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[Nick]

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This Mind that makes Its Self out to be so important
That runs rapine into my natural meadow mellow repose

Jitterbugging antlike
with thoughts of future fears
with
perceptions of past passings

Flailing them failure like
all about my present
picnic of peace

And

when I would appease it
assuage its apparitions
when I begin beseeching abatement
of its
berserk beratement

ZIP!

it is gone

and here I sit-confused/innocent
as others infer it is I
who have lost it


Where is this Mind?

[Vincent Turner]

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Hi Nick, any reason in particular why you posted this here, for me it would be better suited to the poetry section.

just my thoughts.


Anyway, the poem/prose/fiction itself is interesting  and full of clever word play

I am interested as to why you used so much alliteration in this one.

Jitterbugging- great word

That whole stanza is great.

I found this hard to read..

Flailing them failure like
all about my present
picnic of peace


Is it the word "like" that throws me? i am not to sure, maybe its a language thing, but I hard to keep reading it.

Picnic of peace... that gets me thinking, picnics are peaceful, nice pairing of words... if I were to think of a picnic i would think of peace, tranquillity, rural English countryside.... unless of course i had my two boys with me.
Did you think long about the word picnic or was it merely added because of the alliteration? It works well, subtle, unremarkable ( at first) but a hidden gem.

The title reminds me of the song by the Pixies ( I believe it was also used in the closing/climatic scene in the film Fight Club. The song is called "Where is my Mind"
You may well have heard of it, but I know you are a sucker for information, and finding out about new things... so there it is!
Best Regards


Vincent

[Nick]

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Hey, Vincent
 Feel free to scoot this over to Poetry. I am never clear on the line between it and Prose. That is why I put it here.
Jitterbugging was a dance style back when you and I were still cosmic plasma.
Suggest you google 'Jitterbugging'. Go to youtube and select 'Groovie Movie (1944)'.
All the alliteration-I'm lookin' to involve senses, do more showing.
'like', in this instance, means 'in the manner of'. "Flailing them failure like" is an effort to create an image of being flailed (Curious device, the 'Flail', eh? Kind of a short whip on a stick. Variety of versions.) with perceptions of past events with a failed in their doing evaluation and how such thinking wrecks me current state of calm.
Picnic word use-just fit in the original casting of the piece.
Saw Fight Club long ago. Never listen to the music in those things.
'Mind' refers to the understanding that we are not our mind anymore than reins and saddle are a horse. Perhaps a foreign concept. Think Asian Zen Buddhism and that sort of mumbo jumbo to get this. This Mind.