Psalm of the Homeward Luddite, uncoiling creased daguerreotypes crisp from a cotton gin
These staved and staid, impervious sayings
long hung like a mop of penumbrous tresses
troubling sparse and sunken rafters
donned among yeomen, rigid sententiae,
lore, or the plumb-perfect proverbs picked
amid sap-stiffened locks, the emollient withe
and ebullient osier, tresses a skeletal elder’d combed
among tortuous staffs of his termagant’s tedious
worksongs searing and tearfully taut along
platted pates, among dimpling simpers
children sleave from the wizened brows
or crow’s feet cramped upon preening prows
or the ebonied lanterns mildly sage-eyed sisters
stoked with a storybook’s sallowing,
dog-eared dictums fed and enlivened
with luminous frenzy, nerve, and whimsy;
scourge among bottomless prophets pursed,
immuring in dry-rotted verses broken truths
contorted in tangling proofs, perfecting
the finicky flip of a pancake—
Muse how the proofs of umplumbably perfect
truths fan flush against logics’ lenses
stricken, snuffed, effaced, fordone,
now thrust or threshed against contradiction’s
sullenly smoldering sternum.
4 thoughts on "Psalm of the Homeward Luddite, uncoiling creased daguerreotypes crisp from a cotton gin"
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Parsing the language in your poems is a challenge, but I always like the ease and music with which you say it. This, “the finicky flip of a pancake— ” puts the poem right in front of us (after all that hair and sailing and memory). I don’t know…maybe the moral of the story is “once a romantic always a romantic.” Getting “Look Homeward, Angel” vibes in this one. Right in the old sternum.
Thank you! I feel like I have issues laying things out in the most digestible/legible manner, not that its layouts necessarily the fundamental issue. I like the idea that a line is a breath, an idea I think I read among Ginsberg’s musings, however, for whatever reason, I’ve never even attempted to experiment with that. Stubborness, maybe. I like uncommon words, probably too much, and will purposefully go out hunting for them. I guess using them is, in some way at least, is like sharing some strange-patterned pelts I gleaned from a far-off forest. It’s in part some small vanity, but genuinely, I really like sharing stranger words and even attempting to highlight some less common meanings of others. I’m in love with the English language. I’m happy to hear that the pancake line, in a sense, cinched it together. It was the last line I wrote. I’ve been tinkering with these very elaborate poems this past week; I wrote this one, or the bulk of it, watching my fiancee trim honeysuckle about ten days ago, sweating and being sucked to a pulp by mosquitoes, for some reason dandling a maxim I came upon years and years ago that still comes up quite often, that “Truth is only evidenced in contradictions.” The age of that idea, for me, dredged up all of these other images of farmers and yeomen picking through straggly locks of their elders and forebears. So, in an effort to pin up something here, I picked this one squashed and wet from the barrel, shook it out, swabbed its gills and scales, and added a jagged tooth or two. I like your assessment of a moral, and its one that feels right to me and rings rather true. I guess for me, initially, this one seemed like a silly conversational ode to stubborn and age-old wisdom clumsily flaunted in the face of more modern wisdom, i.e. logic, the sciences, (not to discredit it, but) this very arid appreciation of the truth; something a scruffy, scuffling kid might sing to squirrels and ferrets. I like the pancake line because it’s this rather concrete image of a homey, comforting, quotidian gesture that also represents a mathematical conundrum (“pancake stacking”), the moorings and applications of which completely escape me; as I’m, to a self-effacing degree, some functional ilk of Luddite (I’ve even, as of late, forgone a telephone, which becomes increasingly problematic). Thank you again! The fact that it’s being read, what’s more, appreciated in any respect, makes my day.
Thank you! I feel like I have issues laying things out in the most digestible/legible manner, not that its layouts necessarily the fundamental issue. I like the idea that a line is a breath, an idea I think I read among Ginsberg’s musings, however, for whatever reason, I’ve never even attempted to experiment with that. Stubborness, maybe. I like uncommon words, probably too much, and will purposefully go out hunting for them. I guess using them is, in some way at least, is like sharing some strange-patterned pelts I gleaned from a far-off forest. It’s in part some small vanity, but genuinely, I really like sharing stranger words and even attempting to highlight some less common meanings of others. I’m in love with the English language. I’m happy to hear that the pancake line, in a sense, cinched it together. It was the last line I wrote. I’ve been tinkering with these very elaborate poems this past week; I wrote this one, or the bulk of it, watching my fiancee trim honeysuckle about ten days ago, sweating and being sucked to a pulp by mosquitoes, for some reason dandling a maxim I came upon years and years ago that still comes up quite often, that “Truth is only evidenced in contradictions.” The age of that idea, for me, dredged up all of these other images of farmers and yeomen picking through straggly locks of their elders and forebears. So, in an effort to pin up something here, I picked this one squashed and wet from the barrel, shook it out, swabbed its gills and scales, and added a jagged tooth or two. I like your assessment of a moral, and its one that feels right to me and rings rather true. I guess for me, initially, this one seemed like a silly conversational ode to stubborn and age-old wisdom clumsily flaunted in the face of more modern wisdom, i.e. logic, the sciences, (not to discredit it, but) this very arid appreciation of the truth; something a scruffy, scuffling kid might sing to squirrels and ferrets. I like the pancake line because it’s this rather concrete image of a homey, comforting, quotidian gesture that also represents a mathematical conundrum (“pancake stacking”), the moorings and applications of which completely escape me; as I’m, to a self-effacing degree, some functional ilk of Luddite (I’ve even, as of late, forgone a telephone, which becomes increasingly problematic). Thank you again! The fact that it’s being read, what’s more, appreciated in any respect, makes my day.
Puzzled once more but intrigued nonetheless. The follow up easier digestible and interesting commentary from the inside.