Double Blind Challenge

[greenmountaineer]

Totemic

Once muscular, the stark
naked gray-bark elm
is like a balding stick figure man,
and yet its trunk still points
headstrong, so to speak.

I want to say it's an obelisk
as if what remains is a calcified
monument to remember
a once leafy green sapling
whose limbs leaned towards the sun.

I wonder how many gnarly
rings I would count inside
as the dawn's resplendent mist
glistens and drips down the stump
from last night's enduring tryst
with a swarthy pungent sky.

Original

"Totemic" was intended as an allegory for the aging male sexual drive, something I've been thinking a lot about lately, although I must say I'm happily married to the sexiest 60 year old woman in all of northern New England.

The comma in S1 was erroneously left in from the first draft when the syntax was different. I'm amazed how I can look at a glaring mistake and sometimes not see it. Good catch, and Mer's comment about "there" as superfluous is a good one.

I added "stick figure" to suggest the tree's condition as almost skeletal. I have mixed feelings about it, but for the moment it'll stay.

Aura and ether, as Angie noted, mean essentially the same. I knew that when drafting the poem but risked leaving it because both words suggested female names to me. Associating them with "ménage" immediately following, I was hoping the reader would infer the "a trois," a common male erotic fantasy. The feedback was helpful. My reach exceeded grasp here. The revised stanza is very different.

Given the divergent views about "spunk," I deleted it entirely. Piscator's comment about tree rings and sap as separate from one another was the clincher for me. I like my images to be a true reflection of what is real and use "poetic license" rarely. I also deleted "up" for the reasons GP mentioned. However, "gnarly" is an acceptable adjective according to Merriam and Webster, and I like the sound of it.

"Obelisk" required a lot of thinking on my part. I usually think of something stone-like, but at least one dictionary includes trees in the definition. I tried to bring that into sharper focus with new lines. It worked for me, but perhaps it won't for others.

Lastly, the night has neen a metaphor for the female in many spiritual traditions throughout history. The yin of Taoist mythology and the Moon Goddess of Wicca come to mind in particular. That may be too esoteric and isn't really necessary to understand the work, but it was a guiding image for me in writing the poem.

 

[Magnetron]

Totemic

Once muscular, the stark
naked gray-bark elm
is like a balding stick figure man,
and yet its trunk still points
headstrong, so to speak.

I want to say it's an obelisk
as if what remains is a calcified
monument to remember
a once leafy green sapling
whose limbs leaned towards the sun.

I wonder how many gnarly
rings I would count inside
as the dawn's resplendent mist
glistens and drips down the stump
from last night's enduring tryst
with a swarthy pungent sky.

Original

"Totemic" was intended as an allegory for the aging male sexual drive, something I've been thinking a lot about lately, although I must say I'm happily married to the sexiest 60 year old woman in all of northern New England.

The comma in S1 was erroneously left in from the first draft when the syntax was different. I'm amazed how I can look at a glaring mistake and sometimes not see it. Good catch, and Mer's comment about "there" as superfluous is a good one.

I added "stick figure" to suggest the tree's condition as almost skeletal. I have mixed feelings about it, but for the moment it'll stay.

Aura and ether, as Angie noted, mean essentially the same. I knew that when drafting the poem but risked leaving it because both words suggested female names to me. Associating them with "ménage" immediately following, I was hoping the reader would infer the "a trois," a common male erotic fantasy. The feedback was helpful. My reach exceeded grasp here. The revised stanza is very different.

Given the divergent views about "spunk," I deleted it entirely. Piscator's comment about tree rings and sap as separate from one another was the clincher for me. I like my images to be a true reflection of what is real and use "poetic license" rarely. I also deleted "up" for the reasons GP mentioned. However, "gnarly" is an acceptable adjective according to Merriam and Webster, and I like the sound of it.

"Obelisk" required a lot of thinking on my part. I usually think of something stone-like, but at least one dictionary includes trees in the definition. I tried to bring that into sharper focus with new lines. It worked for me, but perhaps it won't for others.

Lastly, the night has neen a metaphor for the female in many spiritual traditions throughout history. The yin of Taoist mythology and the Moon Goddess of Wicca come to mind in particular. That may be too esoteric and isn't really necessary to understand the work, but it was a guiding image for me in writing the poem.

It reads much clearer now.

