Ok, here’s a close reading. Sorry for the red ink; it's just to distinguish my comments from your poem. I'll try to suggest a simple technique or two, but will also mix in some broader thoughts. Sometimes a record stops playing and the plate keeps spinning. What follows the first sentence is further description, but it doesn’t finally add much. The initial metaphor is really strong; you should trust it. “Suspirious” is a bit clever, but I think it’s good to preserve a little or a lot of your goofy diction. It definitely adds to the ironic, ambiguous, both self-congratulatory and self-demeaning tone. It also sounds like what it means and adds to the music—without sinking too seriously into serial alliterative psychopathology. :) This passage, though of course well-written and a pleasure to read, basically just explains in another way what the first segment has already said implicitly and therefore more powerfully. Everybody does that when at work on a draft: we don’t trust a fresh metaphor that springs to mind first, so we go on and try to explain what we mean, each explanation actually just getting worse and diluting the effect of the original statement. Your record image and metaphor says everything: something has ended, but forward momentum has not; or something has spun to an end, but the speaker is unable to move on, find a new trajectory. Just leaving the metaphor there without elaboration FEELS more like what the metaphor is saying. You can feel the gesture. (See my edited version below.) When you try to explain or add additional figures, you actually diminish what it means. You strip it of its full resonance and even its interesting possible contradictions. “Hollow sconce of possessing blame. Past, present, usufruct.” Wonderful language again, but you want to watch out for writing which obfuscates or detracts, calls attention to itself without advancing the piece, or just lets you hide from whatever you're really saying. Sometimes it helps to be humble and dumb and a little poor-mouthed. (Hard for you, I’m sure, because you’ve probably been told you’re a genius all your life. But genius doesn’t necessarily make for good poems. What did Wallace Stevens or someone say--"A poem should resist the intelligence, almost successfully.") I wouldn’t want you to get rid of all the goofier words; maybe just dial it back a tad, be more selective. You will play Frank Sinatra. Frank—the man, the artist, the mobster, the icon, the commodity—is full of cultural resonance. Asserting that you listen to him says everything and then-some. A good reader will hear/feel/sense everything it implies. Let the reader intuit those meanings. “You will buy lunch…” etc. in a way is already “said” in the Sinatra statement (despondency, ironic self-deprication, self-absorption, courage, loneliness, postmodern media-overload weariness, etc.) Gorgeous phrase. Some of this segment could be cut, tho. I don’t know. Below are some brutally edited versions. I’m not suggesting I know the best edit, or that there’s only one or two ways to do it. There are a zillion ways to edit, and obviously you’re the ultimate judge. I’m just including them here to make visible some possibilities.
This first one retains some interesting and distinctive language, but takes greater leaps and trusts itself more: Sometimes a record stops playing and the plate keeps spinning. Suspirious bobbing. You will play Frank Sinatra. One day you will forget again. One day you will notice your breath. Like on stairs your feet will have little room for argument, ascending not up but outwards and in all directions. That last sentence is surprising and interesting without any heavy-handed closure. Students always overdue closure. :p Maybe you could add the “brume” phrase back. Here’s the same edit, but with brume and a title: Past, Present, Usufruct Sometimes a record stops playing and the plate keeps spinning. Suspirious bobbing. You will play Frank Sinatra. One day you will forget again. One day you will notice your breath. Like on stairs your feet will have little room for argument, ascending not up but outwards and in all directions, dissipating into the brume.
And here’s another that I kind of like; didn’t cut as much. Different ending: Past, Present, Usufruct Sometimes a record stops playing and the plate keeps spinning. Suspirious bobbing. One day you will forget again. Gradually the architecture of time will reassert, and like on stairs your feet will have little room for argument. You will notice your breath. In each case the sparseness makes the reader “draw near” and listen more intently. Sometimes a writer cuts too much or the wrong stuff. Doesn’t matter; if you’ve gone too far, just add some of the cut material back in. Knowing how much is always a colossal pain, but the struggle is probably where you learn the most about yourself. I suspect that playing with unusual or arcane or ironic or just funny diction is your way of distracting yourself or derailing your conscious awareness so that you can ultimately say what you’re really after. Don’t stop doing it. But it’s important of course to go back and tear down at least some of the scaffolding that allowed you to get the building built. I often see younger writers—hell, all writers—do two things simultaneously: go towards whatever it is they want to say, whatever itch they’re trying to scratch, and at the same time pull back out of dread or distrust of what’s to be found. Your "pulling back" happens I think when you let the language obscure rather than clarify. I guess the trick is to edit in such a way that you preserve some of that struggle on the page (I think it’s REALLY important to let some of the raw stuff remain visible) while also committing to a fully realized poem.
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