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Autumn Diary

The autumn is at last commencing in Worcestershire with bare brown trees and Bumble bees, well the latter strangely absent.

And the smog from the car exhausts
Competes with early morning fogs
And the leaves turn to a litter of sorts
Making fine carpets for grey footpaths.
Darker nights for much darker times
Darker mornings too, the milk float's
Lights & electric hum now echoes odd minds
As the world rants and finance shouts
That everything is not so fine
With the fundamentalists and anti-Darwinists
And those that will never shine and
Who obfuscate the light.

The cold wind blows from the Urals my grandmother used to say, those forbidding Steppes are always swept, perhaps remotely clean.

Now the crepuscular light prevails
And a retarded God eventually cries
And wonders why he made so many evils
He finally shouts and successfully dies.
Humanity will surely follow him now
And kill everything honest and good
The enlightened will try anyhow
And do everything that they could.
But it's too late my friend
For you did not have eternity
The sanity has come to an end
The emptiness now sublimity.

The sun sets and the birds go to bed and the lights go out in the town, even the Deciduous are decidedly destitute and their leaves are not green at all.




Author notes

For Louis MacNeice

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Comments

1 - 15 of 15
  • Dark Diatribe!

    Phew! for a great write! Needless to say I don't agree with all of your conclusions here, but nonetheless this is a dramatic & potent write. You certainly can be very vitriolic when you want to be can't you, you cantankerous Cyne! You really need to expand your categories a bit, you'd get many more readers! This is most assuredly dark, thoughtful, relating to Society, Spirituality, Nature...etc! Interesting AN! Seems he was a bit of a genius eh? BTW...Steppes almost cleanly swept.... genius!


    • Cynewulf
      October 7
      Edit | Reply
      Well, thanks ... expanding my categories ... the pot calling the kettle black ... methinks. How do you know that I want more readers? You should read some Louis MacNeice. He was originally from Northern Ireland but lived & taught in Birmingham, he even writes some poetry in the dialect that my grandparents spoke.

  • ea silver member
    October 7
    Edit | Reply
    Okay, now I am reading it more as a tirade against global warming, and yes, it is highly annoying that the Anti-darwinists think it's "just God huggin' us a little bit closer" but they are not the only ones driving SUVs.

    • Cynewulf
      October 7
      Edit | Reply
      Well, I was trying to tie in a few things with the idea of autumn getting bleak & cold with a look at the world & particularly my own psyche ...

  • ea silver member
    October 6

    Edit | Reply
    I like the structure you use here, I guess this is what you are referring to about the experimental nature of the piece. To me, it seems to be about the financial crises, especially since you wrote or at least chose to post it today of all days, and the last two lines, which I think are quite good, speak to that with the trees being decidedly destitute. Of course, it could be a metaphor for writing circles or anything else that is lacking. I like the forbidding steppes of the Urals being always swept - it's somehow ominous and made me curious about that part of the world, to the point of even looking it up on a map. The whole piece is depressing and blaming the anti-Darwinists or ranting at them seems irrelevant since we're all in this together.


    • Cynewulf
      October 7
      Edit | Reply
      I just used the obscurantists & creationist anti-Darwinists as an example of the encroaching darkness (like the autumn). The poem will need quite extensive revision I think & perhaps lengthening somewhat.
      • Hey!

        Leave us Creationists alone! There you go lumping us Creationist with obscurantists & then linking us with encroaching darkness? How on earth can you even stand to have exchange with me?

        • Cynewulf
          October 7
          Edit | Reply
          Well, I thought I might be able to save you. Between the creationist USA & the fundamentalist east I don't know who to fear the most! Thank God I live in Blighty!!!!
          • Keep up to date!

            You need to keep up with World news! The majority of the US is not creationist & hasn't been in a long time. The educational system in this country is rife with Evolution taught as fact instead of the Theory that it is!

  • Just Mercedes
    October 6
    Edit | Reply
    Now, this is a good step for you! I like the form and the flow, your thoughts at times take over into 'telling' rather than 'showing' so if you plan to revise you could look at that tendency. Lovely images though, quite stark and forbidding, perfect for the season you describe. I love 'decidedly destitute'


    • Cynewulf
      October 7
      Edit | Reply
      I was influenced by MacNeice's rather long, almost narrative like Autumn Journal so I suppose the 'telling' & not 'showing' was a bit inevitable. I think in drama it is a good maxim but I think if done well you can get away with it in a poem. Particularly if you try to inject a sense of monologue.

  • loopster
    October 6
    Edit | Reply
    Very good, sad..... depressing...... good! One suggestion;

    The enlightened will try anyhow
    To try everything that they could.

    I think the word try is redundant here, it sort of messed up the flow for me. But maybe it's just a loopy thing!

    I like the form a lot! Leave it to you to be so original!! I enjoyed this a lot.


    • Cynewulf
      October 6
      Edit | Reply
      Cheers, I think the flow could be worked on as well. It is experimental in many ways. This is very much a 'work in progress' ... watch this space!

  • arafura
    October 6
    Edit | Reply
    Very deep and insightful work my friend! Wonderfully well expressed.


    • Cynewulf
      October 6
      Edit | Reply
      Cheers, it was a bit experimental. I may revise it in future times.
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