Becoming Frillless Smoke

original spoken-word poetry

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Becoming Frillless Smoke

Sharp stones jutting out:
shards, uphill, in spring.
Sharp smoke cutting doubt;
symbols, reveling in freedom
on the trail of hieroglyphics
spinning, spinning,
while staying still.

Specific feeling dissolves,
all's become diffuse beyond sight.
Rapturous glow, lemon hue
and cerulean turns watermelon
before my incredulous eyes,
neon pink past atoms
I see the fabric
with no frills added:
magic of emphatic correspondence.

Lens-glimmering film cut star-shape
the dull glow of a luminary dream's cape
seen in the day's full sun-brightness.
In the straw, my own likeness,
offspring of my fancies,
my own nemesis,
lovely beguiler,
sweet-word-spinner,
your porcelain fingers slip through my grasp
into the stratosphere—
while I remember, embering here:
sharp smoke in the moist godessship
of spring amongst moss and stone.

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Written & Spoken
By @d-pend
4/13/18
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Image credits

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1 — "Craggy Gardens Hiking"
by Shashaa [cropped]
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2 & 3 — "Majestic Mist of Spruce Knob"
by somadjinn [modified as source stock]

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Notes

First some notes on the title. Though generally the English language disallows the use of three consecutive letters, there are a few exceptions in somewhat common usage. Most notably, skulllike (like a skull) frillless (without frills) and godessship/hostessship/
headmistressship/etc. Without a doubt the more popular way to write these is with a hypen: skull-like, frill-less, godess-ship, etc.

For this piece I preferred to remove the frillish hypen in the construction frill-less to opt for the plainer, no-nonsense version. I have faith that readers of English are intelligent enough to cognitively process three consecutive symbols, especially armed with the knowledge that inner symbols of words are generally condensed subconsciously to read faster.

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The piece itself is a abstract telling of my springtime hike to-day, but the bright watermelon-flesh hues of the waterfall-foam interacting with the sun (if you look for long enough in the proper manner) are real indeed. In the pristine and full simplicity of nature, our psychic convolutions and complexes find eager mirrors for their exposure. The background sound in the audio is my recording of the waterfalls in question.

I never consider my Steemit posts finished pieces but rather sketches for further exploration. Therefore, editing critique and scrutiny of all sorts are allowed on my blog (and quite welcome, to contrast the large percentage of spam and/or generally insipid commentary.) Since "criticism" has such a negative connotation, you could say I am requesting your "analysis" or "systematic impressions."

The piece itself is more in the vein of spoken-word than poetry proper: part semantic word, part music of word-tones. It is specifically intended to be heard or read aloud, not only mentally. If you do leave me feedback on this or any of my pieces, don't worry about being an expert in anything. Just tell me honestly how the piece makes you feel or think, and that is enough. Have a wonderful day!

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