This city needs a desperate flight upwards,
but it only sinks and slowly spreads,
a mud-monster melting, here.
Less can we walk than drive. Anyway
we’ve forgotten how and so
are left in our individual miserable orbs
of gas-guzzling existence.
Reduced to being because of forces
that command us unknown to ourselves
having not an inkling of the waste.
3 comments:
I like this poem.
As I read, I thought how I might re-write it very slightly.
I should stress that I'm a rank amateur in the milieau of poetry and literature, so you should look at the way I re-wrote your poem with a huge dose of sceptism. My version may well have removed certain nuances you deem essential to your poem.
This city needs to fly aloft,
But it sinks only, and slowly spreads,
It’s a mud-monster melting.
Less do we walk than drive,
For, we’ve forgotten how,
So we're left cut-off
in our miserable orbs
of gas-guzzling existence.
We are reduced to being,
Since the forces that command us
Are unknown to ourselves.
Oops, I forgot about your last line "....having not an inkling of the waste...."
Thanks for all the comments. I might incorporate some of them.
I do want to keep flight upwards, instead of aloft, because the poem is about urban sprawl, and to remedy that we are supposed to be building upwards instead of horizontally.
I like, "For, we have forgotten how", but I'll need to find another syllable for that line.
I do like being cut-off (thank you) because that sharpens the point that we no longer know each other, because neigborhoods are dying by urban sprawl, and so we don't know each other as well as we used to.
I think I'll keep "reduced to being" because I tend to not want to put in words that are already assumed in the poem...it says "us" in the next line.
I like your suggestios, and appreciate them. Thanks so much, Christopher
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