Free verse № 129623
How Angels Sleep
They roll and turn
with minds confused
to understand their earthly charge
Angels have no pain or joy
from which to learn the art of comfort.
They know so very little
how a woman feels
with wounded knee
or poison word.
About an earthly hand below her ribâ
once a pleasure, now a scarâ
about this feeling,
only theories can they bring.
And for the missing manly snuggles,
they tout prescriptions learned,
obeying Teacherâs word,
then listen while she grumbles.
All their efforts leave her sobbing
beside him on the bed,
bewildered,
while their platitudes roll on.
But once an angel felt it brieflyâ
the way to reach his chargeâs heart.
He lay beside her sleeping soundly,
and she knew he understood.
25 comments
I got interchangeability between man/god/angels.
For some reason that works for me.
I think all the stanzas have a submissive beat. The angel is submissive to the Teacher and to his task. The woman is submissive to being comforted by the angel, even as he fails. And the woman in the last verse, who is finally comforted, is submissive to the angel. Could you explain what you mean?
The full stop at the end of s2 is there for grammarâs sake. But I see how it breaks the flow, and may do well to disappear.
PS. beatifully was a pun.
The last line has only three beats, while the previous three lines have four beats each. I see how you want another da-dum. The other verses are not so regular, however. How about, âShe understood he knew her heart.â
âShe understood he knew her heart.â sounds OK but the repetition of heart sounds a little like Fred Durst trying to rhyme. I was thinking not a change so much as an addition. i.e. "and she knew he understood it's beat."
"About" in the third stanza stopped me a minute. I'd like to see "Nor" in its place.
Would you consider dropping "About this feeling... can they bring" and the next stanza? Thanks. It was kind of superobvious.
I'd change "platitudes" to a less-strong word, or example, or cool turn-of-phrase of your own.
Okay, I made all the comments above without reading the last stanza. Wow. Oh. Okay. I don't think it works at all. For one, City of Angels???? For two, it's kind of just whimsical wish-fulfillment, isn't it? Not to mention utterly non-doctrinal, against everything you've written so far, and a rather trite Deus ex Machina. My suggestion (ie, if this were my poem, so you know what that's worth): The narrator-woman ends wishing for an angel to sleep beside her, knowing it doesn't really feel or understand anything she feels, but she settles for the compromise anyway. Yeah. Cool. I dig.
Liked quite a few bits of the writing. You're good when you're poetic.
I don't think "nor" works in the third stanza because it's about a real hand below a real rib, and not a continuation of verse 2. The duplication in "about this feeling" is there to show the difference between the act and the feeling. Weird, I know.
"platitudes" is strong, but it reminds me of the sayings attributed to angels - rest in peace, God be with you, I'm by your side, etc.
"City of Angels" might work into a nice addition. I'll consider it.
It is whimsical and non doctrinal, but your seggestion of fantasizing about sleeping with an angel is farther afield than I'm willing to go. The last verse is about sleeping with a man, and it compares this man with others who are like the angels in the former verses.
I'm good when I'm not poetic, but thanks, I see what you mean.
Don't you really mean, "They know so very little [about] how a woman feels with wounded knee or poison word, [or about] an earthly hand below her rib"? I mean, you've basically just broken the list of things angels know little about into two sentences. Which is fine enough except the first item in the list starts with 'how', the second starts with 'about', and there's nothing immediately connecting them. It seems just as well to say, "They know so very little how a woman feels with wounded knee or poison word, or/nor an earthly hand below her rib." I don't see what the hand being real has to do with anything. Nor the "about this feeling" line.
Flipping through the Bible, I find angels saying "Go back to your mistress and submit to her" (Gn16:9), "Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here or you will be swept away when the city is punished" (Gn19:15), and "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God." (Lk1:19). If these are platitudes, they're news to me.
re: the last stanza
Even if you meant the last verse as a metaphor for a man (and isn't the whole poem a metaphor for a man????), it still means you've set up this great description of the nature of angels and then without explanation just changed it and made an angel/man do something totally against what we've understood as its nature. Without explanation or anything. And isn't the whole poem a metaphor for a man? Yes, it has to be. You can't write a whole poem about angels, make the angel in the last stanza a man, and not make us think about how the things you've said previously about angels relate to the metaphor-man. So, you've either got "Angels can't ever feel except this one just happened to feel once" or "Men can't ever feel except this one just happened to feel once" or both. Doesn't that strike you as a kind of silly (if, yes, sloppily gratifying) thing to say?
SOLUTIONS: Of course I'm not suggesting you make the woman sleep with an angel any more than the poem suggests she sleeps with an angel (metaphor or not). But you somehow HAVE to make the man/angel not really change its nature. YOU HAVE TO. The easiest answer is the man/angel DOESN'T really feel anything. Hey, that would be kind of like the reality of angels/men, too! Wouldn't that be cool?
The poem is whimsical and non-doctrinal, as we have both said. So why are you bring the Bible into it?
The last verse is a metaphor for a man, and the whole poem could be interpreted that way. Since Iâve used the plural, angels, throughout the poem, it seems fair to say in the last verse that one particular angel (or man) is different from the others. Therefore the man/angel has not changed his nature. Maybe I could make that more clear.
Thanks for your comments.
And, for the last time saying this, I don't think it works suddenly having one angel/man be different from the others. Oh well, maybe sometime I'll get around to writing it the way I would write it instead of telling you how to do it.
I don't know why I brought the Bible in. I guess I thought that's where angels live.
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