[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.

[Yves S L]

Carl,

Actually the poem would still work in the other case: I am asking for a friend who is similarly cursed (no chance to get one), perhaps Dante would do because of Beatrice and the passage through hell. But whatever reading works for you. Yeah.

[Yves S L]

Hello all,

So this poem is perfect for practicing iambic pentameter. For that reason I have begun to extend it. Here is the first cut. Any comments?

Addendum 1: I added some extra lines after making the above comment.

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Yves S L

Hello all,

So this poem is perfect for practicing iambic pentameter. For that reason I have begun to extend it. Here is the first cut. Any comments?

Sure, I have a comment.

I notice that you often self-deprecate in your workshop threads, dismissing a particular poem as just an experiment or exercise. Here, you are characterizing this poem as iambic pentameter practice.

Not that there's anything wrong with writing persona poems. The narrative "I" need not actually be the poet for a poem to bear witness to Truth. Some of M.A. Griffiths's most devastatingly effective poems are persona poems in which the narrator is quite obviously not her, but one gets the sense that she is truly inhabiting that person's perspective and world in a way that evokes genuine emotional responses.

In contrast, this poem feels as if it's being told from the safe distance of a hypothetical situation and a fictional persona. The transgressive sexual scenario has edginess, first for its strangeness and then for its violence, but to me that edginess seems blunted by distancing strategies such as the narrator's claim to be "asking for a friend" rather than asking on his own behalf.

The longer Version 2 feels even more removed from the Truth than Version 1. The precise details of his interactions with the angry witch are far less interesting to me than the narrator's defensiveness about being judged harshly by others in general. I sense some interestingly genuine, autobiographical Truth in that reluctance to be personally vulnerable — even in the very act of writing what appears to be a confessional poem.

(Not that I think that what is being confessed has anything to do with the poet's actual life, of course; but the narrator's fear of making himself emotionally vulnerable by admitting to his own feelings seems to be coming from somewhere real and personal. I sense that there's something really at stake in the poem, whether or not the scenario described is completely fictional.)

I could be all wrong about that, in which case, bravo for fooling me so effectively in that regard.

Anyway, that's the aspect of the poem that intrigues me. More content about the witch doesn't. I hope that's helpful to know, even if it's only one person's reaction.