Pietas

[milo]

Hello leanne. I liked a lot here. My biggest appreciation is the use of anapestics to lighten the tones of phrases that might otherwise read faux-poetic or archaic if you stuck with iambics.

Today, upturned, I look for the lie,
the strawberry syrup disguising the base
that drips from the tongue of the mockingbird mime
to a crystal decanter of sky.

I get the feeling you have a specific instance in mind here but it can't quite place it so instead I appreciate the wordplay. choices like crystal decanter of sky are /quite/ nice, as I am sure you know. I have no idea what it means here but I love the originality, the imagery and the sonics.


Where truffle pigs root through a midden of pearls
all stamped with a date of expiry
inspiring stampedes as the dogma decrees
with a sniff from its perch in the sun.

"midden of pearls", "date of expiry" and "dogma decrees" never could have been pulled off without your tight control of meter. so of course we should not cast our pearls before swine, but so many have been cast they are forming a midden here and of course our oblivious pigs don't notice?

And nobody looks in their pockets,
and nobody stands on the ground; instead
they despair, with their feet in the air
and I bleed, but their glasses are empty.

I assume people would find silver in their pockets and their glasses are empty for a failure to take of your sacrament.



*Yes, recycling lines

Overall, of course I loved the poem for it's meter and word choice. I assumed our narrator was Christ himself so it seems odd to hear him speaking in such flippant verse. Still, speaking in parables and all.

You seem to be treading a nice line between showing not telling and clubbing us with the hammer of the obvious.

milo