[Yves S L]

Version 1.30 (further exentsion)

Temptation

Is it so wrong to want to make such sweet
And careful love to ghosts that flock my room
Like spectral pigeons seeking carnal crumbs
Around an eerily deserted pond?
I'm asking for a friend who is much burdened
With uncontrolled insouciance, and some
Strange curse he got by cutting off a witch
When late for work on Monday morning. Ah,
What is a soul worth anyway these days,
Especially with spiritual inflation?
Unstable witches and portentous warnings
Have all the subtlety of glory holes;
I would ignore both, all the same, but still
The internet ignores my ghoulish fetish
And leaves me wanting when I want the most.
I tracked the witch down and apologised.
Her cackling laugh was so insistent that
I tuned it out like traffic near my house.
When laughter died, she started on the topic
Of virgin sacrifices by the dozen,
And there was nothing left to do but leave.
I have to speak aloud about the nights
When writhing, agitating ghosts would reach
A pitch of pleasure unimaginable,
And one of them would pause their fun at times
And look me sharply in the eye as if
A thoroughbred atop his mare would pause
To look across a fence straight in the eye
Of some poor runt without a mate who must
Avert his sight from the castrating gaze
But cannot stop his eyes returning to
The thoroughbred exaggerating while
The mare is louder to accent the point—
Such is my life, such is my night and day.
Yearning Dante would be sympathetic,
And write my suffering in the Inferno,
And mark forever its significance,
And place his laurel wreath around my head
To make me happier than I have been,
All full of lust and edging on damnation.
I want to grab a shifting ghost and wreck it.
(I lied about the need for gentleness.)
I hear their passions on the window pane;
It sounds like raining, but there is no rain.

Version 1.20 (Beginning to extend the poem)

Is it so wrong to want to make such sweet
And careful love to ghosts that flock my room
Like spectral pigeons seeking carnal crumbs
Around an eerily deserted pond?
I'm asking for a friend who is much burdened
With uncontrolled insouciance, and some
Strange curse he got by cutting off a witch
When late for work on Monday morning. Ah,
What is a soul worth anyway these days,
Especially with spiritual inflation?
Unstable witches and portentous warnings
Have all the subtlety of glory holes;
I would ignore both, all the same, but still
The internet ignores my ghoulish fetish
And leaves me wanting when I want the most.
I tracked the witch down and apologised.
Her cackling laugh was so insistent that
I tuned it out like traffic near my house.
When laughter died, she started on the topic
Of virgin sacrifices by the dozen,
And there was nothing left to do but leave.
Yearning Dante would be sympathetic,
And write my suffering in the Inferno,
And mark forever its significance,
And place his laurel wreath around my head
To make me happier than I have been,
All full of lust and edging on damnation.
I want to grab a shifting ghost and wreck it.
(I lied about the need for gentleness.)
I hear their passions on the window pane;
It sounds like raining, but there is no rain.



Version 1.10

Temptation

Is it so wrong to want to make such sweet
And careful love to ghosts that flock my room
Like spectral pigeons seeking carnal crumbs
Around an eerily deserted pond?
I'm asking for a friend who is much burdened
With uncontrolled insouciance, and some
Strange curse he got by cutting off a witch
When late for work on Monday morning. Ah,
What is a soul worth anyway these days,
Especially with spiritual inflation?
Yearning Dante would be sympathetic;
I want to grab a shifting ghost and wreck it.
I hear their passions on the window pane;
It sounds like raining, but there is no rain.

Version 1.00

Is it so wrong to want to make such sweet
And careful love to ghosts that flock my room
Like spectral pigeons seeking carnal crumbs
Around an eeringly deserted pond?
I'm asking for a friend who is much burdened
With uncontrolled insouciance, and some
Strange curse he got by cutting off a witch
When late for work on Monday morning. Ah,
What is a soul worth anyway these days,
Especially with spiritual inflation?
Yearning Dante would be sympathetic;
I want to grab a shifting ghost and wreck it.
I hear them making love on window pane;
It sounds like raining but there is no rain.

[Carl Copeland]

Lots of interesting pieces here, Yves, but I’m still trying to fit them together. Meanwhile, please tell me that “eeringly” is a typo and not something playfully experimental. Dropping articles is a trick I’ve seen in poetry, but “on window pane” just sounds stilted to me. I love the last line, though I’d add a comma after “raining.”

[David Elliot Eisenstat]

Like Carl, I'm trying to fit the pieces together. The proposal is delightfully off-the-wall, but then polysyllabic words come out, and while I grasp that the speaker pissed off a witch, who cursed him with ghosts as payback, I find the rhetorical question a non sequitur. I'm amused by the misdirect of "asking for a friend", but I'm not sure how we got from the speaker wanting to "make such sweet / And careful love" to the speaker who wants to "wreck" a ghost. I agree with Carl that the last line is great.

