Three Days' Longing
I look down at the dark cavity
of all that is left of my chest
and heart.
I've been picked clean.
The beat of black wings,
as the carrion eater
leaves.
I am roadkill.
I would call it back,
but without your light,
I cannot draw breath to cry.
I would see it leave,
but without your breath,
the light is gone from my eyes.
I would beckon it to stay,
but without your sight,
I am nothing,
but carrion leavings.
A day, and a week.
A day, and a month.
A day, and years four-score,
an immortal's lifespan and more.
And the sun's warm kisses,
and the sky's soft tears,
couldn't put to right,
this absence of your light.
This trial,
too much for my humbled frame.
The sound of approaching wings.
I welcome the return of this tormenting pain.
Better that than this
absence.
As always, this piece is dedicated to @mamadini, who gives me light to see by.
Thanks to all the Isle of Write members who gave feedback on this piece: @whoshim, @jrhughes, @carmalain7, @authorofthings, @themadrunnah, and @dbooster
Check out my latest pieces:
- When Stories Leave Us Behind – Empathy and The Narratives of Adaptations
- Acceptance - A poem.
- And Also the Moon - A poem.
The image used in this post is Gustav Doré's Jacob Keeping Laban's Flock, 1866, and is Public Commons. For those who need some help, that is when he saw Rachel for the first time.
art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
© Guy Shalev 2018.
I literally never know what to say to your works of poetry! I am deeply moved. Thank you. <3
I am humbled by these powerful words strung together with such mastery.
I don't know if I agree with that "literally never", as even if we do not consider the "I love that you wrote this for me" (and I never would fail to consider that), there are still poems you write back. How is that if not a proper response?
Thank you for the gift of words. Not just the words you leave here, or that you pen in response as your own poetry, but for the words you gift me which I then release as poetry. I just hope there won't be another "Three Days' Longing" to go through.
<3
Very moving. Your imagery is spot on. The feeling of being devoured like carrion I can readily identify with. Even as hurtful as it is, sometimes the pain is preferable to the utter abandonment.
Very much so. Pain is not the opposite feeling to feeling filled with love.
The opposite feeling is not feeling anything at all.
Glad to hear you liked it :)
Yes, and I've been at that place, too. You're quite welcome. Wonderful poetry.
A Promethus reference without a lick of flame?! i'm not sure how it was done, yet here we are.
ironic absence in a piece about absence. too. good.
The cyclical nature of the narrator's predicament:
and represented even better in the logic loop here:
creates the truly paradoxical feel of a life without light, growing back his liver only to have it forceably torn out again.
If there ever was a more apt literary allusion to the longing of a feeling of missing a piece of oneself, i certainly can't think of it.
Bravo, Guy, i still can't quite wrap my head around how you are able to maintain such quality in your writings with so much output. Puts me to absolute shame!
As much as i enjoyed 'Acceptance', this and 'And Also The Moon are the highest quality of bookends for this trilogy, indicitive of the strength of your first and last lines, i think.
Thank you for the share, my friend, very much enjoyed the read.
(lines 2, 4 & first half of 5 in this critique were lifted by me from the author during feedback and editing processes and are creative commons.)
For those who missed the note, Alain is too cute by half here. He said the poem is lacking flame, being about Prometheus and all, and I replied that it's a poem about the absence, especially of light, so it makes sense.
And also drew his attention to the drawing and cyclical nature of No light > No breath > no sight(light).
Anyway, I'm glad you liked the poem, Alain, and gave me feedback on it while I was writing it.
I have to say this piece isn't part of a trilogy with the two pieces you mentioned. Perhaps it's part of a double with "Acceptance", as that too is about being shorn of the warmth of one's loved one, though more due to self-imposed reasons than here. "And Also the Moon" is actually the last of the latest batch of "overflowing love" poems (but then, what is this one? :P), but is also a double with "The Mute Poet" of me deciding to actually venture beyond pure free verse.
It's interesting to try different things. But unlike with "Poem of Protection - Words of Warding" where I channeled things related to my normal nature without feeling them organically, the last two pieces came unbidden, and I'd have much rather kept at the more fun pieces.
As for the output and quality, I'll blame two things: 1. My muse. The pieces, they keep on coming. 2. I usually write my pieces quickly, and they come mostly formed. Fiction, poetry, or non-fiction. If you need weeks of editing per piece, then either the output goes down, or the quality. But when this is how you write, this is how you write.
But then of course the question is, how much better could it be were I to spend a week or two per piece? But that's not how my writing or inspiration work, so I don't really worry about it too much.
And I actually didn't intend for that "missing piece of myself" to come out of Prometheus directly. But I guess some part of myself did, because who said you can never learn anything about yourself from your own poetry? :-)
Wow.. Dts really nice
This is amazing. Hope you get more upvotes.
Inspiring....
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