Like Insects

Hey all - here's a poem I wrote 2 days ago... I might still tweak it in a few places, but I'm not sure. Maybe it's finished. Tell me what you think, eh?

LIKE INSECTS

The grace of your downcast glance
animates this still ink, see? Like insects
it pulses, coils, flexes, lives only
as you look.
Vulnerable in the same sense,
you can kill it easily
if you decide it disgusts,
but if it colorfully flutters
you might be convinced that you wish
it would alight nearby, share space
and beautify with its momentary presence.
Why is it we enjoy fixating our gaze
on a resplendent insect? Is it the
miniature intricacy of their design,
the engineered efficiency of proportion,
the way we can zoom in on singular,
glistening segments of carapace
or discern with aimed perception
the fibrous texture of a wing?
The innate way we appreciate
the exacting grasp the delicate,
pluckable legs possess as the insect rests for us,
the curious instinct we cannot resist
at calculating the interior experience
of this entity; which, while seemingly
insignificant at first, exponentially
accrues significance to the degree
of intensity that we apply and sustain.
You can only find what you contain.
The compassion of your continued gaze
goes as your soul decides, see?
The insect’s seeming fickleness as
it “picks” where it lands, corresponds
to your interest, to the inscrutable
objects your interest selects, sometimes
battering itself against a pane of glass,
sometimes moving outward like
a legion of gathering ants,
sometimes aggressive and cruel as wasps,
sometimes as purposeless and excitable
as grasshoppers, sometimes as sensuous,
languid, and effortless as self assured
butterflies, sometimes as singular and
humble as the ascetic moth.
All this applies to poems.
Segmented, distinct, particular,
organic and artificial at once,
eliciting quickly our visceral,
unconscious response.
So we see the way the Fly
makes feces its theme, courts
reeking shit as if no other substance
makes sense (those poets who connote
truth with base crudity, know no other
technique to move the reader other
than to give offence), reveals itself
so obviously with it’s
irritating buzz.
The lady bug is feminist, writes
of nothing other than the females
in her family, captures only mere
aphids of minds in her one-note capability.
The centipede is stream of consciousness,
never turns its disparate, equal, endless legs
into singular wings, and so never leaves
the ground, but crawls on incessantly
repeating the same utter nonsense.
On their bellies they will remain.
The spider has sense enough to be
obscure, to not share, to keep its secrets
and only show itself to those who might
find its wonderfully spun wisdom in
some obscure corner. Clever, sure,
but captures only enough to endure.
The mosquito you don’t notice till
it’s too late, infiltrates the poetry
community subtly then sucks it dry
by bringing it all to herself singularly,
ingratiates herself in some niche, numbs
the surrounding flesh with her PC poison,
and commences making a parasitical living
on the scene. Must be smacked immediately
upon recognition. The ant is all business,
no inspiration, still, it gets mediocrity
published, thinking only of its Queen-Magazine.
Maybe the bumblebee is best, it dances
in its community, communicates the path
its found the flower muses with its friends,
hums pleasantly and moves with a slow
and certain fluidity, intoxicating itself
on the muse of pollen, holding back its barbs
as a last resort, pleasant, dedicated,
effective, professional, the bee gets
published as assuredly as honey
is produced in the hive of academia.
The firefly surprises with the flash
of its personality, saying hey-see-me,
acting out, neat special effects for
a second, ultimately forgettable.
The daddy long legs wishes he were
a spider, long past his prime
and an embarrassing parody,
has no bite, and is picked apart easily.
None of them compares to the Dragonfly;
ornate, unique, independent,
fascinating, elaborate, rare,
able to hover and demonstrate
its personal nobility
and complete expertise
with its multifarious, encompassing
eyes and unassuming mastery.
We didn’t name it dragon lightly.
This is the genius and inherited
identity, the very emperor of insects,
discrete and definite in its activity,
impressive with its clever,
complicated simplicity.

I enjoyed the poem..I enjoy insects a lot. And I name many that I encounter.:P Tis is a delightsome poem. ^o^

I think I am ready to comment on your poem after reading it 3 times.  I really liked it more after each reading but there were some parts that were confusing for me.

It seemed to be in two parts and I think it would be good to separate them by an empty line before, "So we see the way the Fly..."

That particular section was a little disturbing to me because of its crudeness but I think it gets a point across.

I like the way you describe the different insects and I can think of people who remind me of each one.  Your words are very descriptive and I can almost see the things you are talking about as I am reading.

