Poem UP THE STUMBLING BLOCKS for Thursday August 8 2024

[jill stockinger]

This is one of my EXPERIMENTAL POETRY poems.

It was an exercise in AUTOMATIC WRITING.

The Symbolist and Surreal Poets did not WANT their poetry to have a CLEAR meaning--they usually  offered a collage of ideas, symbols, pictures--everything "hazy"--nothing that can be "pinned down" as far as SPECIFIC MEANING. They often give a jumble of thoughts, feelings, and things that DON'T seem to "go together"- to evoke different, changing feelings and thoughts in the reader. So that's what I tried to do with this "exercise." To just let the words flow, jumping here and there . . . Jill

Jill Stockinger

 

Up the Stumbling Blocks

 

Beyond the pass of Mallarmé

flowers suicide in the night like

balanced swords of passion

floating in the air above every head

Will you jump onto

or off the bridge

of my nose

How many nose hairs does an elephant have,

circus charmer?

Trapeze the artist and float upward

See? No hands

Paste stars onto the circus of day and befuddle the wine

into leaving dreams in my glass

of morning

I will drink so deeply

you will not be able to see me

I am not the sun

or the moon

I burn as brightly as the teeth of the lion devouring prey

Madness cycles through thirteen phases

I am the vampire of love,

sinking teeth into the body that yearns for wholeness

Shadows change their clothes

with no way in and no way out

but hearts spill out, splitting,

tumbling, falling up, holding no flags

Fall up! Up.