deepundergroundpoetry.com
no one told me the clock stopped, but time keeps moving anyway
I was up before the sky awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn
it took me two hours to peel myself
from the bed sheets
and into the air
30 minutes to compose
all the contents of my coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
I cried cold tears on the lenses
of my sunglasses
feeling like they should have crystallised
into something more tangible
than wet
The bus ride to work an eternity
that didn’t last long enough
my stop a destination of pavement
I would have gladly avoided
wishing I could take this road
to the end of the world
where consciousness ends
Because I can’t explain
the hole in my chest
or the way you look at me
without seeing through to the cogs
and gears that want to steer this ship
into the path of oncoming rocks
I was up before the sky awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn
it took me two hours to peel myself
from the bed sheets
and into the air
30 minutes to compose
all the contents of my coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
unsure if I’d have the strength
to do it all again
tomorrow
© Indie Adams 2015
to the sun-tinged dawn
it took me two hours to peel myself
from the bed sheets
and into the air
30 minutes to compose
all the contents of my coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
I cried cold tears on the lenses
of my sunglasses
feeling like they should have crystallised
into something more tangible
than wet
The bus ride to work an eternity
that didn’t last long enough
my stop a destination of pavement
I would have gladly avoided
wishing I could take this road
to the end of the world
where consciousness ends
Because I can’t explain
the hole in my chest
or the way you look at me
without seeing through to the cogs
and gears that want to steer this ship
into the path of oncoming rocks
I was up before the sky awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn
it took me two hours to peel myself
from the bed sheets
and into the air
30 minutes to compose
all the contents of my coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
unsure if I’d have the strength
to do it all again
tomorrow
© Indie Adams 2015
Published 8th Apr 2015
| Edited 9th Apr 2015
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
likes 6
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comments 13
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The author encourages honest critique.
8th Apr 2015 10:14am
What an interesting way to convey loss. I love how you used every day activities to explain that feeling of nothingness that comes when everything ends but life goes on. Well done!
8th Apr 2015 11:41pm
8th Apr 2015 4:01pm
stop a clock.
..time just wanders of it's own inscrutable, mysterioso accord, becoming none-of-my-business
(as if 'time' had anything 'real' to do with our contrived, asinine business in the first place)
suffice to say...time an't no clock, & clock ain't no time....except for our deluded beliefs of it all.........
aren't ye glad ye didn't ask? Peace up, dear.
8th Apr 2015 11:43pm
lol, Dan... the title is more of a metaphor, less about actual time than the feeling of time, and how there are moments in life where we feel like time should stop for us, but keeps moving anyway. Thanks for stopping my and leaving you thoughts anyhow. Made me smile :)
11th Apr 2015 1:09pm
oh, I know bout that & 'them metaphors'.....
I just like to 'foment unrest' where metaphor (AND similes) be thrown about. We take 'em so seriously, and, of course, 'believe' them, which does little or nothing to help the Sense-of-Self, which needs constant monitoring in order to even partially keep from turning into human'moron mess.......blah,blah.
I go'way now.
8th Apr 2015 11:07pm
I guess most of us have been there -
the early mourning routine...
but seriously, an
affecting piece of
writing...
the early mourning routine...
but seriously, an
affecting piece of
writing...
8th Apr 2015 11:44pm
Thank you very much Paul, for your thoughtful comment. I'm glad this piece was affecting.
Indie, I was totally feeling your words in this piece. It's funny, just this morning when I got out of my car to go to work, I muttered something under my breath about being a cog.
The guts of the poem and the way you structured the story, I thought was strong, especially the repetition of the opening and closing stanza. I hope you don't mind, but I thought the poem needed a bit of a tweak, so I've had a shot at editing, just something for you to consider.
I thought the first and last stanza needed to be a bit tighter, to give that feel of the mental checklist routine of the morning and that acceleration of time experienced before the morning grind.
You'll see I added the "one second to think" line after the smoke, which I think adds to the tension and helps with the transition into the following stanzas, especially into your final words, "I don't have the strength..." This will draw more focus on these stanzas as they are the key to what your expressing.
I also tweaked some of the wording around the imagery with the sunrise, tears and shipwreck.
