In Promise

[just mercedes]

I have smoked these fags to the bone; great imagery
Egg-shelled my reputation
With cartoned rags, and anglo-igloos.I'm a bit lost here
And I wanted so much to give in to this night.

How I wanted the warm sputters of competent love
To glue its paramount inquisitions
To the indispensable parachutes of my plight. I think there are too many adjectives in these lines
But they will not listen!
Those that love.

You cannot love only a little bit;I like this but wonder if 'bit' is needed?
Because a fella has his moods.
And most is a reflex in the moment of it, are reflexes?
And after that,
Another mood.
Can’t you see that? I like the direct address here

Or do I have—to tell you:
Never mind.
What I mean to say is: I don’t know.
That I do know:—But, so do you?
You say so. But in what way is that shown? This stanza reminds me of T S Eliot - '“That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

You can’t take offence, if I innocently
Murder the docile fitness of your lies.
So, they were lies. With no offence.
But have you not offended my eyes? The form changes here, as if the narrator needs rhyme and meter to express his hurt

A cry is such a clichéd wager.
Some can fake cries. Actors do it.
But you aren’t concerned about that.
You’re assaulted by the real thing. I'm reading 'insulted' - don't know why

Yes, I cry, and cut my eyes
Like farts in the dismal,
Jocund fissures of my heart. Pow! That was unexpected
But that’s what the word means.

My heart has its cracks,
And above and beyond my literal
Connection, it farts.
Like the rapid fissure of your part, I'm not sure of the sense of rapid here
When rapidly visited by those fiends. what fiends? the farts?

I am a fiend that measures his depths.
And wagers no love that his laughter can’t wed;
—To eyes in the sky, and burps on the can:
I was a fit that coiled after bed. I'm unsure what's going on here but like the depths/heights movement and the laughter. A fit here means a needle

And you,—
Closeted camerado of the pen,
Could dance such ectopic dangers Strong expression - gives me the dangers of sex/life
That, born of tried and tried
Again measures,
I thought you were my friend.

I thought you were my friend.
I thought you—were my friend,
Again. After all we’d been through.
I shutter to use the word, again. I like the repetition, almost a chorus of lament - but I think you meant 'shudder'

Was it not immanent in my proposal? again, I like the question directed out

I've read a few of your poems now and l am slowly getting to a stage where I feel I can say something about them

This one has a great texture for me, it feels like something Beckett would write, with its bleak but uncompromising view of the world and relationships between people.