Coffins Marked With Your Name...

[notavailable]

"Coffins Marked With Your Name (Carved Before You Ever Became)"

The horizon births another day
In the valley of dust and decay
The broken here bury their lives
Aspirations to never survive
Barriers of man and of ocean
Set progress in circular motion
And in paths tread years earlier
Lays weary the broken dreamer

Hungry as ever
The daylight shall swallow and sever
Us as meat thrown to the hounds
(And) night shall shed
A curse of fear and almighty dread
Until all our resistance drowns

In day all feel the sky's weight
Spent running from a sealed fate
Coffins marked with your name
Carved before you became
And a seed planted deep inside
Given to be your only guide
Says there is nothing to leave
But even less to believe/achieve

Hungry as ever
The daylight shall swallow and sever
Us as meat thrown to the hounds
(And) night shall shed
A curse of fear and almighty dread
Until all our resistance drowns

The end of this road meets
The other end of the road
No conclusion, no beginning
No climax, no triumph
No interlude, no solitude
And no escape
No escape

Coffins marked with your name
Carved before you became

Hungry as ever
The daylight shall swallow and sever
Us as meat thrown to the hounds
(And) night shall shed
A curse of fear and almighty dread
Until all our resistance drowns

Coffins marked with your name
Carved before you became

[Brent]

First stanza is probably the best I've seen from you, I really like the imagery and vocab usage, sounds like a mishmash of earlier and newer stuff I've written

[notavailable]

Thanks. I was worried about the rhyme scheme. I try to stray from simple predictable structure, but it seemed to flow better that way in my head. The "chorus" rhyme scheme made me feel better though. Hooray for odd structure.

Also, if anyone's wondering, this is about my other hometown (the one i currently live in, not the one i grew up in, aka Stanwood). This is definitely not me hoping to lure FERD BERFEL into analyzing this particular piece of writing.

Anyway, I am thoroughly proud of it. It went relatively smooth with almost no forcing.

[Muffy]

I wish I could come up with lines like that, not the rhyming scheme, but the meaning.

[Josh]

Very awesome.

[radar]

Very good, Landon.

Have you thought about writing a Shakespearean Sonnet before? I know you said you try to avoid "predictable structure," but you might want to try it:
www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xSonnets.html

[Jacob]

That link said cumming in it.I was very nervous to click on it.

[Shiv]

I wanna like it, but conventional rhyming just turns me off, to be honest

It probably works when applied to music, but reading it on its own is just....ehh.....


But I'm an ultracritic, so whatever

[radar]

Dec 8, 2009 20:59:25 GMT -5 Jacob said:

That link said cumming in it.I was very nervous to click on it.

E.E. CUMMINGS

[Ferd Berfel]

I promised that I'd analyze this poem if I got the chance. Seeing as how I don't have anything to do for the next three days, I might as well make good on that promise.

First, something that needs to be addressed:

Dec 8, 2009 20:59:25 GMT -5 Jacob said:

That link said cumming in it.I was very nervous to click on it.

DURR HURR HURR

Grow up. Seriously. I realize that you're probably still in high school and find that kind of humour ever-so side-splittingly hilarious, but really, you're stupid.

It's not funny, and none of us here have found it funny since the 8th grade. You were probably that idiot in sex ed class that was giggling in the back row the entire time. No one thinks you're funny, just ridiculously annoying.



So, on to the analysis!

At first impressions, this poem makes me think of the proverb "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust". Phrases such as:

"Barriers of man and of ocean
Set progress in circular motion
And in paths tread years earlier
Lays weary the broken dreamer"

and:

"The end of this road meets
The other end of the road
No conclusion, no beginning
No climax, no triumph"

bring a bleak imagery to mind, telling of the futility of life; saying that although we may struggle and yearn for things, for power, for prestige, for fame, all of it is meaningless in the end.
Those are both very beautiful passages, perhaps some of my favourite writings from young Landon.

Now, as I saw from your post earlier, this poem is written about the town that you live in. That knowledge would lead me to believe that you hold some kind of animosity toward the town, or perhaps the way that people in this town lead their lives.

In examination of the third and fourth line:
"The broken here bury their lives
Aspirations to never survive"

I am beginning to think that the town you describe is a place for people who have failed in their lives. Failed, perhaps, to achieve their dreams or their aspirations. It would seem that you are surrounded by people who have given up hope; they have resigned themselves to waiting for a fate they knew would come for them all along.

That is what I'm getting from this poem. I'm sure there's more to it, but that's what I can come up with in the moment.
Thoughts?

[Jacob]

[notavailable]

To elucidate, I am speaking of the town's strange ability to trap young people. In my experience going to high school there and living amongst many of them, there was a great sense of imprisonment. Most of them had glorious ideas for their future but they spent no time on achieving them, and rather settled with remaining as a zero, with no goals, no hopes, and ultimately no future.

The prime examples are two kids I knew for quite sometime. One of them was forced out of his home as a 16 year old, and essentially dropped out of high school and became homeless, hopping from couch to couch until only very recently. He constantly spoke of going back to school and getting his diploma, or this new job he was being set up with that was going to get him a car and a house and whatnot, but none of it ever happened, and he is now 19. He recently got out of the town, moving to minnesota, and it was eerie how quickly things began to turn around for him.

The second example is a girl whom I was very close with during high school. She had some issues at home, and this consequently caused to go from doing college work in high school (aka "running start") to being full-time high school to being transferred to the black hole that is ACES (the school for dropouts basically) in less than one school year. She eventually dropped out entirely, and lived with another friend of mine for awhile, saying all the while how she was going to graduate on time and get an apprenticeship at a tattoo parlor, and go to college. None of these ever happened, and only recently has she obtained a job at a store in the mall.

There are dozens more examples, but the whole city has this aura of entrapment for younger people, and even for myself it was easy to slip into it, and I barely pulled myself away long enough to escape. Its the strangest phenomenon I have ever encountered, and its a feeling I still can't shake. Thus this poem.

[Ferd Berfel]

Wow, and while I was writing that, I had actually put in a paragraph about how I felt that precise sort of vibe; the idea of small towns trapping people.

I shouldn't have dropped that paragraph

[notavailable]

Haha its really not a small town, at least not in comparison to Stanwood. And its not out in the boonies either, which makes the vibe even weirder.