Saturday, November 15, 2008

Sunday Scribblings #137: Stranger

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:

Roan said...

I'm much for brilliant in writing than in person. Genuinely enjoyable poem. BJ

"Sunshine" said...

Cool poem. My favorite part is where you want to skate figure-8s on the map. Awesome!

lilly said...

I love the descriptions of 'place' in this poesm...and everything else!

Linda Jacobs said...

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!

anno said...

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...

me said...

sometimes writing makes more sense than speaking.
great words! :)

Granny Smith said...

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?

Tumblewords: said...

I enjoyed reading this, the layers are nicely done.

Susan Helene Gottfried said...

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.

Mary said...

Nicely done. I love the mixed metaphors.