Paper Plane (a poem)

[A W Eglinton]

Paper Plane (poem)

there's a book called Crash
with an obsession for steel:
wire brushed metal,
shiny, silky, sex-appeal
taming the taboos of fetish
into something playful and coquettish
where moral disorder
is allowed to seep through the borders
and soak the brain
in indelible nausea
it's fiction I hear you say
and not realistic in the way
white man has defined modern social order.

But take away the Ballard surreal,
and It feels cold remembering steel.
there’s no light
cos the windows are sealed
and no night cos
the bulbs stay up late
hanging in rooms
we called ‘triple 8’.
Mother’s womb – death tombs
made for no escape,
measured to scare off all remaining pleasure
8 feet long:
pale green, steel frame, wire mesh oblong
8 feet high:
every day I paint the ceiling with sky
8 feet wide:
it smells like a god-damned zoo inside!
cos the animals that don't abide
don’t get no soap
so they fester and itch
in suits that were stitched
to gag your body, your mind and your hope,
of its instinctive pursuit
to sweat in the heat, oh the infernal heat!
so you lie on your bed,
and try not to repeat the words you’ve been fed.

I scream in my dreams
at a boy of just three
his mum and his dad lie down by the sea
he’s licking ice-cream
and it’s sweet and it’s cool
but the next step he takes
will lead him to fall
a voice cuts the scene
both, foot and ravine
it’s Jones and his gun
grinning like thieves
cos its time - time for their fun.

bang, crackle, pop!
damp wood on top
of the open log fire
that provides me with heat
in my winter retreat.
the book I was reading
falls to the floor
the TV is on, there’s a knock at the door.
I get up from the chair, turn off the box,
glance at my watch and straighten my hair
it’s three in the morning,
pitch black outside
who could it be?
I’m scared but don’t hide.
so I undo the locks and take off the chains
no one is there but a white paper plane.
I unfold its wings and return to the fire
there’s a message in black
and I start to perspire:
whose writing is this?
who can explain
these words I’ve been fed?
and this gut wrenching pain?
i sink in my chair, take a sip from my glass
redo the wings, let it fly through the air
It spirals and falls,
comes to rest in the flames
and I read one last time
while it shrivels and fades.

​

 

[Eugen]

Brilliant poem! You take a bit away from it, though, by not breaking it up in stanzas, therefore one keeps scrolling down, hoping it will end soon. Get some powerful break points and you have dynamite. You do write well.

 

[A W Eglinton]

Thank you again Eugen for your insight.

This is the second time someone has said that about breaking it up. I brushed it off the first time thinking it's just symptomatic of today's short reading spans, but since you also pick up on it I am beginning to think there's a need for breakages as well.

 

[Eugen]

It does read far better now. Are you published?

 

[A W Eglinton]

No, to be honest I hadn't ever thought of publishing.

 

[novella]

This is an image-rich poem with many great sections. May I share my thoughts?

To me it seems either like two poems or that the main poem starts after the Ballard line. I feel that you may have used the Ballard -inspired introduction to work yourself into the subject. (This is a common practice for me, and you might see in my poem Drift that the first stanza is almost an incomplete story about something else.) There is a pointed disconnect between what follows and what comes before, in this case.

You may feel differently, of course, and feel that the opening is essential to the whole.

My second thought is that it is better without the Guantanamo ending. That seems almost like a cheap shot, when you have so successfully carried the reader into a certain mood, laced with remembered horrors, and remembered horrors within those memories. Perhaps a more cryptic message on the plane, less tainted by current events?

Please don't construe either of these comments as criticism, just what I would offer if you were in a writing group with me.

On the whole, I was carried away with the poem, which IS the point.

 

[A W Eglinton]

Novella - I like your thoughts, thank you.

Crash is the book the man is reading, the one that falls to the floor near the end. Yes it is a way in but then all stories, no matter how abstract need a vehicle - i'm not necessarily talking about linear narratives here. There are many ways to present it and metaphor is a common way but in this case I was more interested in the textures and feelings that Crash had left me with and how could I use someone else's work in something of my own. Granted, my poem may not have done the best job of weaving it in but then I know I am not J G Ballard

As for the ending, I see your point. And I am thinking about it.

[Edit] Having given the ending more thought, thanks to novella's criticism, I realise that it is not really what I intended the poem to be, not a piece of humanist social doctrine preaching the wrongs and rights of a US-run, UK-backed, Cuban blind-eyed fascist institution, despite how bitter my feelings are about the whole affair. There are already enough academics to teach the morals of right and wrong and i don't want to turn my poem into a teacher. Therefore I will tentatively remove the ending.

 

[novella]

Novella - I like your thoughts, thank you.

Crash is the book the man is reading, the one that falls to the floor near the end. Yes it is a way in but then all stories, no matter how abstract need a vehicle - i'm not necessarily talking about linear narratives here. There are many ways to present it and metaphor is a common way but in this case I was more interested in the textures and feelings that Crash had left me with and how could I use someone else's work in something of my own. Granted, my poem may not have done the best job of weaving it in but then I know I am not J G Ballard

.

Oh, I didn't get that, which was bad reading on my part. Sometimes I have to read a poem several times before I see it.