Trois would have made a huge difference if inserted in the original 4th stanza.

The use of obelisk feels more appropriate now as well. The idea of calcification ties it in nicely.

 

[Magnetron]

The Curator

See how our combustion blooms!
A fragrant flame too hot to touch
For more than just these fleeting months
Of lush and fruitful spring.
The way it overawes my eyes
With scorching hues that soon must fade
As blossoms do --
O let me pluck it,
Singe my fingers,
Press it 'twixt the pages of a book,
Preserve it there, ethereal and faint.

I'll put those glowing petals thus to bed
Between the paper sheets,
Until a germinating spark
Suffuses them with brightness
And propagates the flame,
So anyone who reads
Will quicken with the sweet
Perennial candescence of our love.

I didn't find much to criticize in the original.

Now?

Ummm ......

The notion that we aren't just reading about flowers is more pronoun-ced. Equating the book to a bed where the fire can be rekindled so to speak leaves me feeling as though I'm a voyeur. Opening the book becomes something like scrolling through someone else's Samsung tablet and stumbling upon their sex tape.

Again, not much to criticize.

Just letting you know it took a sudden right turn to Smuttsville.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Just letting you know it took a sudden right turn to Smuttsville.

That seems to be the default setting in my GPS.

 

[legerdemer]

A History in Blood

A vengeance loosed upon me when it came,
childhood shoved out of its way,
innocence stained with promises
of pleasures so sensual and torrid,
held sway over all else.

Pain radiates,
my contribution to the human race
a reminder, month after month, year after year,
of promise unfulfilled,
a waste of possibility.

Each drop wells, swells, escapes down my thighs.
Luna's reminiscences of life, of power,
of motherhood and love, lust returned, of gifts received
though sometimes turned away.

When men cringe and slink away from the
sticky, fluid, life-giving force, I laugh--
wanting to spit in their face, to SCREAM!

Month after month, the blood still comes.
When it stops, panic strikes! Is now the time?
Should I give in? Should I wait?
Time's never right: more demands
she places on me, that bitch Career.

Until, one day, my womb demands
to share its love:
a second heartbeat incubates,
a quiet rhythm, too tentative.
Too weak.

The beat gives up, the soul not whole nor
wholly ready for the world outside, denies
existence and retreats, a mass of congealed
blood and pain, it spills, the rug drenched,
a clot of nothing, yet.

Another year.
Another plea.

Another seed blooms.
This one is hardy with desire to live,
to beat the odds of eternity against it,
battles demons, battles sleep, the world.
Absorbs everything.

And so it goes, the rhythm of life I share.
A badge, a gift.

