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It Comes: A first draft.

A pressing heavy thud does come.
An, at first, cacophonous
Flocking together of cells
Turns inward and muffles
Against its own uranium-colored core,
Enormous in its simple violence,
A Kaiju darkness, now a flickering celluloid sound.

"Sound a warning! Thrum the guttural!"
It comes. Electric breath, reticulate death
Pads the asphalt between the black glass
Of office buildings with single fortieth story lights -
One solitary pixel of diligence in the night.

Silent roars the night, but for the electric buzz
Of yellow-tinted, street-level lights and -

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale -

And a siren song sounds
Blocks away, none concerned,
None lift their heads from lover's chests.

Jungle springs up from the manholes in Its wake.
Efrits of steam emerge, roost
Fatuous on the power poles as It engulfs.
Civilization falls to The Giant of Surprising Stealth,
To the wee-houred, walking Bipedal Dream.

A glimmering tooth is moist
And curving back into the deepness of the mouth.

Our own predation turns.

Another Armageddon,
Another Ragnarok stares into your window,
Sees your bare shoulder in the moonlight
With an eye the size of a king-sized bed,
A mushroom-clouded ugly head.

Sept. 12, 2009

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ian Mason on September 29, 2009 at 8:55am

I like this. Good ideas and images, although I don't understand the relevance of all of them: "flickering celluloid sound" for eksample.
Dallas is good at the fine-tuning stuff and may have some good suggestions.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on September 30, 2009 at 1:42pm

Well, can I be honest? I’m having difficulty with this poem. One, I think it lacks focus, and two, you use a lot of words that don’t seem fitting, or I don’t understand.

I don’t know what Uranium-colored is. No idea. Why not just say it, whatever it is? And why use uranium unless it is relevant to the poem? But if you want to use it, then let’s say that uranium is silver – then why not use something like:

Silver as uranium

A silver hue, almost like uranium

Like uranium, a soft, silver hue.

Take for example this passage from Macbeth:

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood from my hand?
No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnidine
making the green one red.

Shakespeare uses a great word here: incarnadine. But he knows full well that not everyone in his audience will understand that word. So he defines it for them by following it with “making the green one red.” What does incarnadine mean? It means to turn red. He just told us.

Other words I don’t get: Kaiju, Thrum, Efrits.

I would also avoid big, polysllabic, unfamiliar, or pedantic words, like fatuous. Be direct with us. Tell us what it is, don’t try to impress the reader with a big vocabulary. If fatuous means unreal, illusory, or foolish, then why not say it? I’m not suggesting a good vocabulary is a bad thing, not at all. But great poetry is great because it transmits feelings and ideas in short, direct, beautiful, and meaningful ways – in a style that is very different from prose. Use fatuous in an essay, but not in a poem.

You clearly have something to say here – something you want to share with the reader. Be clear, be honest, and be direct. Don’t try to impress with big words. Tell us what you think or what your impressions are. Words belong to everyone, but your impressions and views belong only to you.

Does that make sense?

Permalink Reply by Eric Wetzell on October 4, 2009 at 7:03pm

Thank you both for your suggestions. I realize it needs a bit of fine tuning.

I think I'll tell you my inspiration for the poem first.

First, my eleven year old son LOVES Godzilla films and has renewed my interest in Kaiju film.

My second inspiration for the poem was this short film:

http://www.babelgum.com/browser.php#play/SEARCH,queryString:tyger,o...

Perhaps that will clear up a thing or two.

I'll take the time to think about your comments before responding to them more fully.

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