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Defiant Intersection
On slick rainy street the line forms,
Yet behind each pair of eyes
Looms the true multitude.
One stretches on hot sands as waves roar,
One leaps over lunar crags, breathing under glass,
One wields a sword that ever strikes true,
One slices through snow, slalom salaam,
One wears scales and flies on mystic wings.
The hidden lives stretch on under misty sprays,
Persist through hissing car tires and wavery reflections
Of the strident insistence of neon and street lamps.
Yet behind each pair of eyes
Looms the true multitude.
One stretches on hot sands as waves roar,
One leaps over lunar crags, breathing under glass,
One wields a sword that ever strikes true,
One slices through snow, slalom salaam,
One wears scales and flies on mystic wings.
The hidden lives stretch on under misty sprays,
Persist through hissing car tires and wavery reflections
Of the strident insistence of neon and street lamps.
Like the recent short story event, I'm sorry i was out of town and not able to comment/vote before the deadline.
Hm, there are a couple of ways I could take this. One is the secret desires that people hold as they trek to and from work. The "secret lives" seems to support that, but I could then also interpret it as the personas these people inhabit when they're gaming online or some such. Until I got to that line, I was taking "the line forms" as meaning these people were all in the same line, and it put me in mind of them waiting their turn at a travel agency of sorts that could make these fantasies come true.
I like the "slalom salaam" wordplay. It's weird, but it also works. More or less free verse, so there's no structure or rhyme to analyze. Maybe the "stretches on" is repetitive with the earlier "stretches on hot sands," and if that was intentional, it didn't seem to be.
Given this author is probably the one who submitted the prompt, I assume this is the idea he envisioned going along with it from the start.
Hm, there are a couple of ways I could take this. One is the secret desires that people hold as they trek to and from work. The "secret lives" seems to support that, but I could then also interpret it as the personas these people inhabit when they're gaming online or some such. Until I got to that line, I was taking "the line forms" as meaning these people were all in the same line, and it put me in mind of them waiting their turn at a travel agency of sorts that could make these fantasies come true.
I like the "slalom salaam" wordplay. It's weird, but it also works. More or less free verse, so there's no structure or rhyme to analyze. Maybe the "stretches on" is repetitive with the earlier "stretches on hot sands," and if that was intentional, it didn't seem to be.
Given this author is probably the one who submitted the prompt, I assume this is the idea he envisioned going along with it from the start.