When finally the spigot curbs its flow
and nearly dries, should I now laugh or cry?
The freedom to be a princess or a whore,
the choice being wrenched away
before I'm ready to let go.

~~~~~~~~~~

I thank all for their comments. By the way, I figured that when AH guessed me as the author of Life's Blood, it was giving the game up, so my "no bloody clue" was itself a clue that I was admitting guilt.

This is a poem that has been incubating for some time, as I'm at the age where my body is definitely thinking of turning to a new stage, and I confess some anxieties about it, or at least thoughts in that direction.

With apologies to gm, the very stripped down version of the poem simply does not convey what I wanted it to, so I went for a more long-winded and explicit/prosaic version. I tried to soften the bludgeoned and take away the assault image that many saw at first. I'm not sure whether it's better now or not.

The spigot stayed - sorry, GP - I definitely wanted that stark, mechanical image the word implies. Sometimes that's what I feel - like a spigot, turned on or off.

Womanhood and womanliness went the way of the circular file - I knew they were rather awkward from the beginning, but as gm seemed to request, I did pretty much post a first draft. But now the "pain radiates" line seems incomplete to me - like it needs to be more specific. I look forward to more comments on this.

The "Porsche/Portia/Penelope" were meant as tongue-in-cheek: Porsche very much for the idea of a manual for a fast, sleek car, as we often are in our youth, giving way to more measured, adult personalities. But it seemed ultimately that those attracted too much attention to themselves and away from the poem, and off they went also. The original last two stanzas in fact were consolidated into one, and I hope they work better.

At any rate, here it is, for your thoughts if not your enjoyment: a history in blood, viewed through my eyes and filtered through my experience. Blood symbolized for me so much of the demands of unyielding biology that I - for the most part - simply had to cater to, that it has taken a rather prominent role in this one.

Thanks, gm, for the challenge - it gave me the opportunity to hear many more views about this one than I think I would have otherwise - all valuable in making me think, even if I did not heed them all.

 

[Magnetron]

Legs, the beginning is indeed less distracting now.

Consider going back to "a vengeance" rather than "with" - the modification comes across now as somewhat of an incomplete thought.

And mentally try "childhood shoved" and "innocence stained" on for size.

 

[Piscator]

Ahab into and explanation

Thanks to gm for the challenge and all of you for your comments. As many of you commented, this is not a complete work. Rather, it is the introductions to a saga telling the story of Moby from the whale's point of view. The intro also steals a bit from Paradise Lost to account for the whales transition back to water, and to give personas to Leviathan and Lucifer (the white whale) as fallen angels cast by Gaia into the ocean and may even borrow from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner at some point.

The mixing of mythologies in somewhat unintentionally intentional, we live on a planet of which more than 70% covered by water (which global warming will increase). As Magnetron noted many of the themes are elemental and might be combined differently by a water dwelling race.

I will leave the environmental message till later, probably after the battle of Ahab and Lucifer. But an environmental theme remains and a

cacophony within a bath warm sea
and air filled with noxious vapours
turning the sweet ocean to vinegar


is definitely part of this, and is perhaps influenced by David Martin's Tar Swan.

I'll keep referring to giant squid as Kraken because the word works for me. For consistency, I've eliminated comma and put a period at the end of each quatrain. The revised follows.

Ahab

Call me Leviathan
Commander of Lucifer's Legions
Prince of the Southern Ocean
Destroyer of Kraken

Cast from Gaia's warmth
plunged into this cold and briny sea
to forever delve its fathomless depths
never again to bask in the sun.

Immersed within this aqueous firmament
the cradle of life and death
from surface to deepest abyss
such was our dominion.

Gliding weightless through the water
rising to grab a breath of air before
diving till under water's weight
lungs collapse then deeper still.

Each breath feeding the flame
that burned within each of us
preserving our light in the dark
with Lucifer burning brightest.

Enveloped within ocean's din
the songs of loved ones far and near
the crash of wave on distant shores
sorting all to find our savage prey.

The tentacled horde, great and small,
from common cuttlefish to great Kraken
such were the source of our strength
but also our mortal enemy.

And so we'd forage, our task
to limit their unfettered increase
and paramount to keep the Kraken
forever in the deepest trenches.

Yet now my tale must turn
from squid to land based ape
and of a time when fate
was balanced with hope.

Extension of the poem will take time - I've been hung up for a good bit already and posted it in part to get it going again. I'm toying with the idea a 30-30 with the objective of adding4 -5 quatrains each day but that will have to wait a bit as the immediate future is busy.

 

