Blackface (edit 2: Erthona)

[PoetryAndPhysics]

After my skin ran dark,
I'd sleuth invisible at sunset
to the roof of a derelict warehouse.
The silhouette of my finger against the moon,
and the mute fathoms between stars,
were black tones nucleating sparklers.

Eating chocolate in heat under a palm tree,
I tried beguiling lost ants into a watery pit.
We were charcoal specs
on an infinite, sandy grid.

Her Ivory Coast soles shuffled silently,
then tackled my unsuspecting, zouglou jiving feet.
We became black mambas, coiled like DNA.

My sexy new plasma wears my skin's new color
as do pepper flakes dashed in my Spanish roast coffee.
This twilight only radiates a darker shade of blue,
but two blocks over hustles one ebony Cadillac.

I don't think this paint helped me very much. Ah well,
empathy...



*I've finaly edited S4; I've also reworded the bit in S1 on nucleation, as suggested below (I think my usage is right this time, but I'm not 100%...). Here's the original:
http://www.pigpenpoetry.com/showthread.php?tid=12845

[Erthona]

I have no idea what any of this means.

"The silhouette of my finger against the moon,and the mute fathoms between stars, were black tones nucleated by sparklers."

The first thing (finger) and the second thing (mute fathoms) were black tones?

What does "black tones nucleated by sparklers." mean?

black tones (skin tones, musical tones, both) were made "into a nucleus." by sparklers"

I have no idea what this is suppose to mean, but as I have to go back to your first write to find out that "plasma" refers to TV. If you had said plasma screen, I probably would have gotten it, but just plasma, I think of " a highly ionized gas containing an approximately equal number of positive ions and electrons".

I haven't seen any comments from people to indicate anybody knows what this means. There's evidently slang in here I don't understand, but a lot of this seems ad hoc.

Dale

[PoetryAndPhysics]

So I think I should probably explain things a bit (usually it's never a good sign when a poem is followed by a paragraph explaining things, but I hope it'll help you guys get a better idea of this, which will help me improve, I reckon). Here's a blurb I wrote for myself at some point:

I always saw this as the narrator putting on “metaphorical blackface”. I picture him daydreaming one day and thinking “Why don't I give this whole 'walk a mile in someone else's shoes' thing a go?”, and then trying to imagine himself black, in an effort to empathize. Of course, this (in my mind) ends in absolute failure, and never really gets off the ground in the first place. Example: I have the narrator imagining himself doing exotic things, which has nothing to do with imagining what it's like to be someone else. Further, some of his imaginings are suspect (sleuth to a derelict warehouse, sitting by a palm tree...). As a last resort, the narrator just starts naming things that are black. He finally shrugs it off, lamenting "Ohh well, at least I tried this whole 'empathy' business."

fogglethorpe- Brilliant, I didn't realize the double meaning. Though Erthona makes a good point about adding "screen". We'll see.

Erthona- in S1, I was picturing the narrator holding up his finger to partially hide the moon. I imagined that the part of the finger hiding the moon would look black, but a different black then the night sky. I was trying to say that the stars (and perhaps the remaining sliver of moon) were nucleated by the black tones, like crystals are nucleated in some medium. Thinking on it again, I might have gotten things the wrong way around (good catch, thanks). The first nucleation example in wikipedia is sort of what I have in mind: "Clouds form when... small droplets nucleate from the supersaturated air".

[Erthona]

OK, I see. You are doing what most of us do starting out, which is to assume what you know, we know...but we don't. I understand a little more now about what you are trying to do (although I am dubious about your premiss), but I don't think there is any way a person will get what you intended from what you have written, there is just simply not enough information to be able to infer even a little of this. You are right, if you have to follow poem by a paragraph of explanation it is not a good sign. The positive part is that you can recognize that and fix it. Failure in poetry is not bad either. If you are not failing you have either been writing longer than me, because I still fail, catastrophically even, or you are not attempting anything difficult enough to fail.

So put this aside for several months and do something else (poetry wise I mean), and then look at it again. Then send me a message about what you find.

dale