Shelley writes, "tragedy delights by affording a shadow of pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."
Spontaneous overflow of emotion--a laugh, a song, an expletive, a dance, a tear, a kiss. There exists within me overwhelming emotions that are all consuming, isolating, and force me to disregard all that reason dictates wrong. It is dark. It is bright--at times the warmth of a lover's embrace or the cold of a dark alleyway that reeks of stale urine and failure. Lie next to me and watch our dreams disappear down the neck of an empty whiskey bottle as the sun fades and takes my pride away. Leave me. My eyes burning with the ecstasy I stole from you but my lips want more. Don't leave me, tasting recklessness alone. Cut out my eyes and bury them in your breast so I can see your soul magnified. Knocked down, lifted up, immersed in a wet flame to flicker, swell, and exhaust.
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ReplyDeleteWow.... I'm so glad you let this happen, that is, as you said, turn into a "prose poem." It's beautiful. It's neat how reading the works in this class (especially Shelley, in my opinion) can inspire you, the entire class, and me to write things we never may have thought of or put into succinct and descriptive words. This new blog thing in the English department sphere has turned out to be a great idea. As I read and re-read this, I tried to pick out my favorite parts, but I kept finding that each sentence and word held such layers and imagery, making it impossible to choose. The move from "the cold of a dark alleyway" into a plea to a lover to "watch our dreams disappear down the neck of an empty whiskey bottle" is coupled well, and gives me further hope into the fact that romanticism lives on. There is such light, fullness of spirit, and comfort in an embrace on a cold night, but when your arms part, when your fingers leave the back of their neck, when you watch them walk away, hope is a bit lessened. You are, again, alone. It is, again, cold outside. Percey would remind us to persist in the "swell" of these clashing feelings, because what else is life? Your writing inspired me to quote Shelley, which I will do below:
ReplyDeleteAn excerpt from "Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude" -->
Upon those pallid lips/ So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes/ That image sleep in death, upon that form/ Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear/ Be shed -- not even in thought. Not, when those hues/ Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,/ Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone/ In the frail pauses of this simple strain,/ Let not high verse, mourning the memory/ Of that which is no more, or painting's woe/ Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery/ Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence/ And all the shews o' the world are frail and vain/ To weep at the loss that turns their lights to shade./ It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all/ Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves/ Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,/ The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;/ But pale despair and cold tranquility,/ Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,/ Birth and grave, that are not as they were." (Norton p. 762 in case you would like to read "Alastor," which you all should!)
(sorry, I tried to edit stuff.. darn)
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