christoph /poetry

Eleven-Line Poem
by Christoph Girard

Lumen (Sunrise)

Planet nonentity on the ligament of lineage
quips the accent with a garden affix to mystery
eclipse by lissom
tens of seconds grasp shades thick with silhouettes
incompatible deserts complete the idioms moral
heavy combs paw over weights migraines
strong wisteria to let go of
wounds like quotidian bloodshed pull irresistible absolution
escapes alive and germane deprive sweet persuasion
steel ills toil on a flat of discord
bleach the average mountains with a deviant vehicle


--
Eleven is simply a symbol for the imperfect and yet a palindrome and having a symbolic relationship with the exterior. In contrast to writers like William Burroughs who write about lives that revolve around drugs, I write about austere lives in chaos. Drugs are severely conformist because they alleviate social situations and create the illusion of belonging. I like the feeling of awkwardness around people, not talking, because thats more of a comfortable and genuine feeling. Poetry generally reflects the inspiration of my surroundings in contrast to my lifestyle. These set of eleven-line poems explore this obstruction by the use of public texts. The second element is the illustration of a public gatherings, incidents and exposures. I am grappling with the series of eleven-line poems to either be entitled "Excess" or "Ten and One Left" in which the the number eleven is derived from the old english word "Endleofan" which means the base of one plus a second element. Instead of poems that are subservient to a number of lines, the constraint is the text by its use of public language written and translated to the outsider by the outsider who writes to the public and its busy surroundings. The texts which inspire the set of poems are read by a plural audience to experience a homogenized familiarity with public texts like biblical references and advertisements. The feeling of disconnection resounds and each has a feeling of similarity by evoking a thought or emotion that was once believed to be true or genuine but it is set in as false of pretenses as a text that is meant to influence readers in an ephemeral way. My struggle is to make ephemeral texts durable by connecting paradoxes to lyrical cadence of opposites thus the tight rope will be strung and falling may be inevitable. The tension of the tightrope will always resound though.