Beyond Literature

[MadelineAnne]

Hi rowens. I like the originality of this. It has some nice high points.

Beyond Literature
 
 
We try to get on with the world
but literature says, No
this'll be a pit of irony too,
and they its characters, marooned
on some hostile environment
with irreconcilable differences
tattooed like a teenage rebellion
under every ladder called every door you walk through. -- I like the equation of walking through a door to walking under a ladder. Bad luck everywhere!
 
Each character like a picture already painted
with muscles easily outlined to go
from smile to frown or laughter or cruelty,
eyes ready to deceive with the empty richness
behind them. -- this little fragment isn't strong enough to stand on its own, I think.
To be ravished and forgotten, in context -- I'd lose, 'in context only' and move right into 'then returned'
only. Then returned to in a poorman's rehearsal,
not even the writers can remember the lines. -- well put lament for the unavoidable decay of literature over time
 
A man'd remember his anniversary
if it weren't for pop culture, --
would be first in line at the store
instead of at the bar after work
with his nonliterary friends. -- 'nonliterary friends' is too much like prose, I think. It's not elegant.
Even the Pope feels he's nothing to write home about when watching The Exorcist.
And his dog lives for friendship
until it dies.
 
—And will I overheat without an airconditioner  -- I feel like it's start to ramble
on Christmas Eve?
Watching reruns of people who told me,
while watching screens of memory,
everybody is a death waiting to happen:
Seasons too, but the Earth too changes. -- this line is weak, but I like the next two.
Each time with a dialect far different, I hear from an old friend
only to recognize—a personality extinguished.
 
From this poetical rat-race, I glean over -- did you mean lean over?
in a pool of gloss, unable to distinguish
the reflection of my face
from the arbitrary formation of clouds
that resembles me; -- don't need this after clouds
nor that bareheaded death mask
of the gaunt Vietnamese monkey-face which, with sickening smile,
stares absently through me from a black and white magazine.