[Magnetron]

I finally guessed one correctly.

 

[HarryHill]

I finally guessed one correctly.

and it was so damn obvious, fishy façade now I need to check the changes

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Ch- ch- changes

This is, almost, a true story. The old guy is/was a real character and I did think he'd be fascinating to get to know but never got the chance. A surprise ending? just ain't my style, man. I simply have stories to tell.

Original

Stories to Tell

He’s familiar in our local coffee shop,
tolerated if not welcomed;
unshaven and scruffy,
pocketing discarded newspapers,
unused creamer pots
and sugar packets,
looking like he’s doing a favour.

We see him often, on the highway,
trudging along the shoulder
in all weathers. He must cover miles,
his backpack always looks heavy.
Stale news, with cream and sugar?

There he is now, in the distance,
turning when he hears a car.
It’s a chilly spring day
and his thumb is out.
Frost crusts the scrubby grass at his feet
but he is wearing sandals and shorts,
his usual summer attire.
He’s in a hurry for warm days
And his knobbly knees look blue.

I want to stop, I really do,
but the driver, owner of this new car
and, he thinks, of me worries
“he looks like he smells.”
So we sweep on by, I catch
his eye, he nods, smiling
as if in understanding.
Unexpected tears prick my eyes.

One day I’ll stop,
He has stories to tell,
I know.


Revised

Stories to Tell

He’s familiar in the local coffee shop, - took out “our”
tolerated if not welcome;
unshaven and shambling, changed redundant “scruffy”
pocketing discarded newspapers,
unused creamer pots
and sugar packets,
looking like he’s doing a favour.

We see him often on the highway,
trudging along the shoulder
in all weathers. He must cover miles,
his backpack always looks heavy… why does the pack look heavy? stuff from S 1
Stale news with cream and sugar?

There he is now, in the distance,
turning when he hears a car.
It’s a chilly spring day
and his thumb is out.
Frost crusts the scrub at his feet took out “grass” as per Ange
but he is wearing sandals and shorts,
his usual summer attire.
He’s in a hurry for warmer days
and his knobbly knees look blue.

I want to stop, I really do,
but the driver, owner of this new car
(and, he thinks, of me) is nervous.. I like the defiance implicated here.
“He probably smells bad.” Changed syntax for clarity
So we sweep on by, I catch
his eye and he nods, smiling
as if in understanding. Prefer internal rhyming

Unexpected tears prick my eyes. Separated line as Ange suggested

One day I’ll stop
and we’ll have coffee together, added reference to coffee to tie in
he has stories to tell,
I know.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Original

Sonograms

I saw
a dolphin’s song today,
clicks and squeaks
whistles and purrs,
signature squawks
with jokey trills.
Smiling secrets
they find in the deep
silver slicing through the calm
joyful leaps before our bow
and aft in widening wake.
How can they know
why their eardrums break
leaving them directionless,
floundering, bleeding
or that huge, stealthy metal fish
are silently killing them?
Helpless, they watch
their brothers struggle,
drowned in drift nets’ cruel embrace.
Do they mourn the loss?

Almost a complete rewrite taking out the lecture.

Revised

Sonograms

I saw a dolphin’s song today
on paper.
Clicks and squeaks became dots
and streaks, the whistles and
purrs were lines and blurs,
signature trills and jokey squawks,
a conversational paradox.

Smiling at secrets they find
in the deep, silver slicing
through the calm with joyful
leaps before our bow
and aft in the widening wake.

Beneath pristine waves
they play with our discarded
garbage or find floating fronds
of sea weed, improvise games
a child might concoct.
They’re bright, perhaps wise,
self-aware aliens who just want
to be friends with the unintentional enemy.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Thank you, GM, for a brilliant idea for a challenge. It's been a fascinating insight into other's take on poetry. Thanks too, to all participants, submitters, critics and readers. es all round

 

[Magnetron]

Revised

Sonograms

I saw a dolphin’s song today
on paper.
Clicks and squeaks became dots
and streaks, the whistles and
purrs were lines and blurs,
signature trills and jokey squawks,
a conversational paradox.

Smiling at secrets they find
in the deep, silver slicing
through the calm with joyful
leaps before our bow
and aft in the widening wake.

Beneath pristine waves
they play with our discarded
garbage or find floating fronds
of sea weed, improvise games
a child might concoct.
They’re bright, perhaps wise,
self-aware aliens who just want
to be friends with the unintentional enemy.

I absolutely love the changes you made.

 

[Piscator]

Revised

Sonograms

I saw a dolphin’s song today
on paper.
Clicks and squeaks became dots
and streaks, the whistles and
purrs were lines and blurs,
signature trills and jokey squawks,
a conversational paradox.

Smiling at secrets they find
in the deep, silver slicing
through the calm with joyful
leaps before our bow
and aft in the widening wake.

Beneath pristine waves
they play with our discarded
garbage or find floating fronds
of sea weed, improvise games
a child might concoct.
They’re bright, perhaps wise,
self-aware aliens who just want
