Friday, January 26, 2007

The Righteous Virgin

A needy soul, without notice, without prize
Without descendants or indiscretions
Gray temples, dim eyes, and wasted loins
The offset for honor that was hoarded
‘Til out-distanced by decline.

Night, repressed and unaccented
Daylight, a separate liberation
From urgency, but weighted
By attitudes external to her world
Of shallow indifference, even scorn
No applause for the spinster whose
Aching longing was purified
By a righteous fire lapping
At her withered loins

Senses thicken, memory fades
Dispassionate and hollow
Long ago, like a volcanic eruption
Passion heated, melted, and erupted
From the core of her being

It is nothing more than fiddling
In the transparency of day
The bleached desert a wasteland
Where she still battles with chaste intentions
Empty and alone she vaguely recalls
A battle neither lost nor won.
The long struggle and the ultimate
Exodus of the courage she
Needed to weakly surrender.

NOTES: I have a creative personality. So I sometimes have to square off with a kind of ‘weirdness’ that attaches itself to creativity that leaves me red faced and a bit squirm-ish. If you knew me personally, my real-life persona, you would find this work quite shocking, considering I’m stone sober, I only pop calcium pills, and I take life seriously. So I am a bit uncomfortable about this post and you might be too. But still, the question is, is this any different than painting nudes? I don’t know. Can this be called a creative work? Or is it just so much rubbish that reveals far too much of my foolish nature?

So do others write poetry like this? How would I know? I'm too straight-laced to read them.

5 comments:

Spicy said...

Roberta,
Wish I could write poetry like that...I have written some poems in the past and they all rhyme.,so I gave that up!
I read it twice, and enjoyed it both times....snicker!

Roberta S said...

Couldn't be happier you stopped in, matty. Any post is just fine if someone wants to read it twice and gets a 'snicker' out of it. That means I don't have to tear this embarrassment down and start over again.

I prefer poetry that rhymes but there was a problem here. There is just no way to rhyme the words needed to describe a righteous virgin -- a regular run of the mill love-lost maiden -- I probably could have done that. But the character in this poem had deeper problems than that. (snicker, as well).

Anonymous said...

I like this; it does get across the feeling of repression--both by society and by self, and the loss of good intentions as unheralded.

I would dump the "diddling" because of its connotation. Even "fiddling" as in fiddling around may work better and also has that strumming of string to make music metaphor readily attached to it.

susan at spinning

Roberta S said...

susan, yes, oh yes. That is exactly the word I need to substitute to move this from a "really silly poem" to a more legimate one. I am going to change it immediately.

I hear the music as well -- having just read an historical fiction on the life of Nero.

Anonymous said...

I really like the "fiddling" now--it's a solitary thing against the rush of life--burning in the background, active.

susan