Day Two: Freedom & Fairness theme.
Here, it’s freedom to be the lone chronicler, of some place. To make it into something
that lives on. Or, that’s the idea. The surroundings belong to no one – so that’s a freedom.
“Passive Exploration”
The town is an
undocumented extinction event.
A blue gel pen
conspires with a marbled composition book
to make the only record of what
inhabited this place.
A mottled billboard
A window which
has missed an appointment
or two with the rain.
The rain is a custom
cleaning service, except
it visits and lends a service
just as often as it wants to.
The billboard might be
from a thrift market back
on the edge of town.
An entry could call it a defunct
landmark, only
that word is somehow
too hopeful.
Nothing will take its place.
Nothing will will overwrite the freedom
of being a shrine that no one tends.
A field note may
term the billboard
A rent-a-temptation-
Today
Field notes will mark
suffocated sunlight
A park that’s a former park
but still a park
Somewhere in it
Ostensibly
A high school planted a time capsule –
Tomorrow or some other eventually
Field notes could be a marker
When a mimeograph newspaper
coughs up some fossilized gossip.
Footsteps/A simulated soundtrack
played with windblown richness.
A field note may
term the billboard
A rent-a-temptation- Love this stanza. Overall, lovely sparse language, red drops on wheelbarrows over and over again, engaging and tender. If I were to expand, not saying you need to, maybe another poem, but I’d start with the objects in the high school time capsule. What would be put in there and who would do the deciding?
Trent-Your first two stanzas are so unique they can take a poem anywhere and for me, they could also stand alone.. I like what you did.
“The town is an
undocumented extinction event.” Whoa is this is great opening! Very interested to see where this takes me!
Yes to the gel pen and notebook, the way it creates a metaphor of creation!
“A window which
has missed an appointment
or two with the rain.” This line is absolutely gorgeous! I’m so jealous!
“An entry could call it a defunct
landmark, only
that word is somehow
too hopeful.” Ha! yes, this is perfect! I can visualize this so well!
suffocated sunlight fantastic!
And yes to this park! This is really so so good!
I am absolutely in with the first stanza. How does one read that and not want to know what the town looks like and the event that took it there? “Nothing will will overwrite the freedom/of being a shrine that no one tends.” I’m still thinking about everything said and unsaid in these two lines. Wow!