I tried to write a poem
but found only you,
juxtaposed amongst the geraniums,
not quite ready to be a poem
a dead little life, sparked,
But not quite ready to be.
Your syntax is right, quite not,
perfect. Perfectly persuasive.
Just sitting amongst the geraniums.
The red and white geraniums
like washed out blood.
Similarly simile.
Sitting whilst you’re written.
You are a geranium. Are you?
Amongst a sea of geraniums.
A little clichéd geranium
within a hyperbolic sea.
So what do you see,
Figuratively speaking
among the smiling geraniums,
those personified smiling geraniums
and those buzzing little bees?
I tried to write a poem
And ended up with a Geranium,
a Red and White Geranium
That wasn't meant to be.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
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yum
this is delicious!! the rhythm, the playful rhymes that keep this quick and light and summery as geraniums surely are, are also the keys to themystery of language, and of growing plants, and of the not-there-ness which is in the process of writing, of growing, of being, and which we usually evade when Fixing Understanding into an art work, or a poem. A real pleasure to read, very well sculpted.language: 4, rhythm: 5, subject: 5, tone: 4, form: 4.
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A poem about a poem about geraniums within a poem about geraniums.
And a good, entertaining, smart read for me, SS. I like the almost too-repetitive "geranium" thoughout, but in reading it, I think you avoided disaster by doing just that: the redundancy is clearly appealing BECAUSE it's so repetitive - clever.
And the theme: trying to capture a shadow that's nestled within the obvious (reds and whites) is the headache of all poets; it sure is one of mine, and you imaged that pain nicely.
Cleverest and best line for me: "Similarly simile" - it brings out the poet's self-consciousness and awkwardness at being unable to nail down the meaning of that "Dead little life, sparked, / but not quite ready to be..." - and it has an undertone of something frustrating going on inside the poet's life, regardless of geraniums. Good writing.
I wonder if moving that question-mark from line 18 all the way down to the end of line 22 would help the poem flow a bit more smoothly? Up to you.
Good one for me to enjoy!
Lad -
Have you been smoking the geraniums again?
Whilst this one has moments of promise I felt it ultimatately caught itself out trying to be more clever than entertaining. The repitition of 'geranium' seemed too random to be intentional and the final line comes out of nowhere like a moment of drug induced 'eureka'. Hope I'm not being too hard on you - some of it was really good. Like 'a dead little life, sparked, But not quite ready to be. Your syntax is right, quite not, perfect. Perfectly persuasive.' the reversal of 'not' and 'quite' here was the highlight. It kind of lost its way a bit and wandered up its own sideback after that. But I did some potted plants in college myself and can probably see where you're coming from here! Not your poetic best as far as I'm concerned. Your Nemesis >W<
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