A Poem About A Canal

[shemthepenman]

A Poem About A Canal 


She spiralled—almost shatterproof—
a victim, a stray country,
like limbs at war.
She tortured and corrupted 
and turned my bicycle into a language
that spoke to me and said:

This is your idiot culture,
this shiny system,
this laugh riot.
These fractures and cracks and breaks 
are your real bones.
This acrobat is your real flesh.
You're a railway
and, despite your inhibitions, 
you have set yourself on fire
so that everyone can see
exactly what you are 
and what you fail to be.

We listened, 
ran off, hid, and spat
some garbled platitudes 
on a dustbin lid.

wanted to comment on this poem before but didn´t quite dare.. and now it´s here again. so i ll get over my inhibitions and give it a try, too.


i like this poem, it has a lot of brilliant lines (like "laugh riot") and images (like the railway, that set itself on fire)
 and as all good poems it might mean something different to every reader.

limbs at war could be understood in  a schizophrenic way, so the subject really talks to himself.
"we" in the last stanza could be another part of the subject.

but "bicycle" seems to be "poems" and the middle stanza would be what the poems say .. so there is some interaction with others involved.

or i could read this as adressed to someone like a stray country, who preaches frustrated/ frustrating views and inadvertently or not victimizes, which could be understood as torturing and corrupting ( i don´t know exactly how that connects but i think it does).

the second stanza seems to be split in two parts with the first being what "she" ´s cursing as she falls, and the part following "you´re a railway" would seem to adress "her" directly.
"railway" puzzled me first but  it is a good opposition to "bicycle", because the latter, at least as long as in control, can be steered in any direction freely.  

the canal  with its dumped poems and floating language seems to be flowing  through the last stanza again   somewhere in the background

and now that i have spread my delusional interpretation you post your meaning at the same time. this is hilarious

yes, that was uncanny. i deleted my comment. because it makes no sense for me to write a poem that intends to elicit multiple interpretations and then go “this is what it means”. my meaning was always meant to be fluid. and although i did have a scene in my mind while writing it, i’m not married to it at all. 

i like your interpretation very much. and i don’t think it necessarily contradicts anything i said about the poem in my deleted comment. 

i’m glad you liked it.