so it is he tells himself

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Billy
Posts: 1384
Joined: 22 Jun 2006, 10:56

so it is he tells himself

#1 Post by Billy » 23 Mar 2021, 06:30

so it is he tells himself

humming under his breath
a song his mother sang
when she was unusually happy

he remembers it from that night
she spent hours bathing dressing
fixing make-up dancing around the room

all the while singing her song
as she never had before and never
would again by the end of the night

sitting on the bed in a lump
bawling and sniffling and heaving
for breath then bawling some more

i sat in the corner not knowing what to do
or why someone could be so sad
i became sad that night sixty-two years ago

have been wedded to sadness ever since
and still don't understand why
that song my sad song now

Michael (MV)
Posts: 2154
Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57

Re: so it is he tells himself

#2 Post by Michael (MV) » 23 Mar 2021, 18:03

Hi Billy,

a mother-son poem - l relate - motivates me to add another to my portfolio(thx).

"unusually happy" - the phrasing says a lot, and invites further engagement with the poem.


Workshop-consider without

" . . . and never
would again by the end of the night"

^^ because it telescopes the remainder of the poem - the experience & emotional impact of the poem is more poignant if readers discover(infer) with their reading radars. Then this lineage(along with other suggestions) of those middle stanzas:

he remembers it from that night
she spent hours bathing
dressing fixing make-up

dancing & twirling around the room
all the while singing her song
as she never had before

then landing on the bed in a lump
bawling and sniffling and heaving
for breath then crying herself to sleep


I believe "phantom punctuation" is the right choice for this poem.


"wedded" - the power of precise word choice - You inherited a haunted song, a song gone sad, from your mother.

Not a dirge, but a mother & son torch song - and here you have composed the torch-poem -

Bravo & on my short list for the upcoming April IBPC.


😎

Michael (MV)

Billy wrote:
23 Mar 2021, 06:30
so it is he tells himself

humming under his breath
a song his mother sang
when she was unusually happy

he remembers it from that night
she spent hours bathing dressing
fixing make-up dancing around the room

all the while singing her song
as she never had before and never
would again by the end of the night

sitting on the bed in a lump
bawling and sniffling and heaving
for breath then bawling some more

i sat in the corner not knowing what to do
or why someone could be so sad
i became sad that night sixty-two years ago

have been wedded to sadness ever since
and still don't understand why
that song my sad song now

Kenneth2816
Posts: 1619
Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17

Re: so it is he tells himself

#3 Post by Kenneth2816 » 23 Mar 2021, 23:22

Sometimes people just give out.

BobBradshaw
Posts: 2683
Joined: 03 Jun 2016, 21:03

Re: so it is he tells himself

#4 Post by BobBradshaw » 24 Mar 2021, 02:13

I admire how this poem builds slowly up to what seems by the close inevitable:

i sat in the corner not knowing what to do
or why someone could be so sad
i became sad that night sixty-two years ago

have been wedded to sadness ever since
and still don't understand why

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