Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

Birds-eye View

Submitted by Eumolpus on Sat, 2019-03-02 19:44

Buoyantly above the intersection
A hawk reviews our daily commute
Barely moving a feather.

We are surely a strange type of insect,
Giant beetles with metallic colors
Crawling orderly in a crisscross below.

Staring at the signal light to unleash us,
The shadow of his great wing span
Splashes across our windshields like a stain,

As if to tap us on the shoulder, taunting us,
To the effortless solitary spirals
Of his indifferent freedom.

Editing stage: 
Editing - rough draft

Comments

Roscoe Lane

Sun, 2019-03-03 02:38

Roscoe Lane's picture

Excellent imagery, and very apt at showing where man has gotten to in pursuit of a dollar or pound. If we didn't produce for wealth we all could be meandering through life, Happier and healthier. Love this. Regards Roscoe..

Roscoe Llane,

Religion will rip your faith off, and return
for the mask of disbelief that's left.

zebra

Sun, 2019-03-03 13:50

zebra's picture

You are a good writer Mark; and this piece is a nicely crafted aerial view of human kind personified.
On one hand I could leave it at that and that would be my easy way out but my friend then I would feel as if I cheated both of us
I felt as if there's a certain perfunctory quality here as if the write is a mere exercise for you.
You are clever and perhaps too facile like a bird out of a hat trick
Having said that I think writing beyond craft and crafty narratives is now the challenge and it is broadly the greatest challenge of poetry or for that matter writing anything. I say this because I recognize this in myself as well especially when I read something with great poignance or urgency

I may have mentioned to you that I knew Peter Voulkos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Voulkos
World renown sculpture and ceramicist. He had said the hardest thing about being a working artist was to keep his creative edge. It must have been extremely difficult for him because every time he did a workshop demonstration and met the obligatory expectations of his fandom he got a fucking ovation
Well he had plenty a reason not to forge forward ie he was a made man and earned his place in art history
Well like him we aint getting any younger or prettier so we could just leave it there but I'm reminding both you and me to pull off a whopper and turn up the flames
Best Always Z

Eumolpus

Sun, 2019-03-03 16:00

Eumolpus's picture

Speaking only for myself, I've more recently been viewing poetry as a relationship between a reader and poet. When I think cutting edge I think of a very natural creativity by people totally unaware or caring about the audience, just pure expression of the age, like Rimbaud, Whitman, Cummings, or Gauguin or Wagner. The rest of us work in craft, the Renoirs and the Robert Lowells.
There are phases of the moon for the muse, because it's connected to the soul. There are many times when I want to reach for the Hi C in a poem, and hit the primal buttons...but this is how I am writing now, the rawness has matured, I'm feeling more disconnected in a sea of connections...so i approach each poem with as much craft as I can, and plant and image in the readers head that will last, like a melody.
Lastly I'm recently retired from 50 years of business, and now I have no stress to DO anything so "they call me mellow yellow " . Sure, everything in the world bothers me, disgusts me, delights me, invites me and I guess I'm just feeling burnt out. (and recouping two leg surgeries) If that's the case, for the time being, I can only write like the weight lifter at the gym, as reach for as much as I can press..and try to connect with the reader in a universal way.

But really thanks, sincerely. I do understand cutting edge, and the thin line between genius and contrivance. The major leagues.. i'm floating around in the minors, but you never know how the next season will be.
Keep pushing me, you never know.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Geezer

Mon, 2019-03-04 09:46

Geezer's picture
Volunteer badge

the difference in your work, since I first saw your poems. I also understand the need to connect solidly to the reader. I have tried hard to do that while still evolving as a writer. I venture into different realms to be not cutting edge, but to make me more accessible to the reader. I think I see the same in you. You are succeeding most admirably! I will leave "cutting edge" to those still seeking their audience. ~ Geezer. P.S. I do think the end came a little too swiftly, I would consider another stanza to lament not being able to fly.
.

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.