[John Riley]

Thanks, Jan.

Thanks for the help, Ann and Andrew. I meant the milk and honey to say simply it doesn't exist. There is no somewhere over the rainbow, regardless of how much we wish it was so. There is also the suggestion of what happens when the weak heart can't pump blood sufficiently. It's interesting when I think something is clear and simple when it isn't.

I do wonder about self-pity. I try to be vigilant because I know well the destructiveness of self-pity. But did it slip in? It's a poem about what happens when my fluid builds up and I have trouble breathing. It does remind me to take my diuretic, so there's that, but the poem's core is how the panic that comes from sudden breathlessness may be less intense if I believed the myths about life after death and didn't see the world with awareness. Maybe I'm over-sensitive about self-pity because it can kill me faster than anything.

I'm going to take your suggestion Ann and make it two syllables.

I very much value your help. Thank you.

[W T Clark]

What I think saves this from self-pity: self-expression, is the vortex of its image-making: its onward, splenetic rush mingled with a dense, almost slippery weight: it is as if the poem is moving a great quantity of sludge, some vast clogging organic matter, and the weight of its language accounts for that. It is not so much an expression of the self-pity, as an expression of the organic processes at fault themselves. That is what I like about it very much. I do wonder at "miniscule".

Hope this helps.

[Carl Copeland]

I like your loose meter, John, and the poem’s unflinching honesty.

Like Jim, I wonder about the title. It sounds like it’s short for “temporary health issues.”

I think you need commas at the end of L9 and L10. Get me right: I’m fine with minimal punctuation, but yours is normal except for these two normally required commas. Sorry, I know it’s the hobgoblin of small minds.

Originally Posted by John Riley

I meant the milk and honey to say simply it doesn't exist. There is no somewhere over the rainbow, regardless of how much we wish it was so. There is also the suggestion of what happens when the weak heart can't pump blood sufficiently. It's interesting when I think something is clear and simple when it isn't.

I’m in sympathy with the sentiment, but I had the same problems that Andrew did, and I’m not out of the woods yet. You’ve got three counterfactuals: “if there were more worlds” (but there aren’t), if squirrels weren’t just struggling for food (but they are) and if “milk and honey did not clog streams” (but they do). Thanks to Ann, I can understand the latter as “if fat and sugar did not clog veins,” but I don’t know how to get from there to “if there was a land of milk and honey” (but there isn’t). Ann did get it, but I don’t.

I couldn’t figure out at first what would “fall down,” but I guess it’s the fire that turns to ice and falls down (in the form of ice). Logically, I’d expect the N to be afraid of falling, but I can’t get that from the grammar unless he’s the ice.

[Bill Dyes]

John;

The two stanzas are an improvement. I am wondering
if in line 4 of stanza 1 "closet table' should be 'closest table.'

If there is self pity in this poem it lurks somewhere in the wish
for other worlds and a different way of seeing which would erase
the need for the panic in the rest of ther poem.
It is that panic which most grabs my attention
away from the shadow of self-pity.
The panic brnging 'the fire to turn to sharp ice and fall down'
seems something as deadly as the sword.

The form and metrics of a poem for me show their best effect
when the poem is read aloud.
I have no further need to identify how this piece achieves its movement.

This poem has power and control
at a moment when those two things are almost impossible to maintain.
Thanks for posting it.

Bill

[John Riley]

Thank you three for the input. I think this one needs some time so instead of revising now, I will copy the comments into the poem's file for when I return. I'm not blowing them off by any means. It's gone a little cold for me now. It'll warm up again later.

Thanks again