Nov 10, 2005

Soot

Cold winter nights warmed by the sweat of summer days
That lingers on my cloths, but mostly in my hair
The musty smell of soot and oily blackness from the pipe
Has stained my fingers and my face
Fire cooled, stainless steel filtered, wood juice
I rub it through my hair completely satisfied and watch it drip
Onto the stove
Like vapor-rub it opens up my nose and settles in my chest
I contemplate the joy no cubicle could bring

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good, strong image (Ezra Pound is smiling)that tugs on sight, sound, touch and has several strong referential ties. I would recommend opening up the allusions a little more to invite us into the associations being triggered in your mind/emotions; they're clearly important to you, but a little vague to us. A few Q's: is it the summer or winter days that cling to your clothes and hair? Is the pipe a tobacco pipe or something larger, more industrial and tied to a summer job/project (I'm assuming the former)? Does pipe smoke really generate that much grease/lingering aroma, or does a mere whiff "grow" in your meditation? Or do you never wash your hair?

And, of course, when you're more alert, watch your spelling. ;)

Last line is excellent.

Anonymous said...

What I find most riveting is the bizarre discontinuity between anonymous I's post and your poem. I, for one, am less convinced that the author of this poem would necessarily revel in AutoAuctions. Hmmmm....

Curt said...

Yeah - that auto auctions thing is an example of spamming to a blog. Best way to prevent it is to at least restrict posts to registered blogspot users—even better to restrict responses to a list of friends.

Now for the poem—Generally I like this a lot. The imagery works on several levels very well. I do wonder about a couple of the pronoun references though. In line #2, I assume "They" is the cold winter nights? Or is it the warm summer days? Or what? I guess in line #5, the "it" you are rubbing through your hair is the smell of soot and oily blackness, and I like that—but what are you then watching as it drips on the stove? As I said, though, I generally like this very much.