[oats]

all right. I nominated this, so I should probably give you a better breakdown. To be sure, I may very well have read this all wrong, but instead of generic compliments, which I'm sure have become tiresome and redundant for you, I'm going to go on a limb and say how I interpreted this.

at first, I must admit that the idea of a lighthouse in the wilderness was a little perplexing. I guess technically all lighthouses are in wilderness, but my initial association of "wilderness" is more of a forest or jungle type setting. which seemed to be more of what you were going for anyway. the metaphor worked though, at least as far as my interpretation goes, which I'll get into as I go along.

the first section (up until "go to war for our fathers") was tough. The writing was beautiful, though the concrete meaning was elusive. At first (I've read this numerous times by now) I thought it was an actual rose, personified. Next I thought it was an actual person being compared to a rose, and then I thought it may be a representation of the sunrise, her petals being light. I'm not sure which is right, if any, and to be honest I wasn't feeling this segment as much because of it. Usually your dizzying blitz of imagery and metaphor stand up to poetic interpretation and analysis, but in this instance I just couldn't latch on to much. Now, it does work in the big picture in the sense that I took this verse as a meditation on man's place in nature, and these were all glimpses at parallel versions of mankind in and among nature (the crown jewel of creation or "rose" that works to honor the beauty around mother nature/the disgusting belly of existence getting drunk wearing armor and killing each other for our fathers). So it worked and it didn't to me. Moving on.

starting from then till the end of the forestation part, I was hooked. Nostalgia always hits me hard, and the children at heart/picking the bark was a heavy dose of that. My first favorite line of the verse was the light reveals our fears but we're scared of the dark. That's the kind of writing that makes me pause with envy. Too sick. The snow-globe bit I saw again as a reference to nature - the inspiration and ingenuity of it that man can't replicate, despite our ability to break down and simplify (but nature is indivisible math - brilliant comparison). Then the tone starts to shift with:

may our children crawl as emperors the second they hatch
earth will quiver at their feet. Pangaea fissure, collapse
flesh a masterful arrangement of it's liquid and gas
feel it licking your hands. fire is wise, it quickly advances

though hatch may have just been used for rhyme, it was the perfect word. now we get the slide into the shittiness of humanity, birthed into a state of dominion that breeds entitlement and disregard. Pangaea collapsing and breaking into separate continents, analogous to the fissures we invented to separate ourselves from the rest of creation. Which works perfectly because post-Pangaea Earth has been the anthropocene era, dominated by human life. *insert superlative* comparison. Then comes the breakdown of man, we're but chemicals, akin to flames in how fast we advance and destroy. Again, provocative and compelling, if not a little veiled by the dense metaphor. But I like that - your work can be enjoyed on many levels.

I wish you separated the forestation and deforestation into different stanzas, if for nothing more than aesthetic readability.

I love that this section, dedicated more to the ills of man, was not overtly negative. You excel when it comes to breaking down components and analyzing them, for understanding rather than judgement. That's why this verse is so effective, when it could have easily been trite in the hands of another.

Mastermind or savage - the defining dichotomy of our existence. Are we animals, or something more? Our behavior as a species certainly blurs that distinction. That we burn down the very things that make us noble is just another "page in the chapter" of humanity. Though you observe this, you don't question, because there might not be an answer, and if there is, it's probably one best ignored for the sake of sanity (and because you would be an anomaly to pay it heed, meaning nothing would change except your level of frustration and sense of futility).

Our brains being the vast, fatal jungle webs is another thought-provoking comparison. Beautiful, but deadly, like the dilopasaurus (Jurassic Park reference). Then the repetition of ancient oaks and leather palms, though this time I read the palms as the palms of our hands, leathered from working with tools (likely to deforest the ancient oaks). Nice twist.

The final section reeked of defeat and capitulation. Waiting for death, we're vegetables compacted together in urban gardens - nothing but intention and carbon (another home run line). There's the resignation that we're bound to remain stagnant, even in the face of our self-induced doom. Why change? Rich and poor will always be there, and really we've had a fun ride while it lasted. The waves of apocalypse should be a beautiful sight while we have our dinner, so maybe we'll finally turn off the TV.


There you have it. My take on a verse that is as beautiful as it is challenging. Again, maybe I'm wrong, but it's what I got from the verse (plus I'm nothing but a smelly hippy - ask Certain). To me, HOF no question, though I can foresee this being too much of a puzzle for others to give it the nod, since it takes lots of reads and re-reads to fully appreciate what you're doing and how you're juggling these concepts. The sentence "this verse is about" can't be finished without completely ignoring the complexities of it. I like that. Great verse, Black.