v2. Greenware

[matsunosuperfan]

v2. edit thank you to dukealien, RiverNotch, wasellajam, and milo for feedback

Greenware


Deprived of contact, blessed be the cold
damp dark—an inner warmth has been renewed
before the setting heat and gentle hold

of humankind was felt and misconstrued
as knowledge of the self. I am no more
abandoned than the mourning I subdued,

so eager to be held again in lore
if I was broken that I shelved belief
in my past being as a distant shore.

Creation seeks creation in its grief
of memory beyond the fading mind.
Yet this slow deforming gives no relief

from raving at the gentle hand's unkind
forsaking of believers it designed.

v1. Greenware


Deprived of contact, blessed be the cold
damp dark---an inner warmth has been renewed
before the setting heat and gentle hold

of humankind was felt and misconstrued
as knowledge of the self. I am no more
abandoned than the grief that I subdued,

so eager to reverberate in lore
by my collapse that I could not conceive
my previous being as a distant shore.

Creation seeks creation, seeks to grieve
that memory beyond the fading mind.
Yet slow deforming offers no reprieve

from questioning the gentle hand's unkind
forsaking of believers it designed.

Friend, I can't pretend to find this voice effective--it feels quite arched and put-on! Must the speaker communicate through this affectation? The last sentence is a bit of a mouthful - in general, there's I think too much subordination (I am no more than the grief that I subdued... to reverberate in lore by my collapse that I could not conceive...). It's very easy to get lost in the middle of any of these sentences. I find the conceit unconvincing as well, probably in no small part because the arched voice makes it feel melodramatic, which only adds to the weight of disbelief I must suspend to engage with the poem's world (already we are being asked to believe the speaker is pottery, which strains the imagination immediately). It is kind of doing that thing where the text CLAIMS to speak from the perspective of the anthropomorphized object, but the declarations that follow all seem to be decidedly form the perspective of an outside human observer. In other words, I don't feel like these are the things pottery would say about itself, so the dream falls apart. 

I think you have a worthy idea but I don't think this is the right approach. Just give us some digestible sentences!   Try reading it as prose first: are you really satisfied with the phrase, "an inner warmth has been renewed before the setting heat and gentle hold of humankind was felt and misconstrued as knowledge of the self" ? I submit that this is almost incomprehensible.