Poem: Obsessive-Compulsive

[apple_pathways]

I'm not really happy with the title of this poem, but then I'm never happy with titles. I used to be tempted to leave all of my poetry untitled, but then I read somewhere that "leaving your poems untitled is like leaving your children unnamed", and ever since I've done my best to put at least a crappy title on each one I write.

I called this one "obsessive-compulsive" because I have been diagnosed (among other things...) as "mildly obsessive-compulsive", and this poem pretty much describes my thought process.



Obsessive-Compulsive

I used to think, when I was small,
that brain waves could travel like sound
waves, their atoms colliding
and spinning through space. I used to
try to shield my thoughts from prying
minds, afraid that the particles
of thought could be snatched from the air
like grapes plucked from the vine. Of course,
if this were true, then what's to stop
a galloping idea from
careening 'round the world just like
a billiard ball shot 'cross the felt
and thrust into another one
(another and another one)
until the thought comes storming back
to strike me once again?



BTW, I really did believe this when I was a child. If I were, for example, playing a trivia game and I knew the answer to someone else's question, I would try to think of something else so the answer wouldn't somehow jump from my brain to theirs. I pictured my brain vibrating the molecules in the air (the way a sound wave travels) and the other person's brain picking up the vibrations.

Of course, I don't believe this anymore, but it still occurs to me everytime I'm thinking something I don't want other people to know.

Comments

[housemaid79.livejournal.com]

Love the images you use here - they are not only visual, but aural, tactile (I could feel the grape between my fingertips), and kinesthetic. I could hear/feel/see/follow the movement of the billiard ball on the felt.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

thank you! Not only for the compliments, but just for commenting on my poetry! (People seem reluctant to comment on poetry, but I promise, I'm not precious and can take constructive criticism!)

So yay! I'm glad to imagery worked. It's hard to know how to use just the right amount, especially when working in a structured metrical form; sometimes I wonder if I'm using a word just because it fits, and not because it's the best way to convey my ideas.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Hey new friend! I enjoyed this! The cadence of the last few lines in particular works very well. Since you said you don't mind con-crit, I'll delicately suggest I'm not sure about the grape simile - I totally understand why you use it, but I'm not sure it quite fits into the sound/wave/space language entirely. I think the billiards work because there's a sense of balls rolling, and in general the poem has a sense of roundness/movement. If you see what I mean.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I see exactly what you mean, and thank you for the notes! (This is just the kind of criticism I was looking for.) I wasn't sure about the comparison either, and it took me forever to transition from that simile into the rest of the poem--I almost made two stanzas, because I wasn't sure how to link with it. (That should have clued me in to how out of place it really was!)

It's funny; I used that image, because the night before I wrote this I had a dream wherein I was picking grapes off a fence, and I just couldn't get the idea out of my head. Perhaps I'll shelve it for another poem.

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Sometimes when one gets a really striking image it's hard to let it go, even if after the thing is written it doesn't quite work. But the joy of language is things can always be recycled! :)

I have no idea why, but the grape picking somehow made me think of Wendell Berry's Water (one of my favourite poems)... Perhaps because the thought of grape picking evokes a Steinbeckian sort of vista for me.
(Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.)

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, that poem is gorgeous! (*must not get discouraged by poets who are better than I will ever be*)

I'm sure the grape-picking image is going to be re-used; I usually have a notebook full of lines and ideas that I want to do something with, but I'm just getting back into poetry writing so such notebook at the moment.

Maybe as an end of the week treat, I'll go scan the clearance racks for a nice writer's notebook...