lit_luminary (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lit_luminary) wrote2009-06-14 02:10 pm
lit_luminary) wrote2009-06-14 02:10 pm
Entry tags:
"Mistake Averted": Free Verse
Watched a few House episodes yesterday and came up with this: a dæmonverse AAU spin on S2's "The Mistake," told as a poem in free verse.
Mistake Averted
It would have been a shock, perhaps, if
he were just human, picking up the phone and hearing
a measured voice tell him Rowan was dead.
As it is, he’d seen death in black masses in the man’s chest,
in the tracery of metastasis like a web
(with Atropos standing beside, scissors poised).
He’d waited out the hours that day, wondering
whether his father cared enough to tell him or not.
Not a surprise, really, that the answer had been no:
when had it ever been anything else?
‘No’ in every ignored request and unanswered question,
every broken promise. Every consult, case or research paper
chosen over time with him. Every present bought
with the idea that it could replace love.
All he can think is that there’s a sort of justice in it,
that Rowan’s life was choked out of him as mercilessly
as Rowan took his mother’s. His only regret
is that the correct response to a father’s death
is not supposed to be relief: no more wasted emotion,
no more possibility of a threat.
We’d mourn him, Kylie says, if he’d really been our father
and not just half our genes.
She’s right. The woman on the other end of the line
is the only one who thinks this news is important.
He thanks her politely, hangs up.
Spares a thought to wish Mum has a chance
to tell Rowan what he deserves to hear
before he goes wherever a soul like his belongs, and
that that place isn’t as pleasant as he’d expected.
(It’s not a charitable thought. But then,
he believes in a goddess who metes out
justice as well as mercy.)
He has a patient to attend to, asks the standard questions.
Her symptoms make him suspect a bleeding ulcer and
diagnosis comes easily, with reassurance in the same breath:
“It’s all right; we’ve caught it in time,”
as he leads her to an exam room.
And as a general note, I've hit a creative breakthrough with "An Art of Balance" after reading some of Joseph Campbell's work on the heroic cycle and a bit more on the Jungian concept of the shadow-self: I now have the story mapped more or less to the end and can begin actually writing it. Extremely thrilled about this.
—D.
ETA: Alternated between writing my prologue and taking notes for future chapters; also found a book that should be very useful. And I just had an idea that wants to incorporate itself into the story's climax; it appeals to me on a number of intellectual levels, but at the same time I find it bizarre enough that I'm wondering whether I've had a stroke of genius or one of insanity.
Mistake Averted
It would have been a shock, perhaps, if
he were just human, picking up the phone and hearing
a measured voice tell him Rowan was dead.
As it is, he’d seen death in black masses in the man’s chest,
in the tracery of metastasis like a web
(with Atropos standing beside, scissors poised).
He’d waited out the hours that day, wondering
whether his father cared enough to tell him or not.
Not a surprise, really, that the answer had been no:
when had it ever been anything else?
‘No’ in every ignored request and unanswered question,
every broken promise. Every consult, case or research paper
chosen over time with him. Every present bought
with the idea that it could replace love.
All he can think is that there’s a sort of justice in it,
that Rowan’s life was choked out of him as mercilessly
as Rowan took his mother’s. His only regret
is that the correct response to a father’s death
is not supposed to be relief: no more wasted emotion,
no more possibility of a threat.
We’d mourn him, Kylie says, if he’d really been our father
and not just half our genes.
She’s right. The woman on the other end of the line
is the only one who thinks this news is important.
He thanks her politely, hangs up.
Spares a thought to wish Mum has a chance
to tell Rowan what he deserves to hear
before he goes wherever a soul like his belongs, and
that that place isn’t as pleasant as he’d expected.
(It’s not a charitable thought. But then,
he believes in a goddess who metes out
justice as well as mercy.)
He has a patient to attend to, asks the standard questions.
Her symptoms make him suspect a bleeding ulcer and
diagnosis comes easily, with reassurance in the same breath:
“It’s all right; we’ve caught it in time,”
as he leads her to an exam room.
And as a general note, I've hit a creative breakthrough with "An Art of Balance" after reading some of Joseph Campbell's work on the heroic cycle and a bit more on the Jungian concept of the shadow-self: I now have the story mapped more or less to the end and can begin actually writing it. Extremely thrilled about this.
—D.
ETA: Alternated between writing my prologue and taking notes for future chapters; also found a book that should be very useful. And I just had an idea that wants to incorporate itself into the story's climax; it appeals to me on a number of intellectual levels, but at the same time I find it bizarre enough that I'm wondering whether I've had a stroke of genius or one of insanity.