Poem in progress...

[readingredhead]

The assignment: write a two-part poem. Part one should detail a certain experience, and part two should present the same happenings from a different vantage point, outside of the immediate experience.

I also volunteered to go first for workshopping, so this may or may not also be the poem that is workshopped in detail by the class. Right now it is not what it should be, but closer to being right than it was before. Also, it does not have a title.

***

two

The moment that changes everything
isn't a kiss. You shared one of those years ago, but somehow
you ignored it. When they asked, you lied
and said he was just a friend.

But here in the silence, a simple gesture--the lean of two foreheads together--
means forever.
It's not flashy--forever appears to be a pretty low-budget affair--
but you don't care. From the way things just lit up, it's a good bet
you don't even notice.

one

I don't want to see the words that pass
between you, unspoken, no less potent for their silence. I don't belong
in this scene--this simple intimacy more private than sex,
more powerful. But I watch
before turning away, and I know
he's changed your world,
become it.

No one is my world. The warmth I feel against my back
is overflow from you--not my own, this leftover creeps
like the scent of cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning,
or the subtle heat of sunrise,
still a long way off.

***

I love the sparseness of two, and I want something like it in one, which is currently lacking. I feel there ought to be a different voice to one because the speaker will necessarily address the overseen figures differently than she addresses herself, but at the same time I think the divergence between the tones of the two parts is too wide at this moment. So that's one of the things I'm working on.

Comments

[transientrain.livejournal.com]

Try changing the point of view of one of them... or is that not allowed?

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

Definitely allowed. The problem is that I kind of like the idea that the women in one doesn't actually know these things about the couple she sees--that she's making it up about them, and the thing the envies about them aren't even things that she knows are true, which makes her situation even more pathetic (and she probably knows it).

Also...the problem is that I really love the "you" of two and don't want to change it a bit, but I can't think of any other counterpart to "you" that isn't "I." I'm mulling it over though, certainly...I understand what you're saying, just not how I'd go about it...

[transientrain.livejournal.com]

Tug at it! It's definitely worth the effort!

[http://Jordy/Chigaijin/ (from livejournal.com)]

Darn. I see what you mean, there's something in two that's real, and one doesn't quite have that the same way.

But I think that in two, the speaker isn't a character, while in one she's the center of attention. (In two the "you" is definitely the reader, while in one it doesn't seem to be.) And it's kinda pulling the poem down too in comparison to two.

Unfortunately I don't have a solution for you. Heh.

[pippins-smile.livejournal.com]

Iiiiiii like this! I love how the first one feels so perfectly, contentedly intimate, but the second one is like zooming out on the camera, to get the real, bigger, darker picture.