Source
r/OCPoetry•
NigelTMooseballs

Black Ice

Disaster stretches
a second like a rubber band,
a new masterpiece,
the world
stripped to the core of its meaning,
smeared across the windscreen in swathes
of colour and pure feeling -

this feeling

which floods through me
when my feet crush white diamonds
into black ice,
when my head reels in the steam
of a radiator
pissing its life all over the road,

and I shake like a lost lamb in the cold,
without a scratch,

what is it?

Is it juice from a nectarine that runs
still warm from the sun down my chin?

Or white sand, cowrie shells
collected and strung up with string

for the soft-downed apricot skin
of someone who came
together with me
so intensely that our heads exploded.

Is it my own heart that
pummels me awake in the night,
or the drumming hooves
of horses?

It is Death? It must be.

She has pushed me up against the wall
in the hallway with the door still open,
rain blowing in,
one hand on my face with a thumb
pushed in my mouth, the other down my jeans

then pulled away laughing
at my white face,
my wide eyes,
and whispered with hot breath in my ear,

this,

this is what it tastes like.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/sacdb9/misery_loves_inability/htsy4j7

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/sa5vek/hear/htsysvm

Posted Jan 22, 2022, 11:03 PM UTC

1313
AdaptedMix•

I enjoyed this. So much gratifying imagery, right from the beginning, with 'disaster stretches a second like a rubber band' and crushing 'white diamonds into black ice'. I read it as the disorienting moment after a car crash. Personifying death is a little old hat - for that reason, I prefer the first half - but sexualising it/her is an interesting choice. Is the speaker comparing the rush of a near-death experience with that of a sexual near-climax (or indeed sexual assault)? It's intriguing anyway.

3
NigelTMooseballsOP•

Thanks mix I appreciate your thoughts. Actually you've identified what it is that I've been struggling with this... how to get across the idea that the near-death experience makes life feel so electric that it almost is a giddy sort of feeling, and for a while I've been interested in the reason the French for orgasm is a little death. Philosophically I mean. I agree, personifying death is very old hat. I have to find a way to make this work without needing that. Writing this, it felt unavoidable that death had to appear as a 'character' who says, alright, you've had a taste of me, how fragile and and intense, and ultimately all the more precious your life feels now. Yaknow? I'll mull this over!

2
xXgender_krisisXx•

I love the imagery; it shows the complexity of human emotion. You refer to death at the end and pain, but for some reason, I don't think it has negative connotations. This poem reminds me of love, oddly. The feeling of vulnerability like a lamb, tasting the sun's warmth (courage), the sweetness of nectarine, and making your heart beat so much it feels like death, all of these remind me of love! The wave of emotions that come from falling with someone reminds me a lot of this. The female personification of death is the lover being flirtaious, only giving you a taste of whats to come. The extreme sensuality of this poem is awe inducing.

2
[deleted]•

A beautiful piece

2
lenny_from_da_block•

I really enjoyed this Moose! I may have cheated a bit and read your reply to someone else's comment where you explain a little more. I got a tad confused when I hit the line about the nectarine and the following images, and started to grasp your meaning better when I got to the stanza about waking in the night. I'm becoming quite a fan of your work, your imagery constantly draws me in, even if I don't always get it immediately.

2
ms33333333•

Disaster stretches
like a rubber band
a new masterpiece of pure feeling
a lamb to the slaughter
then pulled away
laughing at my white face

When a poem is all over the map emotionally and technically, my classically aligned heart is inclined to pick out the most forceful words to see what's being said. You're running a second train here: how it all tastes. Hard to do; different tropes. Play your strong hand and see it through. Stay open to the possibility that what you didn't intend is the more promising part of the poem.

https://allpoetry.com/Smithy9

2
ms33333333•

my edit is offered as a process, not a replacement - amend more promising to equally promising part of the poem - I could see where taste as fear could come into it but just as a detail not as a competing second half of the poem. Hmm, on further reading, and AdaptedMix's unpacking, this is quite inventive. I like the second half as counterpoint, But tidy it up and make sure it's clear that we know what's going on.

1
NigelTMooseballsOP•

Haha thank you. You know, it seems natural this was going to end up a confusing piece. It was a confusing moment. I really didn't know how I felt about it, only that right then, in that moment, somehow life was amplified, it was electric. I was alive in the sense that I very much almost wasn't and every sense was on fire. Much in the same way your senses are lit on fire in some of the situations that followed. Perhaps I've got to work on finding a harmony between my own obscure train of thought and how it's received through my writing.

1
ms33333333•

Your comments are an excellent guide to writing the poem. Achieve what you say the poem is about and you'll have something special.

2
ms33333333•

The ending reads more like poetry; the opening reads more like stumbling. Need to balance that out and make the opening clearer and more inviting. Then control the ending so it doesn't so it doesn't undermine the poem. Just so we're clear, this isn't good writing:

which floods through me
when my feet crush white diamonds
into black ice,
when my head reels in the steam
of a radiator
pissing its life all over the road,

This comes closer:

She has pushed me up against the wall
in the hallway with the door still open,
rain blowing in,
one hand on my face with a thumb
pushed in my mouth, the other down my jeans

1
MentalPoetryGuy•

This was an interesting read. I never thought I’d read anything, let alone a poem, that sexualizes death, but here we are. The imagery is vivid and clearly contains your concept. It makes me wonder what it was that inspired you to write this, or was it that near-death was just a concept you’d been exploring?

I’m not usually a fan of irregular pacing in poetry, but I adore the way this was written. It displays to me how far I have yet to go in my writing.

2
NigelTMooseballsOP•

Thanks, I am also just beginning to experiment with irregular pacing. This was in fact inspired by slipping on 'black ice' (the road is frozen in a way that makes the patch of ice invisible) and completely writing off / totalling the vehicle but walking away totally unharmed.

2
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