I am a stranger in this place,
laid out in a perfect
grid like a thousand midwestern acres
or a New England town,
solid and square, boundary lines
unmoveable. If I could
just jump the fence,
scale the stone wall,
skate in circles around your careful
map. Figure eights.
I don't know the rules; my blades
have rusted with time and neglect.
I mix my metaphors yet again—
my tongue is twisted and inept.
I long for paper and pen,
the cool comfort of written wordplay.
(To see more takes on the prompt "Stranger," visit Sunday Scribblings.)
10 comments:
I'm much for brilliant in writing than in person. Genuinely enjoyable poem. BJ
Cool poem. My favorite part is where you want to skate figure-8s on the map. Awesome!
I love the descriptions of 'place' in this poesm...and everything else!
I feel for the narrator. Paper and pen are so comfortable to me but trying anything new is scary!
Love the way you wrote this!
Oh, I love this, and maybe especially the yearning expressed in those lines beginning "If I could..." and which then fall off into the next stanza.
And, like you, I'd much rather be writing...
sometimes writing makes more sense than speaking.
great words! :)
As someone whose handwriting has become illegible of late, this had a nostalgic appeal.Those neat squares are pixels, are they not? Or am I reading this correctly?
I enjoyed reading this, the layers are nicely done.
Ooh, this is cool. There's a lot going on here; I'd love to take this into a group of real poetry lovers and have them unpack it. I bet they'd see some really neat things in here.
Nicely done. I love the mixed metaphors.
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