Infinity in a smoky thread of purple blood
Surrounded by darkless nights
endless skies and black metal
she explores science, death or poetry
she wonders about the emptiness
of a busy day
the music of a magnificent storm
the silence in the background noise
that space we left behind
The girl looks at the purple stream
denouncing her
flowing in empty space
It could start a new cycle
be a spiral, initiation
or just the end
_____Adriana Citlali
I-VIII-MMXIII
Over at dVerse Sam Peralta is motivating us to write Twitter Poetry –each stanza must be 140 characters or less (spaces and punctuation included).
My attempt is a bit of a dark poem, but that’s today’s inspiration. It has exactly 140 characters per stanza. Drop by Form for All: Poetry as Semaphore @ dVerse and read what other poets are twitting.
fantastic…you had me at the opening line…amazing imagery…the music of the storm, love that…the emptiness of a busy day…some nice nuggets in here…smiles. and the possibility of either in the end…
My prehispanic ancestors thought that human life was just a cycle, just a mirror of the life of annual plants: They have to die every year to be able to live again. I like the idea.
Following Sam’s guidelines, I just “twitted” my poem:
Adriana Citlali (adcitlali) on Twitter.
Really breathtaking, Adriana. I see a girl caught in the ‘now’ and yet, the cycle is about to begin again.
Thank you!
that first line is just amazing
a tweet of a poem
Thank you 🙂
Infinity in a thread of blood… darkless nights… the space we left behind… what a truly amazing poem you wrote here. Connecting it to your heritage is beautiful… I love this…. it’s beautiful and thought-provoking and it just might be my favorite from this prompt.
You just made my day with your comment. Thanks a lot!
A really intriguing write that I most enjoyed.
the silence in the background noise ….think that’s what hit me most here…not sure why exactly..think it touched something deeper…need to ponder….smiles
Wow – what a dark piece, how that kind of music goes well with a dark mood. However with purple you make me think of Prince – and that’s less dark.
One of the beauties (or dangers) of sharing our creative writing is that readers can interpret it with their own background. After reading your comment, I spent some time considering its consequences. I do not like the connection with Prince, but I decided it does not bother me enough to attempt a change. Purple blood was what felt right to me when writing this piece… That is still the color I feel I need there.
Thanks for a thought provoking comment!
I can understand that… I will see Prince in concert tomorrow, so I’m slightly tainted on that.
Enjoy the concert!
Your poetry has a depth here – painting a portrait of a girl by getting under her skin. Well done.
Your poem, the 2nd verse especially, really speaks to me. Perhaps it is where I am at, at this moment– at the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new. It is reconstruction time, again. ~peace, jason
I wish you all the success! New beginnings can be challenging but they are a great opportunity.
I do like the idea that to be reborn, one must first turn to ashes, like a phoenix. With this perspective, the poem’s theme is not so foreboding, but hides a sliver of hope.
I wanted to say… you’re a physicist? So am I! I believe that the background gives you an additional array of metaphorical weapons that you can use in your writing. Don’t you think? 😉
When I was about to finish high school I had the problem of deciding between studying literature or physics. At that time I was attending a one-year diploma in creative writing together with some journalists, amateur writers, less-amateur ones, etc. It was in that course that I realised that a writer does not need to study to become one. Studies help but having something to write about is much more important. At the end I studied one semester with the curriculum of a major in Communication Sciences and I kept thinking that I was losing out on something more interesting, I kept longing to learn more physics. I also understood that, by myself, I was perfectly able to study literature and creative writing but I was not smart enough to learn math without a mentor. I switched majors and studied Physics. I did so until finishing my PhD. The more I studied physics, the more I thought that it was really connected to literature and philosophy. When you start discussing possibilities in quantum mechanics, or start researching something completely new, you are in a discovering process, trying to unearth a story, questioning your own answers, proving yourself wrong and eventually finding a “result” and writing about it.
Writing is about transforming a life experience into the seed of a poem (story), letting it question or illuminate something in you (the writer) and your readers. That life experience can be physical or abstract or a combo. Physics is an attempt to understand the world around us, to decipher life, time and space.
That’s an excellent story, and very similar to my own line of thinking. In the end, I also received my Ph.D. in physics, but continued to hone my writing under my own tutelage. I feel that my scientific and engineering background has enriched my approach to writing, and that I wouldn’t write the same way without it. The key, though, is to start with the emotional in the first draft – then use the analytical process in the editing – and end again with the emotional.
Enchanting.