i have measured out my life with coffee spoons
you have measured yours out in sticks and stones
.
some of those spoons are different-sized measurements
some of those stones and sticks are as well
.
what does it matter?
.
my spoons stir creamier thicker substances like cumuli
on a sky’s eye — i do not take sugar
my spoons are sometimes silver metal tinted, some
are thinner minted, almost transparent —- i do not take to heart
the jangle when they fall apart like pick-up-sticks or
ancient rune-stones
i measure in the jingly click as as they fit their dips into
each others’ hips, sideways — like puzzle monkey keys
.
i play with my spoons
measuring my life
out with coffee sipped
— still hot
grinding my teeth with it
swirling bitterness in cavernous spaces
taking my own sweet time
just for the joy of it
.
i have written poems with this liquid collected
down cups and spooled from spoons – it often goes south
— still hot
on table cloths
i have drawn Picasso pictures on the fabric of my life
winking at the patterns that form — i miss my mouth
.
filled with kisses
emptied of mystery
.
you have measured your life in slings of gin and arrows of foolish notions
pricking your thumbs, sucking on stones sticking in your throat, alone — i miss your mouth
.
filled with songs
emptied of bitterness
.
in another measure of life
could we have spooned?
could we have stuck
together? — made a elixir
better than the offer of bottomless
upended burnt umber beverages ?
.
i leave
the last coffee spoon cooling —
a pool of blackness spreads over
the whiteness of the paper blotter
— and leave
unnoticed by the waitress
.
btw
april 24 2024
Long Sutton, Langport, Somerset, UK
.
Day 24 prompt:- write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. The idea is for the original to furnish the backdrop for your work, but without influencing you so much that you feel as if you are just rewriting the original! For example, you could begin, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” or “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” or “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” or “they persevere in swimming where they like.” Really, any poem will do to provide your starter line – just so long as it gives you the scope to explore.
.
n.b
i wrote this poem with only the first line mentioned, not knowing from whence that line came or what followed.
i have included below the info…..
.
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by the American-born British poet T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot), is one of the most famous poems of the 20th Century.
It was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry magazine, an influential Chicago-based journal read by literary luminaries and poetry buffs in both America and Europe.
Although critical reception of the poem was mixed, it launched Eliot’s career as a poet and gave him initial visibility that grew to worldwide fame with publication of his other early masterpieces of modernist verse: “Gerontion” (1920), “The Waste Land” (1922) and “The Hollow Men” (1925).
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was included in Eliot’s first book of collected verse, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917).
It remains one of his best-known poems and contains several passages found in many books of quotations.
One of those oft-quoted passages comes from the beginning of the poem:
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
In literal terms, an evening spread out like an anaesthetized patient makes no sense.
But, like much of the verse Eliot wrote, it evokes an image that works memorably as poetry.
As the poem proceeds, it becomes apparent that the character speaking is an old man who seems disillusioned, lonely, bored and unhappy.
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” he says in one of the poem’s most famous lines. (Sometimes misquoted as “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”)
Other passages express the old man’s haunting feeling that life and love have passed him by and that he may have let them pass, by settling into a humdrum existence.
In another oft-quoted part of the poem he says:
“I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”
The poem ends, gloomily, with these final famous lines:
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
Eliot’s poetic trip inside an old man’s mind in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was not based on his personal experience.
He was only 22 years old when he began composing the poem in 1910.
I suspect that, in part, the poem reflects the sense of dread many young people feel when they realize they might reach old age without having pursued their dreams, without ever having found true love, without escaping the sometimes soul-crushing limitations imposed by society and the need to make a living.
As Eliot reached middle age and beyond, his work became less gloomy.
barbaraturneywielandpoetess 
Now that you’re there — meaning, with a stunning poem complete — aren’t you glad you didn’t “know” what would become of your choice? (Very cool choice, BTW. I’d never heard of it. And now I won’t forget ot.)
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