Post by Will DockeryPost by Will DockeryPost by George SulzbachSilk diamond
September golden bullet
The leather horse
Rider
With bad news.
Bringer of news
Sealed in a scroll
Over the limit
Time sent
The dust devil.
Thirsty desperado
With a taste for murder
And blood
On his soul.
I will never cross the pass
By winter
The icy demon
Charms us all.
-George Sulzbach
This one reminds me quite a bit of your earlier work I speak of, good spot
imagery, and use of color.
Thankeee Doc..............
This poem does indeed deserve a full interpretation/critique, which I hope
to one day manage.
Perhaps Pendragon will do the honors?
Silk diamond
Velveteen emerald. Plush amethyst. Cashmere cobalt.
Soft and smooth ... and yet a stone that's the hardest naturally occurring substance on earth and sharp enough to cut glass. A self-contradictory image that short-circuits any attempt to imagine it. Poe employed this technique in his poetry with phrases like "Bottomless vales" and "boundless floods," and religion uses similar "mysteries" to keep God unknowable to the faithful ("everywhere and nowhere," "the Holy Trinity," etc.).
Of course most poets and prophets have a reason for using such phrases, viz. to describe something beyond human comprehension. The problem is that I'm unsure what (if anything) is being described here.
Post by Will DockerySeptember golden bullet
Ammunition the Lone Ranger saves for his arch-nemesis, Butch Cavendish? What werewolf hunters turn to when silver fails to take down an Alpha?
And why September? Is this a reference to 9-11? Do bullets, like leaves, turn to gold at the onset of the Autumn?
Are these metaphorical bullets or the real deal?
Post by Will DockeryThe leather horse
Rider
With bad news.
Is the horse made of leather, like the "skin horse" from "The Velveteen Rabbit"?
Has the Lone Ranger gotten into S&M?
The image appears that of an Apocalyptic Cowboy heralding the end of the world ... or a strangely-attired singing telegram deliverer announcing the death of a loved one.
Or maybe it's the ghost of John Wayne announcing that the price of Ripple just went up?
So far this is a Will Dockery poem with slightly better imagery. The first stanza comprises three possibly related descriptions presented in sentence fragment form and lacking both a verb and a purpose.
Post by Will DockeryBringer of news
Sealed in a scroll
Another sentence fragment with Apocalyptic imagery.
Zod's parking meter ran out?
If you can't spend it, mail it?
The cops put a boot on Zod's car for unpaid parking tickets, but at least he can still vacuum it with his trusty Dust Devil®.
Post by Will DockeryThirsty desperado
With a taste for murder
And blood
On his soul.
So the S&M Lone Ranger has gone bad.
Post by Will DockeryI will never cross the pass
Bestow a Catholic blessing on Canyon Pass?
Screw up your bridge partner's play?
A typo for "path"?
The world may never know.
Post by Will DockeryBy winter
The icy demon
Charms us all.
And we build snowmen and go ice skating in the park.
While experienced readers would have given up on this at the "Silk diamond" sentence fragment, I'm going to attempt to make some sense gibberish.
The poem progresses from September to December (the onset of Winter). The poem is either about the season of Fall, or it draws on the popular cliché linking the seasons to the human life cycle, with Autumn symbolizing late middle age and Winter, old age and death.
In this case the "silk diamond" serves as a metaphor for a metaphorical bullet -- or, the lure of suicide. It is the beautiful silken promise masking a hard reality.
The Apocalyptic horseman is any devastating event -- the death of a loved one, perhaps. It could be the latest in a long string of tragic events that has pushed the speaker to the point where suicide becomes desirable.
The speaker feels that he has spent enough time suffering through his daily existence on earth and now wishes it all will end.
The death urge possesses him like a lamia -- it is thirsty for his blood, and has killed many others with its siren song of non-existence.
Each of us will reach this point at some point in our lives. "Diseases come, troubles afflict us; and this make life despite its brevity seem far too long." -- Herodotus.
IOW: Buried beneath the black velvet painting imagery, is the kernel of a universal truth -- one that has proven to be a common element in many of the time-honored literary classics.
In fact, were the Apocalyptic cowboy myth a bit more fully developed, and were the author to figure out how to compose a poem using complete sentences that actually link his fragmented thoughts up in a comprehensible manner, he might have the makings of a pretty good poem here.