Alone & Without Purpose

Shovel sitting in the shed alone,
save for cobwebs collected during
winter months that cling
to your rusted mouth and
weathered wooden neck.
You don’t look like the shovel
My red palms clutched-
Handle irritating and warm to the touch-
promising blisters with each
bit of displaced dirt.
Just another
Thing
next to the toolbox
holding the screwdriver I
Need.

I must say, the only free verse "poetry" and with metaphor I ever truly enjoyed was the famous "Hawk Roosting".


After a few weeks on AllPoetry, this is actually refreshing.

I hate sentence fragments. I'm not sure why certain words are capitalized. The ending made me key in on a tool box and screwdriver--reading it a second time and my brain still wants to do that. The shovel is first made out to be declared as useless for a season, then it progresses to be utterly useless altogether?

Work hard I say. It took me four days to find the right word that wrapped up a great villanelle. In fact, the whole poem was continually changed and it finally morphed into something I never expected. Invoke those words and ideas like something was was meant to be written I say. I do believe you have something, but just not yet in my opinion.

It's an existential piece of poetry that is meant to question the true nature of things; the original title of the poem was "Is a Shovel a Shovel If It Ain't Shoveling?" but I thought it was too long lol; basically this shovel that I've used extensively seems different because it's not being used for its intended purpose and has no use for me right now. It's as if, "Is who and what we are merely defined by what we do?" I'm kind of glad you keyed in on the toolbox at the end; its purpose is that is has purpose (I need the screwdriver, therefore it is familiar and has an identity, unlike the shovel sitting in the shed during winter, which now looks unfamiliar to me), and placing it directly next to the shovel creates, at least I was trying to create, this dichotomy of identities; a shovel during winter (which no one has use for) and a toolbox holding the screwdriver that I need now (immediate use and purpose = identity).

I started off with it based on the idea of, again, existentialism; What makes a tree a tree? Is it a tree because it grows, is green, produces leaves in the Spring and dies during the Winter? Is it a tree because of the things it does or is there something inherent in its nature that makes it, objectively, a tree? In the same way what makes a shovel a shovel? If we are constantly defining our reality by the purposes they serve (the tree example or a fork is a fork because it carries food, etc.), than is a shovel a shovel if it ain't shoveling? (see what I did there) I don't pretend to have an answer for these questions, just merely intending to ask them with this little piece of prose (although I think we define our reality through our own rationalizing of our experiences... in the same way that the actor in the poem has defined the shovel by the work he's done with it, the blisters, the way it feels when he touches it, which in winter are far removed and not apparent, causing him to question it, with a final damning proclamation; "Just another / Thing"

Oh and the capitalizations got messed up lol I need to go fix that :P
Hope that makes y'all see it in a new light!