong as the middle. Stealing from the leg for the heart is stealing the thunder for the middle and is setting me to believe that you are going to have a solution of some sort, or an idea that will allow a mental refuge that allows us to take courage from you. It doesn't go there. In all it is touching, but you seem to have an emotional detachment that makes me feel that you are holding back... that you feel a lot more strongly about this, but you aren't going to share that with us.