Awake
poetry by
heather
17 September 2001
7 comments
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You're still up and I'm still up,
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the only two people awake in the world.
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So there must be a reason
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better than distance
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when we\'re not together
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comparing dark circles
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sprice:
This whole poem is so wonderfully circular, and not-quite-circular, conversation-like, and like reasoning under the influence (of another). |
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and counting the hours of sleep
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we don't get
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and talking 'til morning
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so we can pretend
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that nothing but accident keeps us awake,
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together. That's one more night gone
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when sleep happens,
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or doesn't, in between sentences,
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and I'd wake up answering
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where I left off,
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a nap between paragraphs
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and you still think that I always make sense.
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That's one morning more
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I wake up, or don't,
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stupid with love,
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sprice:
somewhere in here the line breaks stop feeling wander-y, like they're the product of a mind struggling to remember what came before the caesura, and start feeling a little bit rhythmical. Did you want that, Heather? |
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or with sleep deprivation,
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and you're stupid too,
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sprice:
...ouch... |
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only not over me.
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You're still up and I'm still up,
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the only two people awake in the world.
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cutler:
I like this refrain. In fact, I like refrains in general. They (like staza breaks, but perhaps more effectively) segment and organize poetry nicely and cut down on image barf (bwhahaha. . . this term just occurred to me). . . that poetic tendency to spew pictures onto the page (can I hold T.S. "a heap of broken images" Eliot responsible for this trend??). Now that I'm done expounding on poetic trends (sorry 'bout that), a question: is this refrain a specifically beginning and end only type of thing? or would you consider using it once or twice more? I like how the refrain emphasizes that nothing has changed and at the end of the poem these two individuals are precisely where they were at the beginning (still up). But I can also how it might work as a repeated reminder (still up, still up, still up, still up) over the course of the poem. |
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cgroom:
This comment has nothing to do with this wonderful poem, but with the timing of the poem. I was working
alone late at night fixing Skein when this arrived between pressing 'refresh' on my browser window. I really
felt like it was a sleep-deprived dialog, the exchange of words between us two non-present people. |
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sprice:
Whereas it's 10:40 PM, I'm dead on my seat, and thinking "That's so not me." Except that I've been there so many times with people, unable to stop talking late into the night. And 'round about 3 or 4, if it's anything but the other person keeping me awake, I begin to hate the world... |
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samira:
Heather, I think that this is a stunning poem. It evokes a particular mood well enough to give me goosebumps and toss me back into its mindset. In addition, I think that the use of language is neat (as in tidy), controled, and appropriately sparse. I like Cutler's idea and think that it is worth playing with, though I am not sure how II would like the ultimate effect. |
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Content © copyright 2001 by Heather R. Weidner. All rights reserved.