Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.
Oct 08, 2017
⭐ View statistics (Premium feature)
The Chinese Dragon's Period
Electrical tape drools on the camera,
and only through a music box
are you half the blue noir
phantom baby—the Mattoid, Mutant in
the Lava Lamp and Madame Choule
are going at it. Slurping, the donkey
crank, a C-Note, Mattoid’s dirty fingernails
on the phonograph; a baby coffin
with a bone picked. The sampler bottle
shattered in Oriental origami, noiseless
as a blue impatient spider on the cusp of….
The green slimed woman asked me to leave.
A fanged Buddha with eyes smoking white
jade eyes stared.
The sampler bottle shattered
in Oriental backgammon;
a Chen slow blinding.
The green slimed woman
asked me to leave
Balinese porn in ruined
gold calligraphy
Flypaper Shu Fan
Rolodoxes of Ten O Clock numbers
fro Chinese Magic Mirrors
“I have a gooey geisha series,
I have skinny jewels from the buses,
I have our voodoo hearts to knit
in the clear light of day.”
I pocketed two chen bingo coins
spinning silk bunches
in the bathhouses,
above the city’s sedate islands.
About This Poem
Style/Type: Structured: Western
Review Request Direction:
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
[This option has been removed]
Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing Stage: Editing - polished draft
Comments
swamp-witch
7 years 7 months ago
Catching up on your work
School has overwhelmed me this semester, so I'm behind!
You marked this poem as a western form. Could you tell me what it is?
The imagery of photography, the mutation, death, and the Orient all remind me of the Victorian era, and its darker moments, so I really enjoyed the content of the poem. I also love poetry with contrasting or conflicting juxtapositions of the words and phrases. I try to incorporate that into my poetry often and I see it here in "Balinese porn in ruined/ gold calligraphy"
Just wish I could fathom what it means (what it means to me or to you or whomever) after two readings!
Kelsey
swamp-witch
7 years 7 months ago
PS:
The imagery of your work, as surreal as it usually is, is always so vivid and tangible for me. I always seem to think of a film, TV show, or video game that I am reminded of (I am just an absolute video game/movie/TV nerd and others will learn to accept it). This one reminds me of a film called "The Lion Woman" or "Løvekvinnen". It's available subtitled on Netflix if you have it. I highly recommend it.
Kels
fink555
7 years 7 months ago
Thank you.
The answer to your question about meaning is that I am not always sure what the poem really means either; if I did know what it meant, I wouldn't write it. There's all this excess discharge in our psyche through dreams, our weird heritage of occult beliefs and myths, and I personally believe that in the continuation of perception--which can get very hard for an artist to stay on
because it stretches infinitely--we find the key to life. If a poet is like Philip Larkin I get bored, and he was a fine poet. Other times I know exactly what I'm saying and frame it as if I don't. For some reason I catch the Oriental vibe very well, and I think I got a curse in a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant and I was blending the book "The Blind Owl" and this very keen perception of the Chinese, chinese atmospheres.
I think someone else said that real poetry doesn't say anything, it just tips you off in a certain direction. If you're fearful, it is my opinion you won't do anything all that special in poetry.
As for the meaning of the poem it is a bit sad, as it tells the tale of an absence. You notice "Madame Choule"--that is the name of a character in Rolond Topor's "The Tenant", and Polanski's film adaptation of it. I would recommend both for your reading, because both are just really masterful pieces of art.
Thank you for your perceptiveness.
swamp-witch
7 years 7 months ago
An inspiring explanation,
Thank you.
I will read again soon and ponder on what it means to me.
Kelsey