I was already lying there awake
before the dawn tinged the sky
it took two hours to peel myself
from the sheets
to find my legs
30 minutes to compose
pour coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
and one second to think
tears on the lenses
of my sunglasses
should have crystallised
into something more tangible
than cold and wet
the bus ride to work an eternity
that didn’t last long enough
my stop a destination of pavement
I would have gladly avoided
wishing I could take this road
to the end of the world
where consciousness ends
because I can’t explain
the hole in my chest
or the way you look at me
without seeing the cogs
and gears driving me to wreck this ship
on the rocky shore
I was already lying there awake
before the dawn tinged the sky
it took two hours to peel myself
from the sheets
to find my legs
30 minutes to compose
pour coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
and one second to think
not sure if I have the strength
to do it all again
tomorrow
The guts of the poem and the way you structured the story, I thought was strong, especially the repetition of the opening and closing stanza. I hope you don't mind, but I thought the poem needed a bit of a tweak, so I've had a shot at editing, just something for you to consider.
I thought the first and last stanza needed to be a bit tighter, to give that feel of the mental checklist routine of the morning and that acceleration of time experienced before the morning grind.
You'll see I added the "one second to think" line after the smoke, which I think adds to the tension and helps with the transition into the following stanzas, especially into your final words, "I don't have the strength..." This will draw more focus on these stanzas as they are the key to what your expressing.
I also tweaked some of the wording around the imagery with the sunrise, tears and shipwreck.
I was already lying there awake
before the dawn tinged the sky
it took two hours to peel myself
from the sheets
to find my legs
30 minutes to compose
pour coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
and one second to think
tears on the lenses
of my sunglasses
should have crystallised
into something more tangible
than cold and wet
the bus ride to work an eternity
that didn’t last long enough
my stop a destination of pavement
I would have gladly avoided
wishing I could take this road
to the end of the world
where consciousness ends
because I can’t explain
the hole in my chest
or the way you look at me
without seeing the cogs
and gears driving me to wreck this ship
on the rocky shore
I was already lying there awake
before the dawn tinged the sky
it took two hours to peel myself
from the sheets
to find my legs
30 minutes to compose
pour coffee
into a cup
20 minutes to smoke
one cigarette
on the porch
and one second to think
not sure if I have the strength
to do it all again
tomorrow
Thank you Case for your feedback and taking the time to have have a crack at editing this piece. :) I do however feel that some of your new words add a harshness that I wasn't intending, as well as simplifying some of my creative sensibilities.
In the first and last stanza's I was going with how slow everything seemed to take under the weight of feeling (or rather lack of feeling). In the expression of this piece, I wasn't trying to find my legs, I was trying to become one with the air, finding the strength to get up at all. For the last line you've added, re: thinking, I feel it doesn't fit with the tone I was aiming for, as thinking is almost in contradiction with the mindless routine of going through the motions to get where I needed to be.
When I wrote the ship heading towards rocks, I imagined it was away from shore (idk, maybe that wasn't unspokenly conveyed) as the shore is safety and home, and the desire to head my ship out to sea and the rocks is the opposite, again in a kind of mindless self-destruction, to escape the present feeling.
When writing this I had in mind a gentle numbness, and I think I hit that (or I hope I did), but I do appreciate the time you took to delve into this piece and add some of your flavour.
(While I might not have utilised any of your critique, I did change -
"I was up before the sun awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn"
- to
"I was up before the sky awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn"
Which I hope conveys the imagery a little better.
In the first and last stanza's I was going with how slow everything seemed to take under the weight of feeling (or rather lack of feeling). In the expression of this piece, I wasn't trying to find my legs, I was trying to become one with the air, finding the strength to get up at all. For the last line you've added, re: thinking, I feel it doesn't fit with the tone I was aiming for, as thinking is almost in contradiction with the mindless routine of going through the motions to get where I needed to be.
When I wrote the ship heading towards rocks, I imagined it was away from shore (idk, maybe that wasn't unspokenly conveyed) as the shore is safety and home, and the desire to head my ship out to sea and the rocks is the opposite, again in a kind of mindless self-destruction, to escape the present feeling.
When writing this I had in mind a gentle numbness, and I think I hit that (or I hope I did), but I do appreciate the time you took to delve into this piece and add some of your flavour.
(While I might not have utilised any of your critique, I did change -
"I was up before the sun awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn"
- to
"I was up before the sky awoke
to the sun-tinged dawn"
Which I hope conveys the imagery a little better.
Indie, are you suggesting I'm harsh and insensitive to creative sensibilities? 😝
I'll be the first to admit, I'm not the best at interpreting poems and sometimes I'm incoherent with my feedback. This is mainly due to me reading poetry at some ridiculous hour. So, in an attempt to be more efficient, I occasionally have a crack at writing an edited version of a poem to highlight areas where I think can be expressed differently or written clearer. It's not about me trying to impose a particular (harsh minimalist) style, it's more about giving the poet something to think about from another poets perspective.
