The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 8/13/08

[BlueIris]

"Behind the Big Screen"

A million ants are trapped at a beach inside your set,
said the girl on my first grade playground
after I asked why t.v. channels blurred with snow.
For years I half-believed her, searched for proof,
staring each night until a station succumbed to scratchiness,
then craning close to decipher their dance.
Is it any wonder Carol Ann heard voices there,
flattened palm to glass and got trapped in the void?
Once, I saw a man tell Robert Stack that snow
showed him his dead mother,
her brother, relatives he did not remember
surfacing out of static to prophecy the end of the world.
Surely, parts of it live,
work some kind of sorcery,
are worthy of the ankle I sprained
striving to fly like Wonder Woman,
the fingertips I stained flicking cigarettes
as faultlessly as Sharon Stone.
They claim it is the reason
I never mastered multiplication tables,
that I doze beside it because
the drone lulls brain waves lower than deep sleep.
What is the beast that writhes beneath its broadcasts,
this creature snapped awake by my own hand?

—Jennifer Rollings

[arcadian]

1. 13 in the thread title

get's a response

[BlueIris]

2. Heh. Okay.

Kinda makes me wish I'd gone with the one I was going to inflict on the Lounge today.

[arcadian]

3. If you have one about 13

I'd love to read it.

[BlueIris]

4. Kick.

[BlueIris]

5. Excuse me, mean people:

You are mean.

[Chan790]

6. I'm curious what the other one was...

honestly it might be because I haven't watched TV in 10 years but this left me flat. I think televisions are evil.

(I actually own a TV but it's hooked to the DVD player and PS3...it'll never function as anything but a DVD and video game monitor ever again.)

[BlueIris]

7. The other one is a piece I've thought about posting since I started this project...

But I keep chickening out on the grounds that it would short-circuit the Lounge. It is, flat-out, the most difficult poem I have ever read. But since people are somewhat curious, I'm thinking about putting it up this Saturday.

[BlueIris]

8. Also..."flat"?

:cry:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. My dear BlueIris...

This is exquisite!

I don't think I'll ever look at a TV screen in quite the same way again...

...What is the beast that writhes beneath its broadcasts,
this creature snapped awake by my own hand?

Wonderful!


Thank you, sweetie...

:hug: