Apart, or: A part

Posted on by ben Alexander

Poetry Partners #148

‘Loneliness!’, a poem by Artem Miachin

If you will run behind me, I will run faster.
You will stumble and fall lower.
Raise your eyes - there is no me...
If you will follow me to pursue,
You will tired, step back, lower your eyes. Here I'm! (I'll kill you).

And if you catch up me to turn around - you will see soot instead of a face.
I will run away into the darkness of the old winter forest and let them look for me.
There I will ask some woman for help.
They feel nothing for me, and life is gray step by step.
Like that old lady.

By the time I die, I'll have solved this riddle:
“If blood flows like a flood - everyone is hunting for me must wear a snood...”.
“Behold, he travaileth with iniquity, and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made...”.
Do you know how people die from the cold? - blushed.
It is for this reason that I understand - a rifle is better than an insidious woman.

It's a button! Don't press it. Look!
There, where we go will white snow and serene blue will bang.
Playing with fire and water can be extremely unsafe.
There is no time and energy to stop!
Here time and physics are the phase with a distance of one atom.

This is ... Ours,
With you,
Game.
It's old and new.
Play into a sociopath game...

A shadorma by ben Alexander of ‘The Skeptic’s Kaddish’

loneliness
will only conquer
lovers two
together
when a mere atom's distance
is wintry white wood

flames of love
refract through gray mist
producing
prismatic
rainbow bridges transcending
riddles old and new

Let’s write poetry together!

When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.

–Ben Harper (b. 1969)

Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!

List of Poetry Partners

27 thoughts on “Apart, or: A part”

  1. This discussion reminds me of Vysotsky’s story about someone sending him a note from the audience, “What did you mean by this song?” His response: “What I meant I already sang about.”
    Question: with all due respect, would you feel comfortable, David, to help Artem, tactfully, of course, with his verb forms? Yes, I know, I am a card-carrying member of grammar police – sorry!

      1. That’s entirely up to you, David. I would never wish to offend a contributor, and he is good as a poet, but grammar is his weakness. I hope he appreciates your corrections instead of being offended.

  2. The first poem was so dark and hopeless. And although yours spoke to loneliness it also was hope filled.
    I read the conversation with abvr and have to agree that loneliness seems to be a state that is the providence of the elderly. But in my experience 20 somethings are lonelier than the elderly!

    1. Abi, you know I prefer to leave interpretation for the readers 😉

      But when I wrote those words, I was thinking of how the dynamics of love between any two people are complicated and riddle-like, both as something altogether timeless and also as something unique and new to every couple.

      ❤
      David

      1. Oh thank you for simplyfying it for me David
        That sounds beautiful.

        At first I found both poems complex and morbid.
        However, true
        Loneliness is a terrible state.

  4. I have a question?
    Did you understand that Artem the poet was speaking to loneliness or about loneliness when starting out the poem ?

    1. to be honest, if it hadn’t been for the title of Artem’s poem, I wouldn’t have picked up on that, I think… but I reread it multiple times with his title in mind, and it made me think of how a couple that isn’t getting along can actually end up feeling lonelier in their unhealthy dynamics than individuals who are actually alone and without partners.

      ❤
      David

      1. So much appreciation for your insight.
        Loneliness can also be devastatingly weaponised and some of the imagery in Artem’s poem has done exactly that.
        It is so sad how the image of loneliness is stereotyped and made to be the affliction of an older person, particularly a woman.

          1. Terribly unfortunate
            With full malicious intent.
            Some older people no matter their material status
            Are living without fear of lonelines
            Except in the case of tragedy.

          2. it’s interesting though… I know that the global pandemic highlighted the loneliness of a lot of older people who could no longer interact freely with family members – many of whom could no longer receive visitors…

          3. Yes, this is true under those conditions. Still there are many who despite the pandemic have weathered that isolation.
            The point for me is that people in their prime or even younger are hardly painted in this way.
            Loneliness in the minds of even the creative is synonymous with age.
            Forgetting that people enjoy their lives in different ways.
            Being withdrawn hardly says that the person is battling loneliness.
            Older people find ingenious ways to get on with their lives till the day they crossover. It is only tragedy that can take them to the edge, to die by suicide.

          5. Thank you.
            I just wanted to say a few words on growing old.
            And being by yourself or on your own.
            Some men and women choose to be that way.
            Others find a partner

            But I do think that you have good reason, unknown to me, why your pages featured these poems today.

          6. well, I try not to judge the poems I receive – they’re all expressing something from within the people who write them; and, honestly, this one made feel sad for the writer himself – his description of this relationship is painful for me to read… all of the imagery (not just the old woman) is really brutal.

            The poem just left me feeling sad and rather hopeless for the writer because it sounds like it’s a repeated experience for the narrator – a “game” that gets played over and over again.

          7. You are wholesome and kind. ❤

            I on the otherhand could’ve withheld my pen and allow for the presence of these images as brutal as they are, leaning towards the older woman’s psyche.
            I didnt. I did not.

            Very painful, these games that are played.
            I pray the narrator grow stronger and find ways to decidedly make loneliness powerful guide.

          9. Sometimes people can’t. They hold onto that one person for dear life. They can’t imagine loving another so intensely and so dearly, and in this process they break their own hearts.

            I don’t judge them. Not one bit.

            But, I would caution them about demeaning another’s status to drive their narrative.
            The implication that women should always dye their hair and never allow for the gray to grow out and allow for the silver-lining to be blessed.
            Why lay the blame at the feet of the old lay with the gray hair?

  6. Wow, both are great poems. Thanks for sharing David 💕✨ I love the lines
    “prismatic rainbow bridges transcending” that’s beautiful❤️

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