3.18.2010

Two Poems about Growing Up



Two Poems on Growing Up

I

The recipe for 'grownup' is'nt complex -
Three things: the first a set of faces: one
For sneering, chuckling, shouting. Thing the next:
A roll of bandages for putting on
If you, by chance should graze your grownup blades
Across the tender skin beneath your wrist.
The last? You need a book, blank or pre-writ,
To exercise the parts you might have missed
When scalpelling out the withered child bits.
They're like the burn-marks on a frying pan -
You grind them down, but always leave that look
Of bloody-brown, like paint from ancient hands
Cluthched into walls of caverns. But a book
Will let the crackling remnants run their course,
Then shut them in their covers by sheer force.

II

The Cancer of Maturity
Metastizes slow
It splays across your bangs, at first
And creeps into your clothes.

It slips onto your lips at night,
Your throat, and then your breast
Then Lodges in your diaphraghm
And echoes with your breath.

The lungs rebel and bloom their youth
Into an angry mass,
A cancer as the cancer's foe -
The two begin to clash.

But youth imbues it's vital strength
Into a killing blow.
Adulthood reels, but lives, then waits,
Metastasizing slow.

(Image by Valerie Everett. Herein describing the inside of my wrist (which, no, I've never 'grazed' with 'grownup blades', and never intend to, no worries :D), this concludes my somewhat irregular tour of the pictures on the top of my blog. )

11 comments:

claire said...

So beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

chrisa511 said...

So beautiful Jason...and much truth there. Thanks :)

Emily said...

These are lovely, Jason. And well done on crafting a Dickenson-esque poem that nevertheless feels unique and fresh.

Keshalyi said...

Ms Claire - no, no, thank you for reading :)

Mr Chris - Well. Truth is in the eye of the beholder, but true in my brain today, anyway. Thank you.

Ms Emily - Yeah, if imitation is flattery, Ms Dickinson should be VERY flattered - not necessarily the QUALITY of my imitation but the FREQUENCY anyways :D. Thank you, I'm glad you read them.

Leslie @ This is the Refrain said...

Wow wow wow. This is amazing. Your rhyming here is killer. Internal down/brown is lovely, clothes and slow even lovelier. Breast/breath. I could go on.

Keshalyi said...

Ms Lu - Thank you! I honestly didn't think you'd like it - I know I poesy a little old fashioned... :)

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Poetry is such a lovely thing to come across in one's blog; I've not turned to it naturally, myself, but I'm becoming more and more fond of it the more I read. I think your Clover Bee and Reverie challenge with Lu is helping to open my once "heavily lidded" eyes.

Trapunto said...

I love "shut them in their covers by sheer force"!

I have been thinking lately that the thing no one tells you about your twenties is that you will spend them being beat up by life. Otherwise, how could you enter them so fearlessly, and come out so flinching and cautious at the end? Which is pretty much what all grownups look like, to kids.

Keshalyi said...

Ms dolcebellezza - I'm glad you're finding poetry you can love - it's hard, I don't think it's that people aren't tuned to poetry naturally, I think it's just that the world isn't set up to teach us to love it, as much anymore. But I'm glad you're finding some :).

Ms Trapunto - Well, beat up by life, or beat up by one's own stupidity, depending on the person. But, yes, it's interesting, we're very blind to the sorrows of any given period of life. Just crawling OUT of my 20's, now :).

I remember when I was a kid, I thought grownups just seemed so quiet, like they could never say anything, really. Which, now I'm older, I can understand a little more...

Nishant said...

So beautiful Jason...and much truth there. Thanks
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