to be friends with the unintentional enemy.

i especially like the new last stanza. In our lavatory/reading room we have Simon Barnes - Ten Million Aliens (A Journey Through The Entire Animal Kingdom) a regular reminder that you needn't go to space to find weird.

 

[HarryHill]

Original

Sonograms

I saw
a dolphin’s song today,
clicks and squeaks
whistles and purrs,
signature squawks
with jokey trills.
Smiling secrets
they find in the deep
silver slicing through the calm
joyful leaps before our bow
and aft in widening wake.
How can they know
why their eardrums break
leaving them directionless,
floundering, bleeding
or that huge, stealthy metal fish
are silently killing them?
Helpless, they watch
their brothers struggle,
drowned in drift nets’ cruel embrace.
Do they mourn the loss?

Almost a complete rewrite taking out the lecture.

Revised

Sonograms

I saw a dolphin’s song today
on paper.
Clicks and squeaks became dots
and streaks, the whistles and
purrs were lines and blurs,
signature trills and jokey squawks,
a conversational paradox.

Smiling at secrets they find
in the deep, silver slicing
through the calm with joyful
leaps before our bow
and aft in the widening wake.

Beneath pristine waves
they play with our discarded
garbage or find floating fronds
of sea weed, improvise games
a child might concoct.
They’re bright, perhaps wise,
self-aware aliens who just want
to be friends with the unintentional enemy.

..
omg, what a change. (more but deleted)

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I absolutely love the changes you made.

i especially like the new last stanza. In our lavatory/reading room we have Simon Barnes - Ten Million Aliens (A Journey Through The Entire Animal Kingdom) a regular reminder that you needn't go to space to find weird.

..
omg, what a change. (more but deleted)

Thank you all.....let's face it, it was pretty bad first time around.

 

[todski28]

Revised

summer storm

soft moans like distant thunder
entreat me
she demands more
as I slide my whispering
over skin raised to life

swells raised rival an ocean squall
forked lightning rends the air
I feel the rain
eyes closed
breath held

I dive in to taste
fresh water salted in life
lap from the valley's stream
savour it

I have never felt such heat
as that which beats
turbulent waves against the shore
each flash of light
and touch of liquid
drives me toward the edge

I want to kneel naked in the sand
where the ocean meets the land
let the rain wash away
the last of the day
cleanse me

take me into your depths
hold me there

suspended in sensation
and take it all

-----------------------------------------------

I tried to take on as much offered critique as possible

But couldn't lose the rhyme scheme ala magnetron's suggestions because the peak of sex is usually a rapid set of thrusts in the same rhythm before climax, so the attempt with the rhyming line is to subtly reinforce that, the poem is about sex and that is the climax.

Thank you for all those that put in time to critique this write and I hope what has come of it (no pun intended) is a far more succinct and better piece.

 

[todski28]

Totemic

Once muscular, the stark
naked gray-bark elm
is like a balding stick figure man,
and yet its trunk still points
headstrong, so to speak.

I want to say it's an obelisk
as if what remains is a calcified
monument to remember
a once leafy green sapling
whose limbs leaned towards the sun.

I wonder how many gnarly
rings I would count inside
as the dawn's resplendent mist
glistens and drips down the stump
from last night's enduring tryst
with a swarthy pungent sky.

Original

"Totemic" was intended as an allegory for the aging male sexual drive, something I've been thinking a lot about lately, although I must say I'm happily married to the sexiest 60 year old woman in all of northern New England.

The comma in S1 was erroneously left in from the first draft when the syntax was different. I'm amazed how I can look at a glaring mistake and sometimes not see it. Good catch, and Mer's comment about "there" as superfluous is a good one.

I added "stick figure" to suggest the tree's condition as almost skeletal. I have mixed feelings about it, but for the moment it'll stay.

Aura and ether, as Angie noted, mean essentially the same. I knew that when drafting the poem but risked leaving it because both words suggested female names to me. Associating them with "ménage" immediately following, I was hoping the reader would infer the "a trois," a common male erotic fantasy. The feedback was helpful. My reach exceeded grasp here. The revised stanza is very different.

Given the divergent views about "spunk," I deleted it entirely. Piscator's comment about tree rings and sap as separate from one another was the clincher for me. I like my images to be a true reflection of what is real and use "poetic license" rarely. I also deleted "up" for the reasons GP mentioned. However, "gnarly" is an acceptable adjective according to Merriam and Webster, and I like the sound of it.

"Obelisk" required a lot of thinking on my part. I usually think of something stone-like, but at least one dictionary includes trees in the definition. I tried to bring that into sharper focus with new lines. It worked for me, but perhaps it won't for others.

