The RetroLounge Daily Poetry Thread (Mon 12/19/05)

[RetroLounge]

The Art Of Drowning

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,

a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.

Billy Collins

***********************************

Drowning in the sea of life...

RL

[swimboy]

1. What is a life?

Wait, wait!--I wanted to call--I am somebody! I was somebody. The clouds on the surface seemingly don't care. Is a life of infinite value, or no value at all? I'm afraid to spend too much time with this question. If I'm home by myself, I have music I know I shouldn't hear.

Thanks, RL.

[RetroLounge]

2. Hey! Good Morning!

and happy freaking Monday!

:hi:

RL

[swimboy]

4. How the hell are you?

I've got Monday goin' on. I swam this morning and now all this drowning talk!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. Metaphor, my friend.

Wouldn't want to try it out myself.

I miss being able to swim everyday, back when I went to the club and actually worked out.

:hi:

RL

[GOPisEvil]

3. Reminds me of a dream I had about drowning in paper.

That's an interesting poem. Kinda disturbing on one level, but very revealing on another.

[RetroLounge]

6. drowning in paper?

Sounds like some jobs I've had...

RL

[GOPisEvil]

7. Yeah, we HAD automation, but I learned the job on paper first.

Dear God, did THAT suck. x(

[wildhorses]

8. gasping for air I am...damn it all

I will rise to swim and fight once more!!!

[RetroLounge]

14. Hell yeah!

:hi:

RL

[RevCheesehead]

9. Well, that's depressing.

I remember hearing somewhere that drowning can actually be a peaceful way to go, once you let go of the panic.

Ah, but this isn't really about drowning, is it? It's really more about looking at your life and choices made, and being disappointed that there is no big "Aha" discovery. No moment where we find the answer to "what does it all mean?"

I don't buy it. Not for a minute.
Even in the lowest moments, life is still a page-turner. You wonder how on earth you're going to survive, but somehow you do, you recover, and you go on to the next adventure.

The meaning, it turns out, is found by turning the next page...

:hug:

[RetroLounge]

10. "once you let go of the panic"

yeah, life can be peaceful in that way too...

:hug:

RL

[In_The_Wind]

11. The sea of life takes quite a but to navigate.

It's waters are filled with sharks.




I wish you sunny days and safe passage through the sea of life ~ RL :hug:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. My dear RetroLounge....

Today I am drowning in my own losses.....so this is very apt indeed.

Thank you, as always.....

[RetroLounge]

13. My Dear CP

I can give you these...

:hug::hug::hug:
:hug::hug::hug:

Hope they help...

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

15. They do, and I thank you.....

[RetroLounge]

16. Evening Kick

:kick:

RL

[Thom Little]

17. Another favorite Billy Collins poem

Japan


Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

[RetroLounge]

18. Beautiful!

Thanks for posting this...

:hi:

RL

[XemaSab]

19. How depressing!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

20. That's Life!

:hi:

RL