You there: are you familiar with the most wonderful poetic stylings of one Lenni Sanders? Her poetry is most wonderful and the two of us are embarking on a poem writing endeavour, in which we write poems, between us, one line at a time each. It seems to be going well so far. Our first one is posted on her WordPress, here. So check it out. Here’s our second:
A Wasp
A wasp under a pint glass
- some form of creature-trap
rattled raw by a yellow bead,
ringing, ringing
its hundred times a second wings,
its buzz, its sting,
its lonely spiral repetitions,
its singing, straining capturedness.
This wasp my soul,
I cannot let it out.
I am afraid
I cannot touch it,
so I watch it,
so I grip this glass, tight.
My wasp spins circles like a carousel horse, and leaping at my palm,
eager, hungry for flesh that I dare not give:
a little thing that asks too much of me:
I cannot bleed enough to fill its thirst
and yet I cannot bring myself to crush it with a rolled up paper,
I cannot kill this piece of me -
this half inch scream of a tealight animal,
this flash of yellow, flash of black, of pain,
thrashing its poor body to oblivion against the glass,
smashing, obliterating into dust.
And, dazed, I raise the empty glass
but it is already too broken to fly
and, feebly humming like an old machine, can only bring itself to sting.
Pingback: Collaborative Poem #3 « whattaildoesithave
This is amazing. You developed in me a sort of empathy toward the Wasp. I used to do this a lot to insects as a kid. I found them all too fascinating. You two have such a way with words!