I Die A Little...

Max - this is a tremendous introspection on the passage of time and it's cumulative effects on our ability to make choices. So much here is memorable. I particularly love the second part:

Why is this a one-way street,

this wordless singeing exchange,

this quiet chipping at my very core?

Sublime.

In the third part, did you mean to use the word "tradition?"

This is personal Max, and I enjoyed it so much. Your respect for you parents is apparant as you question, your growth away from them, that they must watch, and your sufferring because so much in life is the same, and our children keep fighting the same battles, differently, and they are angry, it is a wonderful poem, and then you go on, I loved it. Ellen B

nice

This is a very sad poem. I read it to be your parents are sick and don't recognize you or the pain their in has somehow taken so much of the light that was there. I could be wrong but I guess that is the beauty of poetry that we can each read it a different way. I am sorry you seem to be going through a difficult time.

This is my favorite of all your poems, Max. It speaks to me of my own (and universal) struggle for independence and validation.

One of your best poems in English, Max. Every word is well chosen and carries with it your overall feeling of cultural conditioning and imprisonment; the speaker in the poem uses his biting questions brilliantly to evoke his helpless state, his impossible quandary.

You take familiar expressions and figures of speech--¨one-way street, my very core, free bird, guilded cage--¨and invest them with a new intensity by constellating them all together at once, so that the colloquial expressions for freedom and enslavement seem like dirtied coins of the realm tossed at the reader to reflect the inner anguish of the poet.

I especially like this line: ¨Why do culture, radition, protocol -
asphyxiate me like a muddy avalanche?¨

Uhhhf. Painful emotion to feel. This poem reminds me of the desperate attempts to break out of his upbringing of the great English writer, D. H. Lawrence.

And the last line really is a remarkable clincher: ¨Where are you, life?¨

Sadder words were rarely spoken.

Hi Tom and John, that was indeed a typo : 'tradition' and not radition, but then I posted this past midnight and frankly I was half asleep.

Sterling and Anne Marie -perhaps you know I am involved with a lot of single mothers and sometimes a story grips my heart with steely claws... then I turn those feelings in to a poem... I did that here. It seems the young lady who poured her heart out to my huge ears, may feel a little solace finding you all resonating with her in a global sense.

This is not about me, it is about someone young, energetic, ambitious and shackled. She used to write classic poems till last year... now life seems to have enveloped her like a stubbron miasma.

Cheerz!

How did I get locked inside a dream?

Where are you, life?

Wow it's as if you read my mind, very touching. I hope she writes again someday, it's very therapeutic.

The muddy avalanche can be escaped by shifting locations and perspective, opening wings full span even in the cold gaze of frozen emotions, can sometimes warm the air.....give the Spirit a lift....jar the love love that sometimes hides in fear, into a braver inner if not outer smile. I fly over this heady poem and toss feathers to offer hope.

Now that I came back to read your reply the poem has a whole new meaning for me this time. I read it this time from a younger point of view.

Guruji ,

I am a bit out of worsd to describe my feelings for the poem. It hasnt seeped in as yet. I do like some of the expressions in the poem. BUt not able to express how i feel

Agre Vartaman

Nimesh

good poem

You give a very clear voice to this young woman, Max. Lucky those who see their children as free unique beings, and lucky the children.

Thank you friends, I must reply to John F. Walter, my most consistent cheerleader in this motley group of writers here. John, you make me aware of some positivity in my writing stylistics, for instance the use of hackneyed phrases which have jelled into a new equation i.e. the sum of parts is greater than the total... this is something I missed myself.

D.H. Lawrence is one of my all time favorites. You honor me by comparing my attempts with his... of course his problems and approach were on a very different scale. I was very fortunate to listen to a dramatized version of his biography for the radio by BBC, UK some 30 years ago. Great stuff. Please do keep commenting.
Cheerz!

oddly riveting for me now.

"Where are you life?" What are you searching for Max?

Life, Barbara, life.
Ahem -this is someone else's tale so can't say more.
The clue is : many young ladies, feel lack of life in their highly mechanical lives.
Cheerz!

Many young..men and women..many middle agers many elders all are subject to feel the "lack of life" as you state above ..life can throttle us senseless..sometimes the best course is to let go of the tiger's tail and sit out a couple rounds!
Thank you for you introspective poem..it has wisdom..