elephants rumble beneath the surface:
the grey wrinkled galloping, ponderous plodding
raising the hairs on my skin
like your breath on my neck
or a sacrament.
in other words, I am not at ease.
pachyderm vibrations ripple through
unseen kidneys, joints, entrails.
all the inner machinations
feel a certain sense of dread
while the visible me
refuses to fear.
I'm curious how this poem is connected with New Jersey; I grew up in south Jersey, and I don't recall subterranean pachyderms. Could you shed some light on the subject? Thanks.
Posted by: Joel at October 23, 2004 01:43 PMit happened in Newark. the airport, to be specific. it was also written there.
(it's a metaphor.)
peace.
Posted by: bob at October 24, 2004 12:52 AMDid it happen there or just was written there? See, I knew about the latter, but not the former.
Posted by: Evan Donovan at October 24, 2004 03:32 PMi guess this poem talks about how i was feeling much but showing little, the better to soak up good impressions of the group. some people were showing me glimpses of myself at different points in my short life. others were giving me a perspective of where i might be in the future. people were talking, reflecting, having relationships. i was just cutting loose and feeling whatever i overheard people feeling around me - is the right verb here "overfelt" instead of "overheard?" i don't know.
anyway, the feelings were romping around within me. they were just pieces of emotion whirling around like kitchen cutlery in an Oklahoma cyclone... or you might say they were stampeding like so many unruly, undetected elephants. i felt very old. and very wise. and as if i had just rounded a bend in my road, only to see a long, rolling plain opening up before me, divided at an angle by a long, lonely ribbon of dirt, a road whose end I cannot spy.
so it happened there and was recorded there. :)
Posted by: bob at October 25, 2004 12:05 AMcool. sometime i'd like to ask you who was who :)
Posted by: Evan Donovan at October 25, 2004 11:55 AM