Mountain, Water Water, Mountain
mirrorworld sleek skeen even the cannabis store straddles the street under the raven gulls’ renegade shadow tell me the name for a puddle unpuddling My gosh! Outside is a comicbook sound — speech bubbles of squelch squish squeamish and bike tire spit. life imitates light light imitates life At last, reaching the sky, a finger into night, void black, retracted at the putrid ooze and then a pinkening: some celestial chemical reaction as if this rain incessant and blanket was vinegar cloud-clad Olympics and their baking soda peaks Icarus and Prometheus sat around a Bunsen burner in togas turned lab coats and other modern pleasantries
As Sufjan Stevens says “It’s the same outside.” But when the clouds DO break… those sunrises.
This poem took a bit of a journey this week. It might be boring, but I find the process of a poem (does it ever really end?) fascinating.
Ready?
A few months ago I wrote a poem called “Slop at 29”. It was a particularly muddy week and Slop29 was (is?) my younger brother’s Club Penguin username.
It read as follows:
My gosh.
Just look outside.
It’s a comicbook sound.
Speech bubbles of squelch, squish
squeamish - even in galoshes.
Poor man. Bike tire spits rhymes,
a word for each vertebrae of his spine.
Flung and final. Frank and fainting.
Imagine if upon, at last, reaching the sky,
you stuck a finger into the black, retracted at the muddiness
of our Sistine Chapel.
As you can see I kept a good chunk of it but didn’t love where it wound up. Then, a few weeks ago, I wrote this line “mountain/water water/mountain” which I liked as a doodle of western Washington.
I put those two in a room together and got the first half of this poem which plays somewhere between abstract sonority and actual syntax. Then the second half surprised me. I was looking out my window at an early morning puddle that had the reflection of light in it “life imitating light.” When I reversed it, “light imitating life,” I found a new momentum.
This turn propelled the back half of the Slop poem into a new tone home that, I believe, landed in a more accurate emotional center. Something funny, but serious — like romping through a puddle.
Slop29 is visiting me this weekend. This one’s for Slop.
With gratitude,
I love hearing about the journey you take to the poem we see!
Thanks, Mason, for sharing this insight into your poem, its creation and excellent reading. I love: 'light imitates life/life imitates light'. Re does a poem ever really end that reminds me of the Paul Valery quote; 'A poem is never finished, only abandoned'. Yours feels far more finished than abandoned though! PS: a small point it's bunsen.