The Girl in the Cafe

[Pseudomuse]

The Girl in the Cafe
- for my dahling E


she sits

her back turned toward the door
burnpage-cornertorn journal open.
a slender hyacinthe girl
tremble fingers tied around
wordsthoughtsfeelingshopefeardeathdualitypeace
things that milk the draining youth
that spark fires in lion caves
that fuel the pen
mighter than any sword
just for the fact, that
wisdom [neologism] bends iron
all in good time.

she remarks

her writing gets smaller
as the ideas squash themselves
tight against her frontal lobe -
let me out-oomph!-god it’s tight in here-let me out!
LET ME OUT!
you’d never know she was screaming inside
stuck in her placid hum.
but turned inward,
a cup of tea for company
she dons the Hatter’s Hat
she deteriorates into
sight, sound, and song
and the winged touch
tickling the imagination.

she is a man of action

like Cyrano, full of precious discourse
which blooms to promise
an upturned rose to the sun.
the written word
becomes heavy for she fuses
back the life-blood
striped by generations before.
Oh Dante, never mentioned this!
she jousts, the pointed avenger
she will win again the patois
overcome the slander,
like her predecessors,
show her true blue colours
paint the hero back in her sky
and all with the flick of ink.

she has

found the wasteland
and belladonna
and used them as tools
not letting them dig stingingweedycorpseholes
in murk-mangrove swamps.
she sidestepped the quicksand
that so often claims
rapes
and corrodes
like sticking plaster, sticking stigmas
birthing frailty (and)
timorous biting nerves
that never let the wound sweat the poison.
but she is beyond all that
using the hue of experience to
rumble and run.

she uncovered

bohemia
Long Live Bohemia!
not like on the silversliver screen
but with holes in the walls,
finks at her feet,
vodka instead of good morning.
she is afraid of the dark
this poet girl
but she found her cause
in man, man-kind
not in western wash.


dip your fingers in her pinklagoonpetals
and drink in a summer’s ideology.
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.

[/b]


(hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…)
the beat goes on


I hear it, don’t you?


Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.

[/center]

[Robin]

"a slender hyacinthe girl"

Good comparison. Too often I hear girls/women compared to roses or lilies, with "slender, supple stems" or a "beautiful exterior, but with a thorny tongue," or something. Simple floral allusion. I like it.

"that fuel the pen
mighter than any sword"

I don't like this part. While it does have an excellent ring to it, I don't like the message it conveys. Anybody can win a battle with a sword, it takes a special person to make that pen mightier than the sword. If it can only win a battle in the right hands, it's not all that powerful for everyone - just for the writer. But maybe I'm looking into it too much.

"wisdom [neologism] bends iron
all in good time."

I don't like how you put neologism in brackets. It cheapens your poem. Leave the decorations to the people who are hired to do it.

"let me out-oomph!-god it’s tight in here-let me out!
LET ME OUT!"

Haha. Stephen King moment. "Hey! Wow! Look! Here we are, inside Bill's head again. Let's think about Georgie! Okay!"

"you’d never know she was screaming inside
stuck in her placid hum."

Cliché, but effective. I'll bite.

"a cup of tea for company
she dons the Hatter’s Hat
she deteriorates into
sight, sound, and song
and the winged touch
tickling the imagination."

Good imagery here. It shows a lot of feeling.

"she is a man of action"

I like the contradiction. 'She' and 'man.' Putting woman of action would have been stupid. Putting man was a good choice.

"an upturned rose to the sun.
the written word
becomes heavy for she fuses
back the life-blood"

Try not to use roses in your work if you can help it. While they do provide excellent imagery, we've been deprived of their use by emo "poets" who think they can write if they incorporate the words "blood, death, crimson, rose, demons, soul, suffering, knife," and "wrist" into the same poem at least twice a piece.

"show her true blue colours
paint the hero back in her sky"

Good connection here. She's true blue => The sky is blue.

"she sidestepped the quicksand
that so often claims
rapes
and corrodes
like sticking plaster, sticking stigmas
birthing frailty (and)
timorous biting nerves"

Awesome.

"she uncovered

bohemia
Long Live Bohemia!"

Excellent.

"(hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…)
the beat goes on


I hear it, don’t you?"

I don't like having hmmm, hmmm, hmmm... in parenthesis. It looks odd, and makes it seem more lyrical than poetic.

'The beat goes on' is a well thumbed cliché, but it works well here.

[Pseudomuse]

ooo thanks...

I actually never thought of 'hyacinthe girl' as basely a flower allusion. E's favorite poem currently is The Hyacinthe Girl by TS Eliot. weird.

I think the part of the pen vs sword, means more to me as a writer and more to E, because it's about her. It delves into our background as friends, that she really has a special ability to make it so.

I am still wrestling with neologism, at first I thought wisdom was too washy, or overused. Will ponder to that effect in second edit.

roses are clichéd to a point. But here I am using rose as a reference to a poem by Robert Burns, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose. But I'll have a rethink.

hmmm... yes... on the hmmms... I just had a feeling of sticking sound in there because of the song. hmmm... I'll think on that.

Thank you dear!
PM

[Robin]

I see. I suppose if it's for a friend, it doesn't really matter if others understand all the stuff you put in there - it's for a friend who will understand it.