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chugglepuff — My Turn
Published: 2008-08-06 23:15:28 +0000 UTC; Views: 427; Favourites: 4; Downloads: 6
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Description
I can’t look at you.I could look at the man whose breath bubbled,
whose face grew a beard of tubes;
I could look at the little girl who cried in bed
because she couldn’t lie still on her bruises.
But I can’t look at you.
I study the yellow plastic of the curtain
and think of things that aren’t here,
aren’t now,
dream of something so far
from the starched white women
that march past.
I dream of our beach.
Your voice
is a crackle of seashells
over the rasping ocean,
and I feel your hand clasping at mine,
skin rubbery like kelp.
I drag my eyes up
to meet your own,
sea-blue but blood-shot,
like marbled pebbles;
wrinkles writhe across your face,
dancing waves
or cracked rocks,
salt stinging at your lips.
I don’t want to believe this is you.
That hair is thin
and rough as marram grass,
that skin, translucent
as a shrimp, fat worms
sliding through your flesh.
But I hold my eyes on you.
I just keep taking every bit of you in,
and I smile
because I feel the golden heart you gave me
on my collarbone,
and I hear everything you said to me,
and I see that sandcastle
we watched drop into the sea,
and I know that now it’s my turn.
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Comments: 34
I was certain I had faved this!!!
Situation corrected and I'm giving it a little feature in my journal.
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Oh, thank you ever so much! 
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My pleasure! I have to run off and read your journal for the latest Cambridge news.
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ooh. its soothing. but i am an idiot i don't get what it means?
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Don't worry about it, it probably just means I have explained things well enough. It's about the (imagined) death of one or other of my parents. They're in hospital, looking old and feeble, and the speaker is struggling to come to terms with what's happening, and ends up trying to imagine a happy memory they have together - on a beach - to help them accept what's going on and to be able to help their parent through what's happening, just as the parent helped the speaker when they were young. And the speaker knows that they will have a part of their parents in them to carry them on.
Hope that's explained it a bit better!
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*haven't explained things well enough.
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"I study the yellow plastic of the curtain
and think of things that aren’t here,
aren’t now,
dream of something so far
from the starched white women
that march past."
that's pretty much what i always do in hospitals
this is great 
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Thanks!
Yeah, I get very wound up in hospitals, I just want to block it out of my head.
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yeah, i don't deal with ill people very well, well i can if i have to but i don't like it
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The only thing I would change is to delete the first line. It seems to subtract from the power of the second time 'I can't look at you' is said. But that's just me.
The man who grew a beard of tubes.
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Hmm. I can see where you're coming from, but I like the first line as something that grabs your attention, and because I feel like it's the key part of the first section of the poem, and the second part is about drawing the strength to look at them and support them as they supported the speaker... 
And thanks for the compliment as well!
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I know what you mean, and 'I can't look at you' does grab attention well, but to me, the imagery of the man whose 'breath bubbled' is strong enough to make me keep reading.
You're extremely welcome for the compliment.
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Hum hum hum... I'll keep thinking on it, I can't decide which beginning I prefer. The 'breath bubbled' beginning is definitely more subtle, and does make the 'can't look at you' afterwards a lot more powerful... *strokes imaginary beard*
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I agree with *mskylstron, you have done well - especially with the imagery. I'll look for something to suggest, crit-wise...
- Get rid of the semi-colon at the end of 'maram grass' because the two clauses are not linked enough to warrant it's usage. A simple comma should suffice (hehe, sorry, one of my Units this semester at Uni is pretty much the fine points of English - clauses, independant and dependant sentences, verbs, adverbs, prefixes, subject and object et al, so I've begun noticing little things like that).
- "and I smile
But I hold my eyes on you." This needs some punctuation or something, it looks like you've copy & paste'd the repeated line and then forgotten to put in a comma after smile (and, if you do, you need to then make that 'But' starts with a lower case 'b'
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Thanks very much for your help! I agree on both points - I don't quite know what I was doing with that last one, that isn't even meant to be repeated... Ah, it was late, that's my excuse.
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Ah, well, there ya go!
No problem!
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wrinkles writhe across your face,
dancing waves
or cracked rocks,
salt stinging at your lips.
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I'm a fan of your scribblings.
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I wouldn't change a thing. She can't look at the sick (perhaps old?) person until the sea imagery unifies the person who was with the sick person who is. This describes how people feel at such times, finding it hard to see the person past the illness, quite beautifully and graphically. Skin as translucent as shrimp, for instance calls up image effectively. It was a tough subject, but as always your brought honesty and intelligence to it.
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It's a painful read. I hesitated to fave it... oh it's beautifully written, but it is such and strong, heartfelt and intelligent piece about something many of us dread or have suffered through. It called to mind my visit to my grandmother on her deathbed. She was very old, but her cancer was treatable. Nevertheless, she told me to tell the family that she'd stopped eating. She wanted to be with my grandfather. What could I say? She wouldn't listen to my plans for her 100th birthday. So I told the family and they arrived from all parts to visit her...
So... in that hovering second I changed my mind, knowing that this is a piece I'll read again and again.
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It was painful to write... a mixture of memories from when my sister was in hospital and imaginings of my parents' deathbeds. It's probably the most genuine piece of poetry I've written, which is perhaps why I feel uncertain about it.
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It's very genuine and well-written. Your sister must have been very very ill. Please tell me she's better.
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Yes, she's much better now, thank you.
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Oh, that's good news. Surgery is such an ordeal, especially when it the person is young. I can see how this would have caused you to think about the people you love and the fragility of life. Your poor sister! Back surgery requires a long and sometimes painful recovery.
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Yeah, she was terribly brave about it - much more brave than I was. She is still in some pain, and it's now about a year after the operation, but at least we've got over the biggest hurdle now.
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Going through this together is something your family will never forget. It sounds like you were all pretty brave. My folks and sibs still talk about the eye two surgeries I had as a kid... (I've had three more in the last 2 years.
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No more eye muscle operations. But I may get laser surgery (if I can afford it). This is gross, but the last two surgeries occurred while I was awake and unsedated. They were to remove '
Two years after my spouse left, (four years ago) I had shoulder reconstruction and have four pins holding the joint together. Apparently at some point, if I last that long, I'll have to have new hardware installed. I am like the bionic woman.
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Well I hope that's the last of them! My dad had to have an operation on his eye while he was awake when he was little, but I think it just involved a laser. I'm certainly going to hold of laser eye surgery until I'm absolutely confident that it's safe... (Sorry about the slow reply on this, by the way, I have a slightly hectic way of answering messages...)
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Geez, when you're in Cambridge you'll be way too busy. If you want my email, just note me okay?
I had needles, scalpels and worst of all a cauterizing gun come at my eye in both wide awake surgeries. I could see the smoke as the doctor burned away the cyst/growth whatever the heck it was. Then he had the nerve to say, 'look at all that blood. This is why I don't do this procedure in the office.' 
I wear coke bottle lenses now. I'd still have to wear glasses after laser surgery. But as an art instructor and artist, I'd like to prolong my vision as long as I can.
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