Poetry Forum

How very down to earth you are. Bacon sausage and eggs. Excellent. Love the stuff, and definitely NOT scrambled. But at the same time you managed to keep an air of mystique with the inclusion of the sea. Im guessing the scene is set in a dream.

relief for the skeletal
structure not to be beaten
into the long term
formative trend

I especially liked these lines. They seem to be having a dig about the daily grind of trying to conform.
I found this a lot more digestible than some other posts i have read. And it also appealed to me because its about sleep which is one of my favourite hobbies.
And call me thick but what is pellucid?

Doh! Toast bacon and eggs, not bacon egg and sausages. I did read it a couple of times but i have just had brekky. Have a guess what i had! But toast is good too! Sorry!

Like a dog!



...nice one there Pinky.

OK, an ode to dreaming and not having to get up in the morning (I think), but where does Kafka come in to it?

I love the evocation of the dream - strangely dream-like, actually, so that works a treat.

An intriguing one.

I am really going to go out on a limb here and ask if this poem has anything to do with Kafka's story "The Metamorphis"?

Gregor Samsa was an ordinary man who went to sleep and woke up a cockroach (or dung beetle). A story about a hardworking man who devoted himself entirely to supporting his family and in return they did not even meet his most basic needs because of their innate selfishness.

In your poem the man falls asleep in stages; the anxiety of what is to come, the need for control, then the final stage of acceptance. Acceptance of what? Acceptance that his skeletal structure is no longer to be beaten in the human sense. Acceptance of the metamorphis into bug- like qualities that are not bound to moral structures.
Gregor's existential lonliness transforms him into further degredation as a bug. His human relatives use their own set of values to define him as repulsive. The guy just can't win!

So he gets up and does a very normal service for himself in instead of what he is use to doing for others.
He is detatched, rejected and no better off. Even in the weightless freedom of not having to choose right from wrong as a bug. The metamorphis was easier in bed than living in either form.

Ok...I'm done but am I on the right track? My interpretation aside, I liked the progressive descent of words in keeping with the dream-like quality and not giving everything away all at once. You leave the reader feeling the poem instead of having to know everything.
Good read.

Cheers,
Kimberly

very good Kimberly,

thank you for the comments

what can i say - bulls eye! - I loved your analysis and insights !

Poem of course was inspired by Kafka short story - "The Metamorphosis" -

these are some ideas that influenced the poem:

Kafkas sees the "bed" as representations of idleness, illness - a birthplace of irrational ideas : " in bed he could never think anything through to a reasonable conclusion"

and also I find it funny: " As Gregor Samsa awoke from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin":

instead of waking up from a nightmare - he wakes up in one.

I find Kafka fascinating - the dualities, the crossing of many dimensions - dizzying endless logical steps of his reasoning - do not make sense in a linear tradional way of reading a story...

And his one page story: "A Message from the Emperors " is baffling and case in point.


All this of course can serve as a rich field of poetical musings


cheers
Arco

Hey Arco,

I thought this was great. Was introduced to Kafka's Metamorphosis earlier this semester and it was probably the most enjoyable assigned reading I'd had all year. There's not much I can add to interpreting your poem, I wonder if it might not work better in first person though?

Asleep, sweat beads
roll off the forehead - -
bathe the eyes - and into
the pellucid pool he falls
heading towards the bottom; - he's heading towards the bottom by definition of "fall."
arms flail, grasp
at small fish swimming away,
tries to stop the falling -
relaxes - weightlessness -
(no danger, it feels good;
no gravity pounding,
lashing the body -
a relief for the skeletal
structure not to be beaten
into the long term
formative trend - wonders - a reference to Gregor's shell?
when will the bottom
be breached ? - soon ?) - what does the "soon" add?
still falls:
when it is over;
get dressed, have a
breakfast of toast, bacon
and eggs (not scrambled),
so undisturbed, logical thoughts
can reach their realistic end.
This weightlessness,
this freedom , so [much] easier in bed. - Great, great ending.

Enjoyed this,

- Caleb

yes caleb a few moot points you rasie there,

however it is a very good crit - thanks !

I considered first person narrative, but i felt it wouldn't work strongly work as a sojourn, my original idea to be there with kafka - lol -

progressivley revealing the dream like scenes from another point of view

I dunno ... may change later ...

cheers

Arco


ps i have changed it to "so much easier " - sounds better

"soon" - the idea he does not want to spend in bed any longer than he has too ! - again - you may be right - moot point - dunno