5.16.2006

The Tain

a while ago I went to a poetry reading at a coffee shop in downtown Dekalb. it ended up being a good night (with David Amram making an appearance and performing), but didn't really start out that way and this poem was written during the segue between not-a-good-time and having-a-very-good-and-interesting-time. I had written a poem titled Smooch years ago, which was crap really, but it had one very good line. so, as a nod to an experience I had around the time I wrote Smooch, I decided to write an acrostic poem with said line.

one-liner
In an interesting coincidence,
my thoughts tend toward
good and evil when I feel the
onset of family politics.
In good time I will break away from the
naysayers and find myself one
giant leap away from the right and the left.
Taking what I can, at times
omnivorous of the influences
surrounding me, at times
murmuring on the floor, broken on an
insignia, indicating this Illinois
landmark that I can feel
even now, when I think of
afternoons, mornings, evenings,
not one distinct, not one
divulging any confessions that could
surprise me, at midnight or noon.
and I think back further, days of
yore when I was yea high,
for when I look at the world,
under this pretense that I
cannot change how I was born, I
know that I can, but I still do not.
You think I can navigate this back and forth,
omnipresent in both worlds? I am
undulating and never staying.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love, but LOVE, acrostics.

Unknown said...

This is the best thing I've read by you, maybe. It doesn't even need the "trick," but it's nice that it's there, yet not screaming at me. The enjambment works so well here.

ROCKtastic. :D

undulatingorb said...

Thanks Matt, and actually I wrote part of it while you were on stage that night.