A dangling conversation April 24, 2013
Glancing back at the poems I posted and she posted over the
last month or so, I find almost no connection – with one exception, which I go
into here shortly.
This is probably because of my cyber nanny and my need not
to post things that my cyber nanny thinks will get me in trouble – or worse,
inspire a real conversation.
My nanny refuses to believe me that there is not a snow ball’s
chance in hell that she will ever talk to me again. I have kept my theory about
possible poetry communication away from Cyber Nanny, who would make me stop
posting entirely.
While I have snuck through a few poems under my nanny’s nose
or written romantic poems that seem innocuous, but had a subtle message of
their own, most of these would not have qualified as “a conversation starter)
though my poetry notebooks are clearly responsive to her works, which is why they
are unlikely to ever see the light of day (much as this journal won’t.)
Gauging from what I found in my limited research, my nanny
need not worry about my poetry influencing here – at least, not in the collection
I looked at, and if my nanny continues to censor me the way she has been, I do
not expect any such exchange in the future – except by pure coincidence or some
act of god through my unconscious, a perilous enterprise all of its own.
I can’t find over the last two months any example of call
and response between me and her, and for the most part, I have been posting –
to quote Paul McCartney – silly love poem, designed to keep my west coast nanny
from scolding me.
Nothing I have posted under that scrunty rises any where
near to the quality and complexity of her poems, deep meaning of poems she
posts as she struggles in the midst of a serious romantic crisis (f my conclusions
about her poems over the last month or so are correct, all of which likely
talking to and about the same man.)
My poems are superficial at best (in other words, safe to post);
hers are full of intense passion, desperation and painful truths.
If she is communicating, it is not part of any conversation
with me (to think otherwise would be folly) and for the most part, her poem seems
to be pleas to a man who owns her heart.
How she comes out in the end of all this, who can say?
The feeling she conveys is of growing distance between
herself and the man she loves. He seems ready to move on without her, and each
of her more recent poems seems to be an attempt to bring him back. There is a bit of a roller coaster effect in
this as she tries this ploy or that to influence him, trying some new plot after
the previous plot failed.
I will likely keep posting silly love poems, partly to satisfy
my nanny, but also not to send any mixed signals which she might mistake as a
comment aimed at her to which she might actually react – or which she might
actually use against me when her pain turns to rage and she seeks out someone
else to take it all out on.
I am extremely grateful for the distance we have put between
us (as opposed to the stupidity I engaged in last summer), although I feel
intense sympathy for her and her current predicament.
But like the vampire-like voyeur I have become, I cannot
look away or stop following her life story through her postings.
I mentioned earlier in his journal entry that there might be
one exception in which something I wrote may have inspired something she
posted,
This involved the poems I wrote in reaction to her Blake poem,
a kind of juvenile showing off I couldn’t resist. Looking back, I wonder if the
poem she posted after mine was in fact a response
Most likely not. But there are some similarities.
I still believe my initial analysis I wrote a month ago is accurate --she writing the poem to her lover who is
lying beside her in bed with the sunlight through the window onto their intermingled
bodies.
My poem was written in ten verses to match Blakes series of
poems. Her poem was largely one long single verse.
Her poem and mine both open with a similar phrase.
“The songs we hear inside our heads are not the ones we take
to bed,” my poem says.
“Living inside my head to survive the outside of it has
become so much apart of me until you sat in the bed beside me,” she wrote in
hers.
My poem compares night to death and the dread of waking in
the morning, and the desperate need for hope.
In her poem, she basks in the sunlight through the window
with his body against her. She can feel his breathing.
My poem says: “the sun bakes through the sky, I think of all
that’s in your eyes… and breathes out more than a sigh.”
She gets advice to stop filling the outside spaces with
words because it makes her miss the moment of calm and quiet. The gift of two
people in a room in the sun.”
In my poem, the wind howls outside the window, fading images
of something still lingering a touch of tenderness, all pleasure out of my consciousness.”
None of this prove anything, of course, more than a
coincidental similarity in language use.
It could be seen as a bit of one-man-upmanship as she
reshapes language that I use (although her poems come off as far superior to
mind and may be showing me just how much better her understanding of Blake is
than mine) or perhaps (and this would be a big stretch of the imagination) she
really is sending a message, a status report of how she is doing and how very
happy she is with her new man.
Of course, my fantasy plays havoc with my common sense,
making me wish for a connection I know is not there.
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