Lastly, the night has neen a metaphor for the female in many spiritual traditions throughout history. The yin of Taoist mythology and the Moon Goddess of Wicca come to mind in particular. That may be too esoteric and isn't really necessary to understand the work, but it was a guiding image for me in writing the poem.

The strength of your revision is in my opinion publishable beyond lit, I wish id have had more time to comment and participate!

 

[todski28]

Thank you all.....let's face it, it was pretty bad first time around.

At the end of the day, it was a draft and the improvement is a hundred fold, awesome edit!

 

[HarryHill]

summer storm

soft moans like distant thunder
entreat me
she demands more
as I slide my whispering
over skin raised to life

swells raised rival an ocean squall
forked lightning rends the air
I feel the rain
eyes closed
breath held

I dive in to taste
fresh water salted in life
lap from the valley's stream
savour it

I have never felt such heat
as that which beats
turbulent waves against the shore
each flash of light
and touch of liquid
drives me toward the edge

I want to kneel naked in the sand
where the ocean meets the land
let the rain wash away
the last of the day
cleanse me

take me into your depths
hold me there

suspended in sensation
and take it all

-----------------------------------------------

I tried to take on as much offered critique as possible

But couldn't lose the rhyme scheme ala magnetron's suggestions because the peak of sex is usually a rapid set of thrusts in the same rhythm before climax, so the attempt with the rhyming line is to subtly reinforce that, the poem is about sex and that is the climax.

Thank you for all those that put in time to critique this write and I hope what has come of it (no pun intended) is a far more succinct and better piece.

I'd say you nailed it dead on, made my tongue hard

 

[todski28]

Red Roses

Roses mean
remember

Do you not remember Joyce?

We do

how she was peerless
deliriously precocious
possessing a penchant for playing house with human dolls

Obsessed stating it rather mildly

in making breakthroughs to the Other Side
cementing Parapsychology as a field concrete
no longer so easily dismissible as
"Pseudo Science!"
with an arrogant waving of those same tenured hands
responsible for bricking it up behind a Fifth Wall
using heaping trowels of their ignorance as mortar

Gone amok a more precise assessment

similar in manner to her fixation's focus
a certain toured Seattle manor rumored to have
more rooms now than ever before ...

... despite it being unoccupied for decades

Fearless
furiously ferocious
in tantrums tantamount to fanaticism devout

cowardly willing to sacrifice anyone
for irrefutable proof finally shutting up
the most deliberately obtuse skeptics
in what was to become to her misfortune
not too mention the others in our group
an ill conceived paranormal investigation
we were late to the party in figuring out

Structurally unsound
framed upon an insecure foundation
erected on cursed ground

even the most wrought iron clad logic
is subject to flaws

for beyond her smeared blood grasp
fingers curled tightly around knurled bars
fencing in her mentally gated community of one
all its vociferous residents bearing childhood scars
leveling Reardon's house of cards confidence building
on a daily basis with nightly wrecking balls of doubt

was the evidence already at hand!
compelling enough to champion her cause:

broken water pipes so cold
bursting with icicles in July

spinning wheels on parked bicycles

run of the mill stones granite
raining down from the sky
pulverizing a home across the street
from the Wheaton household
not just anywhere on the planet

words unspoken
thoughts told
left behind by you and I
psychically raptured from inanimate objects
trapped in doorknockers rapped
captured in cameras as if film exposed
unnaturally superimposed with special effects
spectral

manifestations
reflected in eyes of more open minded
children likewise occupying adult sized bodies
witnessing things that are there
but not there ...

... Not there!

Here?

In bad bad! houses
miniature or otherwise grand
haunted by their architects
gone insanely mad

only lies are to be had

and

the walls push back hard

If you really must insist upon
exploring these unsettled grounds
where the old Rimbauer mansion once stood
throwing our cautionary tale to the wind
then it is imperative to tread lightly
keeping this firmly in mind

remember
Rose is mean




======================




Thanks to GM for a spectacular challenge.

And to everyone who took the time out to read and comment on Red Roses.

Angeline and butters hit the nail on the head with the main assessment that my first attempt was not communicating. Here are the reasons why.

I was deliberately withholding information and simply left myself with little to play with. And instead of being direct, I tried steering readers in a roundabout fashion towards arriving to the conclusion that Joyce Reardon's paranormal investigation of the Rimbauer mansion AKA Rose Red was completely unnecessary. Hence, the circular effect that emerged in the presentation.

Then I resigned myself to believing that it was good enough and filed it in my finished pile, whereas I usually leave it in the unfinished pile to be revisited over and over again in a rotation. Essentially I gave up on it way too early.