I've reread your poem and thought I'd explain why I made some of the edits. The changes you made to the opening lines works better. The way it was originally written suggested that the sun woke up to it's own sunlight, but maybe I'm looking at it too literally. In my edit I was trying to differentiate the sky from the light source, which is what you've done in your edit.
I know you intended to express "becoming one with the air", I still think the line, "and into the air", isn't clear to the reader (me). I think you could lose the "and" at the start of the line, because for me this is what's linking "air" to the imagery of peeling of sheets. I think if you threw in a verb or an adjective, e.g. vaporising, becoming, fading, your intentions would be clearer. Or why not even just write, "becoming one with the air"? Those words sound cool to me.
In regards to the "ship heading towards the rocks", the reason I reworded this is mainly because the line suggested the rocks were "oncoming", as in "oncoming traffic", which is suggesting that an object is physically moving towards another moving object. So I removed the word oncoming, because the rocks are stationary. Also, you're suggesting you want to run the ship into rocks, which is the definition of the word wreck (verb).
Anyway, hopefully that explains where I was coming from, just wanted to highlight the areas that I thought you could give a tweak. It's always up to the poet how the feedback is taken and processed, even if it just provokes thought, I think it's all valuable stuff.
Shine on Miss Indie.
I'll be the first to admit, I'm not the best at interpreting poems and sometimes I'm incoherent with my feedback. This is mainly due to me reading poetry at some ridiculous hour. So, in an attempt to be more efficient, I occasionally have a crack at writing an edited version of a poem to highlight areas where I think can be expressed differently or written clearer. It's not about me trying to impose a particular (harsh minimalist) style, it's more about giving the poet something to think about from another poets perspective.
I've reread your poem and thought I'd explain why I made some of the edits. The changes you made to the opening lines works better. The way it was originally written suggested that the sun woke up to it's own sunlight, but maybe I'm looking at it too literally. In my edit I was trying to differentiate the sky from the light source, which is what you've done in your edit.
I know you intended to express "becoming one with the air", I still think the line, "and into the air", isn't clear to the reader (me). I think you could lose the "and" at the start of the line, because for me this is what's linking "air" to the imagery of peeling of sheets. I think if you threw in a verb or an adjective, e.g. vaporising, becoming, fading, your intentions would be clearer. Or why not even just write, "becoming one with the air"? Those words sound cool to me.
In regards to the "ship heading towards the rocks", the reason I reworded this is mainly because the line suggested the rocks were "oncoming", as in "oncoming traffic", which is suggesting that an object is physically moving towards another moving object. So I removed the word oncoming, because the rocks are stationary. Also, you're suggesting you want to run the ship into rocks, which is the definition of the word wreck (verb).
Anyway, hopefully that explains where I was coming from, just wanted to highlight the areas that I thought you could give a tweak. It's always up to the poet how the feedback is taken and processed, even if it just provokes thought, I think it's all valuable stuff.
Shine on Miss Indie.
10th Apr 2015 8:19am
I really am glad you too the time to give me so much feedback :) it helps me see my work in a different light. I don't think you're harsh or insensitive to my creative sensibilities, I just prefered my flowery way of fluffing about. I like to be challenged even if I don't always end up changing my mind and the fact that you gave me such an honest crit (which I welcome) is awesome as I receive so few of them. And I know how much time and energy it takes to really delve into someone's work like that. Much appreciated. :)
10th Apr 2015 3:23am
This feels like a deeper exploration of the second stanza.
I've known that feeling too many times. The repetition works in this, and I know how hard it can be to get it right but I feel it'd tie up the poem a lot better if you changed the last stanza to preparing to sleep instead of just repeating word for word the first stanza again.
20 mins for one last cig on the porch
30 mins for my legs
to find the set that that lets me start to think of sleeping
unsure if tomorrow
You get the picture
jmho, I like it just the way it is, too.
I've known that feeling too many times. The repetition works in this, and I know how hard it can be to get it right but I feel it'd tie up the poem a lot better if you changed the last stanza to preparing to sleep instead of just repeating word for word the first stanza again.
20 mins for one last cig on the porch
30 mins for my legs
to find the set that that lets me start to think of sleeping
unsure if tomorrow
You get the picture
jmho, I like it just the way it is, too.
11th Apr 2015 1:17am
Thanks for your feedback DM, I wanted to reiterate the feelings in the first stanza. The end of the day is less of a mission than the beginning, and the thought of going through the routine tomorrow (in the same vein as today) seemed more potent than wrapping the day up in the bed time routine, which pretty much just involves crashing.
