Where do I begin?
The start is hard to pin
like a wrestler refusing to yield.  
It is easy I know it all by heart.  

It has haunted me and made me lie 
as I lay, as I have lain 
in your arms.  

Green on the outside with orange spots.  
But bleeding pools of black and blue
which burn orange
Nobody has lit their
fantastic hues, but one.  

And I fall in fear
As I leap from rock to rock along the shore.  
I am afraid I will fall into the water
I am afraid that I will enjoy
the depths and drown
my flame
SO I drown it myself by slipping
on land.  
And my fear has paralyzed my leap.  

I love you all but
I claim my purity

A wide grassy field filled with elves
and wizards
life now
and then.  I
create a larger world:  

A little elf dances through the field,
Asks the wizard questions whose answers she
won't admit to knowing because
She wants to know he knows.  

THe little elf dances in the field 
with little boys who are real like her.  
She remembers now that she is supposed to be a person
The little boys do not know what a girl looks like
so the little girl shows them.  
She sees nothing wrong-- she is an elf
flitting amuck

SOmeone in the real world sees 
Not Understanding
Her fellowship is fenced: a wide field no more.

The elf stops trying to be real.  

There is nobody to be real.  

Her created world collides
HEAD ON
with school
with real children.  
She loves to play pretend but it is no longer real.  
She is no longer an elf.  She
creates 
stories for the "real " little girl.  

School is a cage and she is scared of it.  
She has to sit at a desk
and cannot fly away on flights
of fantasy.  

So she sits therein reality and
rubs
the 
 edge
 of 
her chair
She doesn't know why she shouldn't.  
ANd she is soooo frustrated.  
She doesn't want to stop flying.  
The elf is fighting to be let out.  

The little girl now fights the elf
She learns to 
create
the cage herself.  

It is better that it is hers.  

She learns to be a real little girl and deny
the elf

She denies
I deny.

I make the structure into a game:
there are goals to pass in scholarship.  
There are structures to climb which
I adorn outlandishly
A fighting submissive elf

But I never let her out.  
I fight her down.
 
I am afraid of her blue blood.  
I am afraid of the colors it will burn.  

I am ashamed to have fought her
so long

She is real, I am real.  
I will be whole again.  

12 responses total.

The beginning of this one is really great - the lie/lay/lain in the 2nd
stanza, and the colors in the third, and "I love you all but I claim my
purity".  Also "She denies I deny" towards the end is nice.  I'm not sure what
I think of the middle...needs another re-reading.

The middle is fine, except for the abrupt tense change, which feels funny to
me, and the transition description to the fantasy world is a little jagged.

Otherwise, this is just lovely, dreamy, magical, and everything I could want
in a poem set in a fantasy setting.

I'm just gonna sit here, I'm not gonna say anything, `cause if I do, I
think I may forget what item number this is, and I don't want to do
that...HA!! I'll print it, and keep it in my wallet! Much better


(P.S. I'm really going to keep a copy of this in my wallet, it's
beautiful)

I want to get a copy of this one, too, Allida, so that I can read it over and
over.

yes, and I know she would..I hope she does.  Maybe if you can paste it to
e-mail..

whoa   
thanks :) 

(linked to new poetry conf)

really good, i should put it in my book'o'others work:)

Allida, thank you for being real.  You speak of the duality of reality, which
is the most real thing you can say about being real.  Wow, almost lost myself
with that one.
exit

that was very interesting and very confusing yet understandable if that makes
any since.... i liked it a lot...  .

        There was something discontiguous about the beginning, and it took a
minute or two for me to figure it out, but the initial image is one of
wrestling, then of laying in a (lover's?) arms, and then expanding pools of
some substance described as "bleeding", and then leaping off of a rock or
cliff face.

It has been a long time since i wrote this and almost as long since i have
bbs'd.  I don't expect people check the "oldpoetry" that often, but if you
do check it, i would like to thank you all for your responses.  The
discontinuity in the beginning is the manifestation of my inner struggle in
trying to write about something of which i had been ashamed.  i think i still
am ashamed of it, and more than a year later, i still haven't gotten myself
into myself so to speak, in the particular way discussed in the poem.  it is
a lot more work htan i thought it would be.  the rest of it, if you hadn't
figured this out, is autobiographical.  it isn't a fantasy in the traditional
sense.  it is a description of a creative little kid trying to not be aware
of grownup things, trying to not lose that imaginative fire to those grownup
things by rebellng against what the grownups tell her to do.  then it is
further about how that little girl tries to re-assimilate as she has become
a grownup in a way which most little girls do as they are young women, but
that this little girl still hasn't done into womanhood.  

sorry to rant, i have become more solid in the two years since i wrote this,
which is an accomplishment in itself.  
thanks again

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss