Source
r/OCPoetry•
neumonia-pnina

i hope my corpse stays intact

I'm having a looot of trouble with this one. It's not thematically consistent- everything after "and if that's too much to ask" isn't that relevant, and the smart move would probably be to split it into two separate poems, but I feel like they wouldn't have enough substance, and I want to link them somehow. So I'm asking that you focus on the themes, but if there's something you want to point out about the craft, please go ahead.

I wrote this over a longer period of time than usual, and my mind was drifting, so there's a lot going on here, and it's only loosely connected: the whole archeology thing about the history seeming distant and intangible, and existing vs. living, and death being the completion of a cycle... it's messy, but I don't know how to clean it up, or if I even want to connect these themes.

feedback 1

feedback 2

i hope my corpse stays intact

and i hope some archeologists dig it up

and see a body like the ones they see in the mirror-

if mirrors still exist-

and not just the vestiges of a worn-away skeleton.

maybe then they’ll be wonderfully aware,

for just a moment, that people existed the way they existed

warm and fleshy, without a speck of the purity they try to preserve.

and it’s not enough to have my lifespan compressed into a single revelation

but if i lived it through as a person, then i guess it doesn’t matter.

i know the feeling of existing, it’s so straightforward

maybe archeologists will see the full picture,

digesting centuries of colorful suffering like novels

but i’m painting square inch by square inch until i reach the edge.

living is some elaborate scheme that i keep my distance from

as full of holes as a slice of swiss cheese

billions of sentences twisted into cutthroat plot lines

cut off by three letters: f-i-n.

mortality is pretty simple.

and if that’s too much to ask,

i hope my corpse melts away into the ground

and knows that death is real.

i’ll pay my dues and feed the soil,

and my name will be crossed off from a few lists

i’ll go back to the place where i was before birth-

ouroboros’s fond nostalgia-

as for now, i’m not quite sure if i am whole

because this incomplete circle scraped into the sand

is really more of a curvy line.

Posted Mar 13, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

1112
kiltedweirdo•

i love your mention of ouroboros. i try to show them in the body of god series. the symbology here is good. and i like how it wanders. like a collection of thoughts.

2
agree-with-you•

I love you both

2
kiltedweirdo•

i agree with you. i love you both as well :)

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kiltedweirdo•

if you want to bring a math joke, add to the end, "and making a curvy line is as easy as π.

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neumonia-pninaOP•

Thank you! Looking at it now, I can see the appeal as just a haphazard collection of musings (especially with the weird, random lines like ‘a slice of swiss cheese’ or ‘warm and fleshy’). Maybe I’ll just leave it like this.

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kiltedweirdo•

"digesting centuries of colorful suffering like novels" one of the most thought provoking lines when i read it.

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Tamturr•

I very much enjoyed it, it didn't feel thematically different to me from beginning to end, but rather a progression of thoughts. Tangential but connected. Some lines darker and some more light, but I felt like I was following a real persons thoughts as they went along, which to me adds to the attraction of the piece.

I love the contrast between the first half, with making it seem (to the archeologists) that your life is real vs the second half of the poem about making your death feel real, and then circling back to birth.

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neumonia-pninaOP•

Oh, I'm so glad to hear! The contrast was intentional, but I was worried that it would seem more like a contradiction. I like the way you put it! Maybe the ouroboros line was more significant than I intended, lol.

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Tamturr•

I would say the goal of feeling real after death or - by circling back to birth - being real again pervades the poem, and so it is really describing quite beautifully that desire to be real and to stay real, however that may be accomplished, and is quite the opposite of contradictory :)

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Planetxodus•

I really like the concept you’re tackling here. The writing reminds me not so much of a journey, but rather a rumination of thoughts that can be placed no where else. Very refreshing!

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fortune_stealer•

Great job. The line "if mirrors still exists" really captured how far into the future your poem could go. Everybody talks about the afterlife but nobody really describes a corpse as detailed as you do. If a poem gets your imagination running the way mine did, that's how you know you did a good job.

2
nownobody•

Reading this was a very immersive experience! It felt like I was listening to a monologue of a very specific, distinct person. Your poem has a lot of personality, and obscurity that comes from how personal these words are. I loved the theme/ narrative of the whole poem, of thinking about future archaeologists digging up your own corpse, very self reflective. And I also liked how you literally used a "mirror", in this very self reflective poem! I think it improves the poem by bringing actuality which makes the point clearer to understand and feel.

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