NaPoWriMo is turning out to be an interesting experiment. For one, I was expecting my poems to be getting shorter and shorter by the day, as I’d be getting bored and lose my creativity/inspiration. It seems, however, that I was wrong. The first few poems I’ve written for NaPoWriMo are much shorter than my more recent ones. Also, all this “compulsory” poetry writing is helping me understand my literary obsessions and is perhaps keeping them from overtaking my more important work.
Well, today’s theme is “shadows”, I guess. And the poem is, in a sense, a bit of a sonnet.
[“The Executioner” by George Condo, via]
Interstices
by Kalyiel
“Shadow of me!” I said; “which art not me, but which representest thyself to me as me; here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of darkness! Here I may find a blessing which will fall on thee as a curse, and damn thee to the blackness whence thou hadst emerged unbidden.”
~ George MacDonald, “Phantastes”
In the spaces between people
I can always see them:
Smudged on the sidewalk,
Flattened on walls,
Larger than life sometimes
And sometimes clinging
Close to men’s feet,
Like vice, like cowardly love.
When people die,
They don’t disappear:
They hide with the corpses,
Waiting, more patient than fate.
But there is light within them:
All the light that heaven can afford.
Encyclopaedia Vanitatum 