Wednesday, November 17, 2010

In need of a title.

All right everyone, I know I've had a bit of a hiatus, spent the last week enjoying life, rather than writing about it, but two days ago this came to me, and it might be the best damn thing I've ever written. Tell me what you think and give me a title idea if you can. I'm at a loss.

Background: This is in response to a prompt for a sestina in my poetry class. A sestina is one of the hardest poems to write because the rhyme scheme is very specific. Each line must end with a series of the same six words and the scheme goes like this:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE


Enjoy and let me know what you think. I'm really proud of this one. 

Unforgiving Dream (temporary)

I remember the first day I saw the knife
Small little thing, tucked away, hiding the sharpness…
Its glisten drew my eyes, like in some “Sweeny” dream
And beckoned me to take it in my own idle hand.
The handle felt warm, fleshy, as though some  body
Had already held it pressed against their skin.

I smiled, coyly, and touched it to my own skin,
The blade’s cold, quiet danger, made the knife
Feel to me like your caress. My body
Became listless, my senses lost their sharp
Bite, and when you touched my hand
You, me, the knife, all three fell into dreaming.

And as we slept, we all three dreamed:
I of your sinew, muscle, flesh and skin,
You dreamed of holding someone else’s hand,
Between us, with hollow dreams, slept silently: the Knife.
Should it have tossed in its sleep, its sharpness
Would have cut us both in our slumber. Three bodies

Intertwined, each one a slave to our own body’s
Needs. Yet truth does not come from dreams
And we must both awaken, with a sharp
Snap of the head and a flush of the skin,
Back to reality where between us is only a knife,
And two severed hearts, unable to handle

Even the slightest touch of a human hand.
Both trapped inside our own body
Of lies, and the only solution… the knife.
I believed, for a moment, the dream
That I was worthy to crawl inside your skin
But you are well protected, your edges sharp,

Unforgiving. Yet I tried to file down the sharp-
Rough parts of you, and somehow hold your hand.
I let you take me, and felt you inside my skin.
No longer a foreign prisoner of my own body,
I’ll weave real from the fabric of the dream
With sheer will power and if needs be, the knife.

Within my lonely life just for a moment, somebody
Took my hand and pulled me into a dream.
It all started and ended with a knife. 

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