Goodnight in the City

[danny_]

Goodnight in the City


The pounding of my heart 
and frontal lobe
like my boots on hard black tar,
    I caught the meaning but I had to stall for a bit first.
    What your boots do on the black tar needs to directly
    relate to your heart's activity. (The sound, feeling, or
    some description.)
reaches a rhythm far into the long
cold night, then stalks my shadow by day

when I scrape meat from my ribs
to feed my children.
    Strong and interesting lines, but I'm not sure how it
    takes place. Is it literal, in scraping meat from food on
    your plate? Because at first I thought your own body's
    ribs. In that case, is it the automatic process of the body
    using its own muscle/fat to create the needed milk for
    breast-feeding? Or is it the self-denial of eating so the
    children can eat? I'm not the quickest to understand
    things but I thought I'd share my difficulty with that part.

My guilt is a quilted blanket
    I like this because guilt can become overwhelming and
complex, just like busy quilt patterns.
placed upon me by white
supremacists' rage.
    Vague. Agree that you could use an image of what
    happened to cause the guilt.
Yet knowing this I swaddle tighter
like a house.
    I did not understand "like a house". I mean, abstractly,
    perhaps I understand where you came up with that.
    A house is generally tight in that it keeps in the warm
    and keeps out the cold, but a better simile would surely
    help. Or helping clear up with why a house relates.

Today you brought me a lentil stew
and I stirred in my tears.
    I liked these lines and still do. A strong image.
Tonight we'll start the new green candle.
It'll smell < Don't need the line break.
like apples
and we can read the library book
by the flickering light.

Good reading this. To help tie me in emotionally I need to see
more of the injustice or whatever is causing the anxiety, difficulty.
Show me - make me hurt like you hurt. Then I will really feel the
contrast of the bowl of stew, the candle light.