Titan

daniel on Nov 30th 2009

Amble on and we’ll pore sweat over maps,
plumb with a chalk snap and mark twain:
this is the tributary where I first paid
the belle’s toll, a river of silver and gold.

Toddle on and we’ll find our sea feet
to the rise and swell of brine and stomach:
this retreating continent where I first voided
her saltwater kisses into a shallow trough.

Saunter on and we’ll cross swords and whiskey
shots across the bow like ships in the night:
the stern warning blinking dashboard red,
the iceberg, and the imminent disaster.

Filed in main | 3 responses so far

3 Responses to “Titan”

  1. # Astianon 27 Oct 2010 at 10:37 am

    This is really good. I’ve had a few of the lines stuck in my head since I read it in CC a while ago, but I couldn’t remember what poem they were from, so I googled them and lo and behold, it’s not T.S. Eliot but a goon!

  2. # danielon 27 Oct 2010 at 11:59 am

    Awesome! Glad I came up with something that sticks in your head.

    Man, I haven’t been back to Creative Convention for a long, long time. I should see what’s going on.

    Anyways… always nice to hear from a fan!

  3. # Astianon 27 Oct 2010 at 4:56 pm

    Oh, and to offset my praise, a critique. In the last stanza, the iceberg line (which I assume refers to the Titantic) seems out of place with the pre-modern naval warfare imagery. So does dashboard red, of course, but that’s so shockingly anachronistic that it’s awesome and pulls the poem out of distant metaphor into the passenger seat, whereas the iceberg retains the distance of the past without fitting in with the preceding lines.

    If you could think of another maritime disaster to allude to, you’d have an almost perfect poem.