When GM proposed the competition, it was the only thing of mine on hand that I had nagging doubts about. I'm usually ultra confident about everything I write. But as soon as I donned my critique goggles ( which are merely airplane goggles I wear while operating the Internet ), I myself immediately saw some improvements that could be made.

I shit you not when I say I spent at least 20 hours rewriting this. It is even longer now because more facts, rhymes and wordplay have been injected.

If you ever watch Rose Red, then you'll understand various references beyond the basics you could gather from Wikipedia. And you'll see that in the entire 4 1/2 hours, not one character questions Joyce's need to investigate a haunted house in order to document supernatural activity when she can just as easily test and study six characters with extraordinary paranormal abilities. Is it a glaring plot failure? Or is it something more, which is the impression I walk away with and chose as my subject.

The extra you have added, though I am unfamiliar with rose red and have not googled it, makes it stand alone without the allusion to the tv series, you managed to create interlocking sound structure and enough curiosity in what is coming next for me to read on, poems of that scale due to the lack of coherent story and structure often lose me as a reader, however I read this twice through and feel your edits have helped those without the neccessary information to still walk away without the, WTF did I just read element.

 

[Magnetron]

The extra you have added, though I am unfamiliar with rose red and have not googled it, makes it stand alone without the allusion to the tv series, you managed to create interlocking sound structure and enough curiosity in what is coming next for me to read on, poems of that scale due to the lack of coherent story and structure often lose me as a reader, however I read this twice through and feel your edits have helped those without the neccessary information to still walk away without the, WTF did I just read element.

Glad to hear it.

Remember
Frog in a bucket = WTF

 

[Lyricalli]

Frayed Reflection

Though I wish I had an edited version of my poem to share, life had other plans for me this past week. I very much appreciate all of the feedback, and have to admit it made my head swim a bit.

The Poet could bypass what you perceive as a problem by creating two poems rather than one from the comments.

Ishtat sums it up well here.

Mer described the piece as an awkward teenager, and she's absolutely right. This was one that I was having a difficult time making it into what I wanted, so I decided to offer it up for dissection. Istat's suggestion to pare it down appeals to me, because I tend towards shorter writes, generally. I also understand the advice to add more and making it more specific. It all makes sense to me, now I just have to make some sense of the poem.

Don't worry AH, "swells to overwhelming" will stay. It's my favorite line in the piece. Either that, or I'll use it somewhere else.

My used of 'frayed' in the title was in the connotation of frayed nerves or feelings, but I understand that the association with fabric makes it not quite fit the piece. I also liked that it sounds like the last syllable in 'afraid'. I'm not terribly good at titles, so I'm not attached to this one. It was the only thing I had other than 'untitled' when I sent it in to GM.

There's a coherence to this draft, but it's much too abstract for me.

Don't tell us what "the ugly truth" is; give the reader a hint. Let him or figure it out. An important part of poetry appreciation is the "aha" that comes with discovery of meaning IMO.

I would reconstruct the pieces of the broken mirror in L1 of S3, instead of L2, and put scars in L2 in which case the scars beome more visible to the poet's lover which is what poet wants and fears. I might even introduce "shards" to S3 to suggest how complicated it is to reconstruct the self that has been broken, and even then may be incomplete. Shards to my mind suggest many more than broken pieces which may be just a few. For some that may be extending the metaphor more than needed; perhaps, but it may trigger some thought about other images that might bring "the ugly truth" into sharper focus.

GM, your comments, most of all, really resonated with me, and they help pull together some of the other comments I received. Hopefully, it won't be long before I have the time and energy to return to the poem and put them to good use, along with the other comments I received.

Thank you for this challenge; it was quite the eye-opening, head-spinning experience.

And, thank you, sincerely, to everyone that took the time to read and comment on this piece. I wish I had something more satisfactory to post here today. Every one of your comments are pasted into a file with the poem, so I have easy reference to them when I go back to it.

 

[Magnetron]

GM mentioned he was open to a retitling of his poem as well.

I'm voting for a change to I Thought I Had A Woodie, But It's Knot

 

[legerdemer]

Legs, the beginning is indeed less distracting now.

Consider going back to "a vengeance" rather than "with" - the modification comes across now as somewhat of an incomplete thought.

And mentally try "childhood shoved" and "innocence stained" on for size.

I'm trying your suggestions on for size - so far, so good. Thanks muchly!