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Diary (Free verse) by Dovina These pages on my screen,
hard-drive bits aligned
with soft cerebral shadows,
changeable with keystrokes,
as memory with time.
âprobsbly right,â I read and grin,
almost fix it, but then,
itâs âprobablyâ and âpossiblyâ mixed,
and let it ride,
in bits and brain alike.
Time, the jailerâs tool,
squeezes present toward the end,
And finally frees the space.
Events and deeds,
some never said,
never read,
typed tonight,
fall to recording head,
and sleepy eyes to bed.
A musty album of decisions crafted,
acts and actions that created me,
not fact,
but verisimilitude Iâve learned to trust.
Up the ladder:
The Little Girl
Down the ladder:
Asbestosis
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 6.3333335
Posted: July 27, 2006 3:30 PM PDT; Last modified: July 28, 2006 5:02 PM PDTWeighted score: 5.1589375 Overall Rank: 5115 Comments:
The jail cell metaphor competes with the main metaphor of the poem. It tends to confuse people when you put an unconnected metaphor inside a bigger metaphor. Otherwise very interesting and thought provoking.
Thanks, Ranger and ALChemy, for your comments. I've awakened today in less of a stupor, and revised the thing. I hope it makes more sense.
I like this much more. It's got more of you in it. It seems more honest, more like a diary now.
Some problems in logic and flow, but I like it overall. Resist rhyming "aligned" and "intertwined"--we all want to do it, and too many succumb. "Soft cerebral shadows" reads nicely.
I love the second verse--we get a nice bit of YOU (the you in the poem anyway). Next verse (time)--I like it in concept, but I'm not clear on how time keeps it all in place--seems to me that diaries do the opposite--keep time in place. Maybe I'm just misreading it. I like the interplay between jailor and "frees the space." "Events and deeds" verse doesn't scan right (grammatically/logically). Last verse--you've come to trust verisimilude, not fact? If yes, lose the comma after fact. What you're saying, in effect, though is that you've come to trust the appearance or suggestion of truth rather than fact? verisimilitude doesn't always equal truth though; we're very self-deluded critters sometimes. Like it overall--you seem to be simplifying, which usually makes things stronger, clearer, less pompous.
Thanks for the good comments. I've revised it again. But I am so in love with the verisimilitude line, it has to stay. The way I see the diary, it is a collection of symbols and representations of the truth about what really happened. So it is not fact, but something near fact. And as I look back at it, some is ridiculously far from fact.
This doesn't read very smoothly at all, to me. What bugs me about this is that each line is a different length. The first stanza has the right idea, but from there it goes bad. I didn't enjoy reading this at all.
Verisimilitude throws this off a bit, but I think it fits as a noticeable oddity. Really a good poem, overall.
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The 'tiny hard drive space' is good for the idea of each of us being small, virtually inconsequential - as I assume that's what you mean. It needs to be a little clearer though.
Stanzas 2 and 3 are super, although 'Events and deeds/some never said' seems to go against the title; diaries aren't usually fictional.
Use of 'verisimilitude' is either genius or madness, I have yet to decide which...
'The rest, like life unlived' was good.