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After the ice season ~ shamelessly lewd revision

Member since 2004 · Posted 6 Feb 2004 · Edited 10 May 2004 · 21 comments

After this ice season is over how will we again be lovers? Will we have to get sensationally drunk - sit out all night on an old Pontiac sunk in weeds up to its windows, in a field where winds blow warm over us, until you cover my body with yours, the trunk and branches of an old tree that bends above us creaking in the wind? Oh, if we have wine, car, weeds, wind, and tree, will that be enough for us to be really anything more than friends after this long ice season ends? One mid-April morning, she says, our clothing skimmed like curd, when the soothing touch of a window box-fan slips on our damp skin, itâll wake us. Your lips, searching, will find my lips; then upend the water-jug on me, kiss collar and hips, hollows and dips â for nothingâs been lost this long winter, though weâve grown frost-bitter, though neither of us have known how to unfreeze us â Oh, love, I donât know how to begin, but I know itâll end with us at last becoming lovers again.

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21 comments

[10] lastobelus 8-Feb-04/1:27 PM Reply

Once again I admire your ability to construct naturally flowing inversion-free rhyming lines. well I suppose there is one inversion, but it seems totally natural.

I find myself wanting to know something about the reason for the long ice season...

This has just a hint of "O western wind..." about it. Was that a source of inspiration at all? What if you made an explicit reference...would it add or just be trite?

[n/a] zodiac › lastobelus 8-Feb-04/1:31 PM Reply

I just meant it's too cold for love, which is kind of the case here, or neglecting love until it's been too long to start again. I've tried to make this longer and fuller dozens of times and not been successful - another example of the poem choosing its shape.

[n/a] zodiac › lastobelus 8-Feb-04/1:35 PM Reply

Weird call on the western wind. I haven't seen that poem in years, but I remember it giving me an odd feeling every time I read it - still does.

[10] lastobelus › zodiac 8-Feb-04/1:46 PM Reply

Me too! Chills every time. Weird isn't it? it's such a simple little thing -- but it affects many people that way. It's the unnaturally perfect rhythm, perhaps?

[n/a] zodiac › lastobelus 8-Feb-04/1:55 PM Reply

Here's some cheese: it's a primal expression of need, in the simplest purest form. The 'Christ!' especially gets me. And the small rain. And that as much as he wants his love's touch, he also really just wants to be in bed. It's a good one for rockmage to look up sometime, with his ten-word poems. That is how it's done, rockmage.

[8] irishfolksuicide 8-Feb-04/2:03 PM Reply

Good, a few nits.

Lines 4-9 seem choppy compared to the rest. I am not sure carrying on a sentence on the next line when you have just rhymes drunk with sunk works.

For me the sunk rhyme stops the piece before the new line.

[n/a] zodiac › irishfolksuicide 8-Feb-04/2:39 PM Reply

re: "For me the sunk rhyme stops the piece before the new line." The correct way to read a poem is not to consider the end of a line as a period or break. Imagine reading this as prose: "Sit out all night on an old Pontiac sunk in weeds up to its windows, in a field where winds blow warm over us." It makes perfect sense now, doesn't it? Ask yourself if this would work better:
"Until my body with yours you cover,
The trunk of a tree which over us bends,
Creaking in the wind..."
Basically, you'll find that ending lines at the ends of clauses or phrases drastically limits the amount of things you can say or the amount of style or natural diction you can use. Walt Whitman pulled it off with his amazing run-on lines, but almost everyone since has considered the concept of 'enjambment' a necessary poetic tool. Will you please give this one another shot with that in mind?

[8] irishfolksuicide › zodiac 9-Feb-04/10:24 AM Reply

The first two lines of this are made up of a premise, and a question predicated on given premise ---> pause

It is not unreasonable for the reader to make the same pause at the end of the second two lines.

Also as the brain organises stimuli together, things that rhyme will also tend towards forming their own discrete block.

The combination of expecting a couplet, line break and rhyme really do I think signal to the reader, end.

I can read it better if sunk starts the fifth line.

[n/a] zodiac › irishfolksuicide 9-Feb-04/11:17 AM Reply

No.

[8] Shuushin 9-Feb-04/10:50 AM Reply

Took me a couple reads to appreciate it, but I like it.

My main hesitation was the many prepositional phrases - having said that, I really want the first line to be:
"After this season of ice is over" - see, another prep phrase, but it seems to flow better, imho.

My ear keeps wanting "warm" to be an adverb, rather than a noun - but somehow it works (as is often the case).

And I'd prefer some specific types of tree and wine and weed.

But, after a few reads, the idea of it convinces me - its a good perspective. Good enough to build a snowman out of -8-

[n/a] zodiac › Shuushin 9-Feb-04/11:16 AM Reply

Not a great poem, but warm is an adjective.

[8] Shuushin › zodiac 9-Feb-04/12:42 PM Reply

So your saying its modifying "winds" (noun), rather than "blow" (verb)? As in:

"where the warm winds blow" - oh, okay - that works.

I thought you meant it like , "where the winds blow warmly"

Otherwise, I thought it would be a noun, as in "warm is this thing that blows"

[9] <~> 28-Apr-04/7:31 PM Reply

mistake #1:

title and opening line repeat. aaaargh!!!

suggested title: 'frisson, unfrozen'

why 'ice season'? has it really been an entire season? or just a hastily-made peace that's grown into a rift?

'will we have to get'--dude, economize! save the breath for when you need it! 'must we' will suffice to thaw this ice!!

the rest of it melts off my tongue, deliciously. now, if you would only ind a way to ease me in--instead of making me fell like you're cranking that pontiac, hoping it will turn over!

bueno.

[n/a] zodiac › <~> 28-Apr-04/8:35 PM Reply

Hey, thanks so much and duly noted! Incidentally, it was originally after the cold season, which doesn't sound nearly as long and hard, but which does sound like an allergy medication advertisement.

[9] <~> › zodiac 10-May-04/7:39 PM Reply

nothing lewd here, zodiac. can't you make L1 of S2 work with the sounds of this bit:
' our clothing/
skimmed like curd, when the soothing '

this is so lovely to the ear.

and, up-ending the water jug' does not work as well for sound--but visually, that is one hell of an image.

i like this revision!

[10] Sasha 10-May-04/5:19 PM Reply

Very ephemeral, but still grounded in reality.

Good, especially with the natural rhymes

There's a palpable but faint feeling feeling here of Fitzgerald's:

"A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise enow."

[9] wilco 10-May-04/7:52 PM Reply

I'm not really seeing anything "shamelessly lewd" here, but it's pretty good.

[8] <{Baba^Yaga}> 10-May-04/11:21 PM Reply

What, no death? Boo.

[n/a] zodiac › <{Baba^Yaga}> 11-May-04/7:02 AM Reply

Sorry, I didn't know the definition of a Lewd until just a minute ago.

[n/a] -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. › zodiac 11-May-04/7:36 AM Reply

I first encounter'd the word in 1998, when it was reported that George Michael had performed a lewd in a public outhouse. He was busted by the L.A.P.D during OPERATION LEWD RESOLVE.

[n/a] zodiac › -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. 11-May-04/8:28 AM Reply

Of course, that incident was later determined to be the worst case of Lewd-entrapment ever, as the broken outhouse door-lock which played such a crucial role in the arrest was exposed as the work of a special L.A.P.D. crack unit.