For the penultimate line, I dislike the omitted article and the repetition of "making love". Maybe "I hear them coupling on the window pane"? Shagging? Probably several other possible verbs.

[N. Matheson]

Maybe, "I hear them intimate" or something like "I hear their passions"? It needn't be literal, just implying sex with a subtle innuendo and anyone paying attention will get it.

[Yves S L]

Hello Carl, David, and N. Matheson,

I hope you don't mind if I collect your comments together and respond them. Yeah, the penultimate line was originally "I hear them rutting on the window pane." but [1] I wanted to see if the omitted article would fly, and [2] wanted to take a step back from literality. I am willing to accept it does not work.

Sure, I will re punctuate the final line.

I hoped with the "asking for a friend" I established an unreliable or not totally forthcoming narrator which would justify the transition from "make such sweet/ And careful love" to "I want ... to wreck it". Also the speed of transition was supposed to be mimetic to the state of mind.

Sure, "eeringly" is not a hill that I am willing to die on, since it is such a minor special FX (after Sarah).

I am going to post a revision responding to the remarks immediately.

Yeah, interesting pieces/fragments is one way to think about the poem.

Oh, the second question is meant to efficiently heighten the stakes of the curse, and is supposed to link up and further progress the first question.

I will immediately post a revision responding to the comments.

I also added a title. I am open for suggestions.

[Carl Copeland]

I said I loved the last line, but with N.’s suggested change, I can now say I love the last two lines (and not only).

My talent for always getting the wrong reading in ambiguous cases never fails. I’ve only just realized that the N is asking on behalf of a friend and not looking for a friend. Maybe the pieces will fit together more easily now.

[Yves S L]

Carl, I am happy the adjustments have improved the poem for you. I did actually conceive the poem as a sequence of set-pieces so even if the poem does not cohere for someone, I am hoping they would still find it a an entertaining experience at the level of language.

[W T Clark]

This is funny! The latest version has the most intact swing between riffs, although I wonder how the Dante scene is precedented by the previous witch-conversation (— a great blast: that "virgin sacrifice by the dozen"!) I see how it is precedented by the later fucking-riff, but not by the previous ones. Although I now wonder at the poor wretch's desire to fuck the ghost in juxtaposition with his squeamishness over the v. sacrifices. Is the incline into explicit sexual desire too great and sudden? It is nice practice. I remember your Elvis sonnet with admiration and nostalgia ...

Hope this helps.

[Yves S L]

Cameron,

Dollars to donuts, you of all people would see the play. I miss the Elvis sonnet sincerly. Your questions about the swing between the riffs is interesting. I will have to think about that and get back to you while I contemplate the balance.

I like your ghazal. I will try to find something to say.

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Yves.

I'm not wistful for more obviously autobiographical content, but for a more obvious sense in your thread responses that you take your own poems seriously. If you don't, why should anyone else?

It's none of my business whether any poem is informed by the poet's firsthand, lived experience. (I once told a poet that I liked her poem about a bike accident, and she mentioned that she had made the whole thing up, which didn't change in the slightest how I felt about that poem's ability to testify to the truth.)

But I do care very much if we are being asked to spend time critiquing a poem that is regarded by its author mainly as iambic pentameter practice — or some sort of casual experiment with this or that effect — rather than as a real, full-fledged poem.

I hope I'm mistaken in taking your frequent statements of humility about your work as evidence that it doesn't mean much to you.

I'm not a fan of confessional poetry, despite the fact that much of my own work having been interpreted as such. I mentioned confession here only because your narrator is confessing to a sexual obsession with (literal or figurative) ghosts, and later to having lied about the violent nature of that obsession.

After the poem's mention of the Internet, I did briefly wonder if the ghosts at the window might actually be a reference to online porn, which has obvious relevance to a lot of people. But I decided it couldn't be, because the narrator had also blamed his ghost problem on a very specific cause — namely, a witch he had cut off in traffic within the past week. Since porn obsessions tend to be of longer standing than that, I decided that a more literal interpretation was more likely, and that things in the poem should be taken at face value.

Frankly, I don't think the presence of the witch is doing the poem any favors in any version of the poem. The less of that red herring, the better for literalists like me.

I do like the title "Temptation," which seems to have disappeared after Version 1.10. I hope it's still there.

I either missed your Elvis sonnet, or I'm forgetful in the wee hours of the morning. Would you mind sending it to me via PM, Yves?