Saturday, March 17, 2012

The End Times for Whom for What?

The following poem is not the usual fare posted at The Urban Mother's Book of Prayers, however, it is related in an abstract way to the concerns of this blog. I posted more about where the poem is coming from at my other blog, WSATA, along with the poem's video if you're contemplating its possible meanings. So, there you'll find a little context to help you out if you're the kind who likes to read the background on a poem, and that post includes this thought:
It seems sometimes that some people think that the more you use language to obscure meaning, the better, which begs the question what is it we're trying to obscure?
Another bit of context is that this poem could have been entitled "High/Low Poesy Flow" or "Country Poem/Siddity Poem" or "How Come Ya Don't Tell It Like it Is?" or "Too Much Workshop While the House is Burning Down." :p

End Times
By Nordette N. Adams

This verse is overwritten,
that couplet overwrought.
At insucking intersections,
what should we write? Our world
bombs and our breath's bought
with another's blood.

That line's too sentimental,
that paragraph too fraught
with sloppy appeals
to subcutaneous feel
ings -- cheap pen-shots scribbling
after meanings we have sought
to make sense of the flood

that never recedes.
     It never recedes.

Those quatrains are too obvious,
these sextains too simplistic.
Work and rework words until every
syllable becomes a breadcrumb
for the mystic. Do not be a realisss
stic in the mud because
     we will see.

The good times' rolling's run.

© copyright 2012 Nordette N. Adams


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