My Twentieth Year - 18. Darkness brings the visitor

Perhaps number 37 puts me in mind of the way I feel some days...old, worn-out, done with the grayness of life. Dawn puts that weariness to flight, but nothing can keep it from returning.
If Number 37 feels soullessly grey, number 38 is fascinating for its use of words and word placement...one almost feels an antiphonal call and response going on between different parts of the self, or perhaps between Death and the Self. And the neologism, agress me, could not fail to bring me up short the first time through.
Both of these ache, and are full of pain. I could not help but wonder what held you fast that day in its iron grip when you wrote these.
As always, thank you for sharing your talents with us.

It's interesting we generally consider loneliness in conjunction with suicide. Yet, there are examples everywhere of people killing themselves in spite of having love. This is almost like the person resents having love. Very moving and thought provoking.

Read both of these holding my breath, only realized it at the end, when i let it go. How sad and lonely the author, at least to me, who wants to escape, or at least can find nor think, of a reason to stay, to live on. I'm grateful he did.

On 05/17/2016 12:27 PM, Parker Owens said:

Perhaps number 37 puts me in mind of the way I feel some days...old, worn-out, done with the grayness of life. Dawn puts that weariness to flight, but nothing can keep it from returning.

If Number 37 feels soullessly grey, number 38 is fascinating for its use of words and word placement...one almost feels an antiphonal call and response going on between different parts of the self, or perhaps between Death and the Self. And the neologism, agress me, could not fail to bring me up short the first time through.

Both of these ache, and are full of pain. I could not help but wonder what held you fast that day in its iron grip when you wrote these.

As always, thank you for sharing your talents with us.

Thank you, Parker. I seem to remember that much of my poetry was written in bed at this time of my life. I would try to go to sleep, but instead had these verses come to me.

Your take on No. 38 is particularly fascinating. When I typed it up recently from the MS, I wondered about the apparent shifts in focus, but decided I had to be faithful to the original. I have been with all of these poems, even though some of them leave me wondering.

Thanks again for your support. It means the world to me.

On 05/17/2016 01:14 PM, Cole Matthews said:

It's interesting we generally consider loneliness in conjunction with suicide. Yet, there are examples everywhere of people killing themselves in spite of having love. This is almost like the person resents having love. Very moving and thought provoking.

Thank you, Cole. I like and appreciate your take on the poems. Writing verse – especially the ones dealing with thoughts of self-destruction – helped me cope back then. With writing, one can live out an alternate, and thankfully here, it was the one I did not have to act out in the flesh.

Thanks again. I really value all of your support and feedback.

On 05/17/2016 07:36 PM, Mikiesboy said:

Read both of these holding my breath, only realized it at the end, when i let it go. How sad and lonely the author, at least to me, who wants to escape, or at least can find nor think, of a reason to stay, to live on. I'm grateful he did.

Thank you, Tim. You seem to anticipate my comments to Cole, which I just wrote below. I can picture you holding your breath, and I'm honored that the work affected you to such a high degree. Yes, our young poet made it out alive, and I'm grateful for him doing it too.

Thanks for a great review, and all of your awesome support.

Hasn't everyone been the position where, late at night, thoughts and recollections surface unbidden? Often they are unpleasant - surpressed during the day they invade when you're winding down in hope of sleep.

It should be your lover, your life's companion who 'lies beside me every night' and 'whispers things' in your ear instead of some malign influence which poisons your sleep and leaves you in the morning feeling that daylight is 'no victor' because darkness will return.

The writers of late C16 England understood the threats of the dark well with Nashe writing of 'The terrors of the night' and Dowland talking of 'night's black bird' making real the presence of sadness, melancholia and death in their lives.

These feelings are so very present in 'Night thoughts'. I found this distressing to read – imagining the 'black bird' hovering close by while, in the dark, the mind gives up its ability to think rationally, inverting the goodness of things and people, and so losing sight of the reasons to live.

I am so glad these thoughts were not acted upon but also grieved they were thought at all.

Sad, alarmingly real, and with almost every word carrying such weight.

On 06/05/2016 01:26 AM, northie said:

Hasn't everyone been the position where, late at night, thoughts and recollections surface unbidden? Often they are unpleasant - surpressed during the day they invade when you're winding down in hope of sleep.

 

It should be your lover, your life's companion who 'lies beside me every night' and 'whispers things' in your ear instead of some malign influence which poisons your sleep and leaves you in the morning feeling that daylight is 'no victor' because darkness will return.

 

The writers of late C16 England understood the threats of the dark well with Nashe writing of 'The terrors of the night' and Dowland talking of 'night's black bird' making real the presence of sadness, melancholia and death in their lives.

 

These feelings are so very present in 'Night thoughts'. I found this distressing to read – imagining the 'black bird' hovering close by while, in the dark, the mind gives up its ability to think rationally, inverting the goodness of things and people, and so losing sight of the reasons to live.

 

I am so glad these thoughts were not acted upon but also grieved they were thought at all.

 

Sad, alarmingly real, and with almost every word carrying such weight.

Thank you, northie, for an incredible review. Your comments alone are enough to conjure images of Goya and night creatures in my head

I think your comment about inverting good to bad, and bad to good is a brilliant one. I had not quite thought of this poem in that way, but it's a very interesting observation.

Unfortunately, in this period of my life many night poems were written, in the semi dark, with me struggling to create a fair copy sometime the following day.

Thanks again for your review and all of your support. I appreciate it a great deal.