Lonely Night

Lonely Night

“My solitary watch I keep,”

Bill Monroe sings high lonesome.

“So fare-thee-well I’d rather make

My home upon some icy lake

Where the southern sun refused to shine

Than to trust a love so false as thine.”

**

a pile of yellow

toenail clippings

thought I threw

those things

out

with the nonchalance

of god

**

Yet, why be so theatrical

in your desolation.

In this way

the floor

speaks to me.

I think it means

.

and I think it is

the floor

**

            Castaneda asks, What is going to happen now, don Juan?

            Nothing. You won your soul back. It was a good battle.

            You learned many things last night.

**

(So perhaps that’s where it stands.)

———————————————— 

Anna Chamberlain has us going to the edge of meaning and sanity for tonight’s dVerse prompt. Well, anyway, that’s how it seemed to me, as we discovered a variety of experimental poetry techniques. Take the time to read the article—Anna did a great service in providing all the information, and there’s really no good way to summarize it here.

I tried to write spontaneously, piecing together many disparate, jarring sources and images in service of a single theme; however, I think there may be more flow, or at least more noticeable meaning, than one would expect to find in experimental poetry. I couldn’t help it. Hopefully there is enough here to make it fit the prompt. (The quotations are from Bill Monroe’s song “Midnight on the Stormy Deep” and Carlos Castaneda’s book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.)