man, what a treat it is to come back to this piece after a few days away. All your recent pieces, I'm glad they are captured here for me to find some inspiration when I need it (especially when I find myself quite drained because my eyes have been searching for inspiration a good bit of late).
It's funny, our approach to writing could not be more different, me afraid of space (and conscious of it), I'm a clutterer while you are the king of creating space (or maybe a Tetris champion), and you can feel it most in these pieces where they become long from.
It's just easy and smooth to read you, Guy, like whitespace on the page, you guide a reader along so smoothly that sometimes it takes me more than a few stanzas to realize something a few stanzas back really caught my attention and blew my mind.
I don't remember if I mentioned it in earlier drafts, but here are my most noted of those in this piece:
How concisely you convey this key shift in the piece:
And they have come to love the message,
more than they loved the truth.
And they have come to love the messenger,
more than they loved the truth.
O My Brothers and Sisters!
and the other key transition point, for me as a reader, here:
In trying to show the world of you,
I have learned that you have your limits.
I doubted, and in doubting, thought.
I thought, and in thought, was.
Was alone, once more.
I know longer poetry pieces rarely get reads, but I so hope some are pulled by your Empty House pieces to come here.
If that worked, the people who constantly had to keep buying bot-votes would be able to stop. Alas. But I've got some of the people who count here with me, and that includes you, friend Alain :)
You told me you loved the Descartes reference, but not the other, and not the shift in tone.
Inspiration is a funny thing. I think reading a lot of dross saps you of inspiration. Commenting and critiquing are also creative work, so they take on your stores of energy, and inspiration. So you need to be careful of overgiving, when you need to find time for your own voice to carry.
I've always found the best thing for inspiration is to either create, specifically non-fiction, which leads to all those other ideas you need to get to, or consuming. Our minds turn all we consume into material to use later. But not when we keep giving. Or when we consume too actively, especially bad stuff...
I do hope my stuff helps you find something to say, not just here, which is always appreciated, mind, but when you seek to take to pen on your own.
Finally, I'm going to ask what you mean about being a clutterer versus my white-space mastery. Your poems don't seem too stacked in black space. Do you mean that your lines tend to be all the same length, and that you keep each stanza of the same length as the others? Don't butter me up, Alain, speak clearly :P