Message To Pain: .
Dear Pain,
.
You have large
connotations
too many to list,
number, or define.
.
So unshakable
like an an unscratchable
itch, as if you were a talisman
that has lost your luck.
.
Sincerely Mine,
The Pained
.
Lady A
02-17-16
1057p
Nice Lines: "...counting reasons to go on/reasons I should quit"
.
Economy - emotion bared, universal for all whi have possessed and given up. Empathy melds into the confession - a rare style; clear, unrehearsed.
~A~.
Thank you. This far into my: Thank you. This far into my allotted life soan, those memories are no longer unpleasant, as I am remindered, with each remembrance, that I was led around, or over, or through the obstruction.
Very real emotions: ..easy to sympathize with, in their rawness and relatability. With love, it is hardest of all to know where the line in the sand is.
From purely a poetic perspective, it is interesting the way you used periods in unexpected places to alter the flow of the poem, as well as create empahsis and, of course, pauses.
On a personal level, I do hope you find the answer you need, very soon.
Please forgive me for a: Please forgive me for a second comment, but I wanted to make some remarks about the poem as a poem. It alludes, both in its title and in its text, to the pattern of a classic ghost story, the speaker haunted---but by the remnants of an emotion from personal history instead of a ghost in the traditional sense. And is the emotion that is doing the haunting a sum, a sum of several fragments (Eliot's statement, near the end of The Waste Land: "These fragments I have shored against my ruin.")? By making such an allusion, your poem---in my opinion---gives the grief and sorrow it expresses a universal resonance, a place in the canon. I am so very much impressed by this poem. I am sorry for my delay in commenting: I continue to be radically ill.
In an ideal world,: it is very much how you pen it here.
We each only grow by being able to expose all of our branches to the light, even those that may not yet be healthy.
And, from a literary: And, from a literary standpoint, you do not need to explain it otherwise---because I doubt (after reading in poetry for forty-nine years as of last month) that it could be stated more succinctly; and yet, in those four brief lines is an energy, just waiting to be released by expression, that turns the lines into four coiled springs. While brevity has never been one of my strengths, I recognize its presence in your work, and that you deploy it to the advantage of the poem. Which then becomes the advantage of the reader.
No one asked T. S. Eliot to explain the grief he expressed so forcefully in The Waste Land. No one, with any ability to appreciate classica music, wishes that any of Chopin's Nocturnes had been written differently. The enormous anguish described in Poet/Ambassador Paul Claudel's play, Parting At Noon, is---while almost unbearable to watch in a theatrical reenactment---not too short (as to be severely truncated, although some in the audience could wish it so), and not too long (as to be diffused among words and less effective).
Thank you so much, Stella. I: Thank you so much, Stella. I thought I had wrote you a response to your flattering thoughts a couple of weeks ago. It apparently did not post successfully. Sometimes, when I am writing, a line or phrase comes about that suddenly begins to connect everything, and the gaps in expression begin to fill. "Spilled sugar" was another case of this, and I appreciate the way you see the rest of the lines radiating from it, because that is how it unfolded for me, as I sat and wrote : )
The truth has always been the: The truth has always been the enemy of power. Power is rarely, if ever, honest. And, when so, probably only due to peverbial gun to it's head by a highly vigilant society. At least when we talk about power on a highly centralized scale. Smaller, less centralized societies, in some instances, seem/seemed to have more potential for facing and embracing honesty.
Of course, now, the hate for truth among the ruling class "elite" is empowered to a historic level by what was once merely a wet dream - technologically advanced chains.
I just had to visit this one: I just had to visit this one again, and I realize that, in my previous comment, I missed out on mentioning the fourth space of the poem . . . the presence of the Beloved. You describe this person very well.