This is brand new. Just wrote it and thought I'd share it--still slimy with natal ooze. Gross, right? I guess that's the experiment here. Post first, edit later. Or not. I'm lazy. Unfortunately, my talent is sporadic. Comes, at best, in twos, like unclean beasts to Noah. Which brings up a question: why re-populate the earth with uncleanliness. By inverse adage, wouldn't that be ungodliness. My thoughts, I suppose, could not be farther from God's thoughts. Or should I say further? Ha! A grammarian's theology!
But I digress. Natal ooze. Here you go.
Coinage
A penny as old as I am:
As valuable as me.
We’re worth our weight
In free.
I plucked the penny from a crack
And chipped a fingernail.
Dead flesh and coin
For sale.
Copper and water—most of us,
Respectively. We flip
Senseless through air
And slip
Off the palms of distracted gods.
A penny from seventy-five:
As magical as me.
A melded two
Are we.
I pocketed the penny—quick,
My poverty a shame.
We’re dented just
The same.
Metal and pale skin—we are what
They say we are. We cling
To each other
And ding
In the jeans of impoverished gods.
!!!
ReplyDeletefirst: I love the implications of your intro. I must think longer on repopulation of the earth with uncleanliness. I mean, WORD.
Final stanza and line I hope remain unchanged in revision. The movement is so good throughout the entire poem...seriously carefree. "Plucked" is such an odd verb!--not in the poem, but intrinsically so as a word. Anglo-saxon as the day is long, those sounds.
HV, I agree with your assessment of the last several lines. They are likely to remain the same. The rest will be hard to revise because the temptation will be to make it look more like something I would typically write--not a good thing as this is clearly an intended aberration of my style. Carefree. Seriously so. Yes!
ReplyDeleteAs for the intro: I sometimes stream-of-consciousness my way from the patently goofy into something more worthy of further thought. the implications are indeed interesting.