NaPoWriMo Day 3
Clutter. Objects with peepers. Here's looking at you . . .
Hi ho! Today’s effort was prompted by the quotation I start with, a sentence from poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ journal (from the 1870’s-ish). I ran across that after this poem surfaced somewhere, one of his I hadn’t read before, or hadn’t remembered, anyway, and it prompted me to go looking for interesting things about Hopkins. He was a true weirdo (I mean that as highest praise and admiration); the Poetry Foundation has a pretty good selection of his poems, if you feel like exploring. There’s also Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Archaic Torso of Apollo” in here, and a spot of Ralph Waldo Emerson from “Self-Reliance,” a little ways after he says, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Dude could craft a phrase! Then, there’s the famous thing he said in Nature (1837): “I become a transparent eyeball . . .”. Feels fitting here, along with this fantastically funny/weird illustration by C. P. Cranch. And, plus, extra, bonus: here’s an essay about those illustrations in the Public Domain Review. Bonanza!
Gerard Manley Hopkins said “what you look hard at seems to look hard at you.” That means the dressmaker’s form is staring me down out of its torso like Rilke’s archaic Apollo you must change your needles they're dull and dodging fibers your seams are tacking back and forth only straight from a distance (Emerson said that embracing the beat of his own drummer) the green felt torso peers at me from the dial at its bust its heart chakra I suppose there is no place that does not see you said Rilke's torso out of the seven chakras the dress form only has two but it stands at attention and notices the mess splayed around it the massive bag of fabric scraps the paint-splattered cardboard the shop vac the half-finished garment on the table the dress form’s currently naked back is to the window so it doesn’t have to look at another day of icy rain though I suppose it can see the greengray sky out the other window a little slice of another world the black-and-white Dorothy returns to maybe eyedazzled after all the splendor of Oz outside it's kansas in here it's candy colored and I'm looking hard at the computer's bright rectangle eye I'm always gazing into its eye like I’m searching for treasure if someone looked at me like that I’d definitely turn away it would be too much I'd feel inadequate I've got nothing in here that good trust me or at least I don’t know where I put it go ahead come in and look around maybe you’ll find something you can use they say the thing about one person’s treasure being another’s trash here's all my trash and treasure muddled up together I can't even tell it apart some days the laptop's eye doesn’t even blink not once it feels like an xray that sees right straight through me to the table behind the rabble of inkbottles clamoring to spill their bright guts on all the paper in the world pools of shimmer and sheen and a word or two they'd like to have a word with you and a pen those rattle in their cups and bags and boxes they are legion warm in hand and skiing over the blanks inscribing them what they see is the camera view the action take before the avalanche they look at me and see I am their instrument to play