Fever dream: I'm
cutting through salmon-streams of piranha-people
scoops of sardines squeezed between whale baleen
shot out of blowholes, cut up by coral
strangled by tendrils, cackling deafening electrical crackles
just a small fish in a gargantuan pond
drowning in an ocean of omnipresent stimulation
FYI, my thought process as I read this:
ReplyDelete1. I like where the first line breaks. "Ooh, hey, Isaac's initials spell IM."
2. Piranha-people. Yes.
3. I wanted the sardines to be strained through whale baleen. This was probably mostly due to the PBS segment I saw on whale baleen a few hours prior. Shark's teeth fit the frantic scene better. Then again, shark's don't have blowholes. But then again, realism isn't necessary for imagery. This line obviously caused a lot of inner-conflict for me...
4. It's like "Dark Blue." But under the sea. And with more imagery.
5. Nice.
Let the record show that "whale baleen" is a better phrase than "shark's teeth" in this context for two reasons: One, it is more accurate. Two, it sounds better. I had the same image in mind, but I didn't know what it was called, and I thought that "shark's teeth" sounded better than "whale's teeth" so I put "whale's teeth." I know shark's don't have blowholes. I intended the lines/actions/images to be cut off from each other to mirror the feeling of being shuffled along in a crowd. Unfortunately, some of the lines *do* carry over, which just makes it confusing. But hey, "confusing" is another way to describe that crowd-feeling, so in a way, it works. (Like my logic? Because it doesn't work, it works.)
ReplyDelete