Curl
Walls are the minds of other people.
I sit in piles on the desktop–
a black sun,
the leg of a poem.
A glass eye drops
to the bedside table,
having seen enough.
My rumpled bed
is full of poems.
My closet stuffed with words
in too many sizes
that go unworn.
They are purses never used,
these poems I have departed from.
Still, I slip into their pages
day by day.
I drown in these things
I have assembled a life from.
Prehispanic bowls on the mantel.
A tiny dried seahorse
standing on a curled tail
The Prompt: Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form. Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.
In case you are curious, here is my original paragraph the poem was culled from:
Around me on my walls are the minds of other people. A black bird faces an orange sun, a leg lies suspended over a poem. Fish swim by with hands and a woman stands bare breasted holding birds on the palms of her hands. A Bedouin woman holds three roosters and there is much more of other people’s minds on other walls. My mind sits in piles on the desktop. boxes, papers, heaps of contents migrated from other rooms. A case with hundreds of different DVD’s behind a TV with VCR player. my life piled around me ..what is not nailed onto walls. A half-empty glass with soda straw and eye drops on the bedside table. I am too tired of this room to describe it more. My backboard of my bed is a file cabinet full of poems. My closet stuffed with clothes in too many sizes. Belts that no longer fit. shoes that go unworn. Purses lined up but never used. Int the bookcase, poetry books I haven’t read for years. Words of friends I have departed from or who’ve departed this world. My house my room like a giant scrapbook of my life I slip into the pages of more securely day by day. Wondering about escape but questioning whether I really want to. We are all consumed by our lives in the end. My air running out. In my mind I escape seaward. Where I drown instead of smothering. No way out of this life in the end but t drown in something: life or death. Either way, we need to leave these things we have assembled a life from. Prehispanic bowls on a mantel. A clay warrior holding a lance, a tiny dried seahorse, standing on curled tail, and a Huichol painting of curled string.
As you can see, many of the images in the above paragraph fell away, mainly because I’d dealt with them in an earlier poem. Links tto hat earlier poem and to photographs of the room are given below:
For another poem about this room go HERE.
And for images of the room described in both poems, go HERE.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/interplanet-janet/
