Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Love Songs


blackened the swan
I blackened the swan
I blackened the swan
my swan
is gone.

murdered the fawn
I murdered the fawn
I murdered the fawn
'twas wrong
so wrong.

a queen with a pawn
a king eats the spawn
a knight dies at dawn
love songs
love songs.

3 comments:

Karen said...

I hope you get a chuckle from this, but I have no idea what this means! I like it, though, for its sound.

Now, I suppose a poem can mean whatever I want it to mean, so I'm going back to reread and see if I can figure it. Very interesting imagery.

KGT (aka Cagey) said...

Yes, whatever the reader wants it to mean, is what it means to the reader--which may or may not correspond to what it meant to the writer.

I am mostly interested in modes of artistic expression that get to an essence of "otherness." The fine grain detail is less important to me, and certainly literalist endeavors fatigue.

What DOES excite me is the tapping into archetypes, of tapping into philias and phobias, the most basic, most controlling properties of ourselves, those that define "is-ness." Those emotions, sentiments, urges, drives, that define us in spite of our self-conscious "civility."

...Naked before the mirror, so to speak, and form must follow function.

Thanks Karen-what it means to you is of interest to me.

Karen said...

Okay - here is my thinking when I read this.

The imagery of blackening the swan makes me think of burning the swan- a creature of great beauty.

The style - nearly stream of consciousness makes it sound as if the speaker is turning his actions over in his mind - almost simple in his thought - although it also has the cadence of someone running, perhaps from the event.

So - destruction of the swan (beauty) and then the fawn (innocence? Bambish?) The speaker knows he has done wrong.

Next - a queen with a pawn - woman/man - she's using him. The spawn? a child perhaps? Devoured by the king, so is this the spawn of an illicit love? The knight? Maybe the father of the child?

So -- that's the way it feels, but how does the final stanza relate to the first two? I'm not sure unless the queen, king, spawn, and knight are all representative of animals/nature, as well, and have nothing to do with illicit love.

Still - it sounds stream-of-consciousness, recitation of having done wrong.

Now -- have a laugh, because YOU know what you meant!

Ps- I'm not even proofreading this, or I'll erase half of it!