LUKE DAVIS -- POEMS

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Just on about the first few pages of scrapheap btw, there's lot more to the book than that. Be interested to hear what @mvuent has to say though, no doubt much more coherent than my drunken ramblings.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
yeah my first impression of this poem, of its dramaturgy, was definitely in terms of the push and pull between spiritual uplift and destruction. the carp pond gets attacked, the guiding star rots and collapses. seems like it’s all over. but then…

so this line you mentioned stood out to me too (well, in my personal ranking it’d probably come at like 202nd but that’s just a testament to how many great moments there are here):
why can't we be happy
all the time?
it’s funny because you can imagine it emblazoned on the wall of some instagram mommy vlogger entrepreneur's beach cabin YET, in light of the above, there’s a bit of a “sad clown” quality to how this innocuous language is appropriated in the larger context of the poem. it’s a serious question phrased in the most facile, naive way possible.

the way the color gray gets invoked a few times throughout resonated with me a lot.

at some point while reading i started wondering about a naive question of my own... will "scrapheap" have a happy ending? obviously, as orson welles said, that all depends on the particular moment you end on. but will the final establishing shot be gray or blue? the title seems to imply that this particular journey is doomed, but does it need to be?

so with that question in mind the place it does end up at is very interesting. doesn’t invoke either color explicitly, but...

Harold gazing impossible harbour icebergs sail serenely
towards the shore seabirds circle angry squawking
icy air. your next samba class
little coloured houses cling to and guano on the rooves
little puffs of smoke drift all merry
from the chimneys sometimes
a walrus
drags it's bulk across the
pavements.

the dreaded grey is there in a way, in the icebergs. yet in contrast to how the color's referenced elsewhere, there's a feeling of enchantment in the air. i guess because the kind vast “billowing” blue invoked elsewhere is present as well. to me it seems, tacitly, like a happy ending. at the very least, this remote, comfy yet enigmatic little scene not where i would have at all expected to end up if i'd been assuming the poem would be a tragedy.

anyways… MERE SAUSAGE DOG
 
Last edited:

mvuent

Void Dweller
the way the color gray gets invoked a few times throughout resonated with me a lot
over the past year or so i’ve developed a kind of superstitious aversion to it, culminating in one particularly unsettling dream a while back. to me gray connotes an inability to do or feel anything, being slowly abandoned by everyone who can, and all of life's excitement and possibility shrinking out of sight in the rearview mirror. it creeps up on you if you’re complacent. basically, it's this. it’s not the worst thing in the world but once you’ve been fully enveloped by it you’re at the mercy of forces that are worse... "centipedes look for a way in, orange legs in terrible synchronization". the way the word is appears several times here struck me as eerily consistent with that personal association. so much so that i wonder if i skimmed through “scrapheap” ages ago and unconsciously retained some of it.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
damn copy and pasting destroys the formatting. guess you'll just have to open the book and see how it's supposed to look for yourselves folks.
 

sus

Well-known member
over the past year or so i’ve developed a kind of superstitious aversion to it, culminating in one particularly unsettling dream a while back. to me gray connotes an inability to do or feel anything, being slowly abandoned by everyone who can, and all of life's excitement and possibility shrinking out of sight in the rearview mirror. it creeps up on you if you’re complacent. basically, it's this. it’s not the worst thing in the world but once you’ve been fully enveloped by it you’re at the mercy of forces that are worse... "centipedes look for a way in, orange legs in terrible synchronization". the way the word is appears several times here struck me as eerily consistent with that personal association. so much so that i wonder if i skimmed through “scrapheap” ages ago and unconsciously retained some of it.
It's also why the opposite of grey is green.

Spirit sallies into grey nexus.
Ghosts hold forth their begging bowls. Particulate matter in the throat. Damp. Neither salvation nor retribution visit here. BRAIN FRENZY. pewter. The soft decisions of a spider's feet. Gossamer and grey lace. The grey tide of grey dust. This, is another forgetting.
 

sus

Well-known member
I have said to myself that I will fix my attention upon those things that
have most meaning for me. All that seems to me to contradict or threaten
those things I will do my best to modify or to defeat, and whatever I see
that favours and agrees with those things I will support and do my best
to strengthen. In consequence, I shall certainly be guilty of injustice, the
heraclitean ‘injustice of the opposites.’ But how can we evade our destiny of
being ‘an opposite,’ except by becoming some grey mixture, that is in reality
just nothing at all?
.
 

luka

Well-known member
for better or for worse im a real poet and my procedure is the standard poet procedure which ive successfully taught you
and you might be clever enough to advance that or you might be too stupid, but i tauht you the blue print so it's up to you i think
 

luka

Well-known member
but at the very least i was clever enough to grok the entire template and internalise it. which very few people can. and i taught it to you
in a very generous way which i dont think hardly anyone else would.
 

luka

Well-known member
so maybe you could be better than me. and if so that's great. but i invented modern poetry by understanding the template first.
 

luka

Well-known member
not exclusively, but sure, i think you can write better than me cos you are way smarter
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member


so this line you mentioned stood out to me too (well, in my personal ranking it’d probably come at like 202nd but that’s just a testament to how many great moments there are here):

it’s funny because you can imagine it emblazoned on the wall of some instagram mommy vlogger entrepreneur's beach cabin YET, in light of the above, there’s a bit of a “sad clown” quality to how this innocuous language is appropriated in the larger context of the poem. it’s a serious question phrased in the most facile, naive way possible.
In the Last resort there's "Cheer up, what's the worst that could happen?"
 
Top