DESPLOME
Plane crashes are the new tornados,
the recurring modus operandi of my dreamtime disasters:
mechanical mayhem is the new wrath of nature,
the ground coming up is the new sky reaching down.
The tingling sensation of falling, oddly pleasurable fear,
a count, in Spanish,
veintisiete, veintiocho, veintinyeve and
on treinta,
fire and darkness galloping at me like
nightmare horses in some
demolition derby.
Thirty is the new zero.
Bracing for impact is the new waking before the crush.
Being dead is the new being alive.
In the nothingness I hear voices I don’t recognize,
Mexican angels but
I don’t speak the language.
Purgatory is the new 3 AM.
Resuscitation is the new wake up call.
Not knowing is the new knowing.
© Bryan Borland
This!!!!!! You must go on more vacations, this is brilliant, morbid, self serving and aware…I dig your new alcoholic poet.
Write on Brother!!
bindo
July 4, 2009 at 9:58 am
Thanks Bindo. Maybe it’s the liquor making me dream in other languages?
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:00 pm
vice is the new avant garde. You’ve definitely been tunneling inward Bryan and if you keep writing like this, I may be forced to skulk away with my ineptitude and faux abilities. Either that or take my last bit of pre-vacation energy and up my literary game. Hmmm…I’ll think on that one. That was truly excellent mon amis, keep that hatchet poised and chisel away for sake of the work.
valbrussell
July 4, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Oh Val. You had me at vice.
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:00 pm
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DESPLOME =AB PoeticGrin.com: The Poetry of Bryan Borland « Poetry Book Publishers
July 4, 2009 at 1:38 pm
What I like about poems where you are writing from a place of potential memory is how unique your images are. You don’t just retell a possible event, you put a voice to it a swagger.
i love the part in spanish and the line 30 is the new zero, although i’m not sure if i would get it if i didn’t know you were talking about flying and being 30
And voice is what I want to mention here because I think the voice changes in the last sentence, which maybe is what you want, but it becomes kind of cheeky whereas the rest of the poem is very smart and filled with apprehension.
yay!
jessiecarty
July 4, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I am unsure of the last sentence… I had the poem closing with “I don’t speak the language” but thought that didn’t wrap it up as nicely as I wanted… but then dreams rarely come in nice little packages, do they? I might slice away with the current last line.
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Also – blame the dream for the 30 – I woke up confused about the count-up instead of a countdown, but then I realized…
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Okay – I’ve changed up the end a bit to take out the tongue-in-cheekiness.
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 6:35 pm
“fire and darkness galloping at me like
nightmare horses in some
demolition derby.”
Ooh, positively lovely!
Joseph Harker
July 4, 2009 at 2:31 pm
gracias, mi amigo.
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Stunning~ Your vacation has served you well my friend. This poem is great. Happy 4th.
Michelle Johnson
July 4, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Thank you Michelle. Hope your Fourth was full of fireworks (unless you have animals that are scared of such things, in which case I hope your Fourth was not full of fireworks.)
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Dreams are truly some of the greatest impetus for awesome poets. Nice job putting into such vivid words!
Tel
July 5, 2009 at 10:26 am
Some dreams just slap you in the face so hard you have to turn them into a poem. I was so happy with this nightmare I forgot to be scared…
poeticgrin
July 5, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Surreal and real. Plane crash survivors have said they feel a sense of unreality, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening…and this mimics that well. You should know many plane crash victims have aortic tears, because your body stops but your heart does not stop going forward. I learned this from a book by Mary Roach called “Stiff.”
Your crash is an inevitable as my next manic state.
FYI, readers: Bryan isn’t a *new* alcoholic. You’ve been had.
medicatedlady
July 5, 2009 at 3:59 pm
More ‘dreamtime disasters’, please!
Loved it.
queerlefty
July 5, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Exclent!
Thirty is the new zero, that is great and true, you discover why physics have been failing
lately so blatantly.
And this:Not knowing is the new knowing. is just fantastic (let me put it in my web for a day), I will pay with a little more mediocre phrase, but promise to do my best
just one detail when you say
-veinti siete, veinti ocho, veinti nueve, and on trieta,
it would be, at least I belive so far
-veintisiete, veintiocho, veintinyeve y treinta
(adivina que dice esta letra sin leer un diccionario para entenderla)
marianasoffer
July 5, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Thank you, Mariana! I will edit. My knowledge of second languages in sleep is not the most fluent.
poeticgrin
July 6, 2009 at 6:10 am
Advertised on MSNBC last night, a new show called “Why Planes Crash.” I thought of you. I know I will be watching.
medicatedlady
July 6, 2009 at 7:49 am
I am *so* excited to fly to Chicago next month!
poeticgrin
July 6, 2009 at 9:04 am
Great poem! I’ve never believed that dreams are meaningless and I think that, when analyzed, can be help to us in our waking life.
I love the line: “the ground coming up is the new sky reaching down”
For some reason it just seemed to ring so true to me.
A little creepy that we posted about similar things in the same week…I mean, really, are Spanish and death a natural pair or what??
Keep writing what you dream! It’s facsinating!
Rachel
July 6, 2009 at 10:01 am
The Yin and Yang of what goes up
must come down transformed, and disfigured.
Dreams of falling are quite common,
but you made this one rise up to the task.
Spirals are the new merry-go-round grounds
for scientists and poets alike. How smashing!
Uncle Tree
July 7, 2009 at 4:01 am
Whoa…this is something different from your usual style.
I like the rhythm and beat of this work.
benjaminchew110478
July 14, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Ah Bryan, silly boy, you DO speak the language…
1writegirl
July 15, 2009 at 8:15 pm