A couple of little technicalities; I think maybe you hurried a little too much on the second half but maybe it's just me.  I think the sentence "The ant is all business..." should be at the front of the next line rather than right after the word "recognition."  All the other insects seem to have at least their own first line...(after reading what I just wrote comparing the ant and mosquito, though, maybe there is a purpose for doing it that way.)

I don't understand this sentence:  "Maybe the bumblebee is best, it dances in its community, communicates the path its found the flower muses with its friends, hums pleasantly..."  I italicized the part that I had difficulty with.  Also I think in this sentence: "as a last resort pleasant, dedicated,...there should be a period after resort.  That whole sentence really doesn't make sense to me.  It almost seems to me as if you have turned something around and it should say the bee gets honey.  I think I understand what you are saying and I like the analogy of bees and honey to literature and publication!

I think there should be parenthesis around "hey-see-me." 

I don't really understand the part about the spider because I thought daddy long legs were spiders...

I think you could go more into why the word "dragon" means so much to you.  Some people might not think of it as such an evocative word.

I really liked this and I would like to know which one of these insects you think you most likely are lol.  I also hope you don't think I am a mosquito, though I guess I would rather be a mosquito than an ant, I guess...

Thank you for sharing this.

Ode to Bugs

Rael's a big boy so I'm taking off the kid-gloves here.

But that's not premonition that its about to get ugly - just frank.

It's a bit long and borders on stream-of-consciousness prose. But I know you put a lot of work into each line. Here's an idea that would make this one easier to swallow (if you allow me to use that figure of speech while talking about bugs).

How about simply breaking it up into multiple poems - a collection thematic of insects? And the common thread - with a little more work after the break-up - would be how the attention (and/or other qualities) of the targeted audience are similar to the piece as the spot-lighted critter?

Much of the standing work can be salvaged as-is - it would just be segmented, like an insect. Broken-up, we'll benefit from "the way we can zoom in on singular \ glistening segments of carapace \ or discern with aimed perception \ the fibrous texture of a wing?" rather than be overwhelmed by the writhing, wriggling swarm.

Just my 2-cents.

I liked the poem quite a bit - the descriptive language is both evocative and clear, and the comparisons of different types of writers was amusing. In the first section, the prosaic style had a gentle yet relentlessly persuasive quality to it; I heard the voice of a teacher who, whilst benevolent, has an urgent will to impart something of weight. In a few of its lines, this tone seemed to hover intriguingly between the anatomical lecture and the religious sermon, particularly with the use of exact, scientific language to explore more interior, metaphysical ideas. The divide between the human observer and the objectified (pinned down, even?) insect is therefore both unbridgeably immense and worryingly small, leading to an oscillation between detachment from, and engagement with these fragile, mysterious drones.

The second part seems to have a far more varied voice to it, one which flits between emotions such as envy, curiousity, mockery, awe, contempt, etc. This, for me, is what led to the feeling of the wriggling swarm which Writch described. I was never able to settle down into a rhythm in this series of sketches of poets/insects, but I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing, as it forced me to try and agree or disagree with your poet-types, thus confronting the ever-present prejudices towards the dreaded and yet mystical "other writer"!

However, I do think it could benefit from a quick edit for clarity. A stronger break between the first and second parts would be welcome, and the whole section about the bumblebee should be re-written - not only for the reasons above, but also because you're confusing the bumblebee with normal honey bees as regards their barbed, one-off sting. (I had a poetry tutor who was tyrannical about getting the details of nature correct, and heard him tell someone else this exact point!)

Otherwise it was a really good read. I didn't find it too long at all, and the flow was great, especially the few odd rhymes stuck in. I find your positioning of line-breaks very different to where I'd put them, but that's not a criticism, just an observation - was it perhaps written to be performed?

Here is an interesting excerpt from the book I am reading called Cosmic Consciousness:

After Confucious had seen Li R he said to his disciples: "I know birds can fly, fish swim and animals run, but the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked and the flyer shot with the arrow.  But there is the dragon; I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds and rises to heaven.  To-day I have seen Laotsze and can only campare him to the dragon."  We might say the same in our own way of nearly any of the persons mentioned in this book as having the cosmic sense.

He's talking about Gautama the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Paul, Plotinus, Mohammed, Dante, Walt Whitman and some others. 

That's a long poem

Good stuff there...I actually thought it was about your lover/muse/? after reading the first eleven lines.  That would have been a complete poem in itself. 

I couldn't help thinking as I read it that it was not actually a poem.  More like prose/meditation/essay and I found myself caught between being entranced by the writing and proofing it as I read to see why it wasn't actually poetry.  In the end the piece succeeds the test; I wanted to read it all the way through, and I want to read it again.