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The Lighthouse Above The Graveyard

The Lighthouse Keeper

I am the lighthouse keeper,
the night manager
for the ambulance’s
blue, red wick
the coordinator
for whistling colors.

I fish with wreaths
of goblet flame
at noontide catching
dreams of pixie dust
gold dust women panting.

Lobster orchids crawl
legs in the smoke fall ;
dizzy dolls made sick.

I wind solvents for our yard lines
clipped with butterfly wings,
tracing their crippled
pulses always, fainter,
keeping score.

Bigfoot ISBNS, mirrors,
my fog horn double
down there, enunciate palmistry…
(along with a little love)
Keeps our sedate island
smoking away in good order.

Clients in the sand
knock and knock,
but I get around most nights.

It can be beautiful
helping this tide
kiss our namesakes away.

Editing stage: 

Comments

I really love the imagery here. Have you ever heard of the Elder Scrolls video games, such as Skyrim? A lot of the imagery here reminds me of that game. Lighthouses, butterfly wings, goblets, Big Foot wreaths, the lobsters, flowers, smoke from the fire, and the dust: almost all of them are "commonplace" but so fantastical all together in this little world you've conjured up in this poem. Although, Skyrim doesn't have an actual Big Foot, but there are giants and trolls which are absolutely reminiscent of our Big Foot. I have hundreds of hours put into Skyrim (literally!) it's an open world inspired by the medieval era full of exploration and adventure and I feel that in this poem.

With my interpretation in mind, if I may be honest, I feel like the "ambulance" doesn't fit the rest of the poem. I got that historical fantasy vibe (or even timelessness) from this poem, but ambulance stuck out for me. I thought it would be useful to look up the word (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulance). I studied Latin in high school and remember the origin for the word ambulance coming from a Latin word, so it's not that "ambulance" is too modern a word all together, but definitley that the image itself is rather modern for me. What do you think? Do you think something else might work there, or are you set on that image?

Hope this helps,

Kelsey 

Critique, don't comment.

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on that one; I do recall at some point seeing "Skyrim" or something like it, maybe, but that was a video game frame of mind, I think. Actually THAT is my version of a poem that was put in a book:

https://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-Above-Graveyard-Surrealist-Seance/dp/1...

I still mess with the poems in here, though, because it was such a level of paraconsciousness we were working on that it required a lot more revision than we gave it. In fact, though it is published, we are still revising it.

And thank you for assisting!

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