Poetry in Progress ~ construction zone

[vampiredust]

Beauty

Blossom hangs like pearls
before falling into the lake
lacquered by moonlight.

Beauty, once so precious,
lies swallowed by the iris
deep within us.
------------
am not sure about the last stanza, my original thinking was to have just the first stanza by itself. Help!

 

[vampiredust]

Façade

'You can keep the façade,
you've earned it'

mother said to the sky

as the blue silk screen was lifted,
revealing the grey backdrop
underneath.

'You can keep this façade'

Mother said to me -

'You created it'

as I slipped and fell
into the puddle

I created by my own deceit

 

[Coi]

revision

Daniel is all I could call you.
Dad stuck in my throat
with my glued peanut butter tongue
always sounding false.
Forced.
Little whispers followed me;
I grew up, day by day.
I knew bitter nightmare truths
that never showed their face in the cold light of day.
Devil red hair
& murderous hands
with an arsons punch,
I watched.
You beat my mother.

Hiding under the stairs
between the wooden planks
I can still see you blurred
with your anger and my tears.
Those tears became the river,
where fish are diseased
with tumorours growths.
Where damns hold the water,
heat rises, bacteria grows.

From the jagged rock banks
I sat,
watching men pull sturgeon
from the blackness towards the light.
Sick but heavy still with life.

I became the fish,
with Golum eyes
& bottom feeder mouths.
They visit me in the night,
flopping, drowning in air
before billyclub death
is introduced with a thud.
All that's left behind is blood on rocks.

"Don't worry," I heard my grandmother’s voice
"she is too little she won't remember."

Four years old, with my eyes that had seen too much to forget.
Leaving cookie crumbs in gram's lysol clean kitchen
while hearing my mothers sobs echo'd
on hardwood floors.

I can still see her on that day,
in the dust and sun.
Golden strawberry blonde hair
a white linen top,
cutoff jean shorts.
A thumb-sucking toddler on her hip,
standing tearstained
next to a beatup leather suitcase;
hitchhiking towards salvation.

 

[SeattleRain]

I would suggest you lose the space between the last two lines, the last line feels lost and awkward there by itself.

You might consider the extra spacing earlier as well.

appealing poem~

SR

'You can keep the façade,
you've earned it'

mother said to the sky

as the blue silk screen was lifted,
revealing the grey backdrop
underneath.

'You can keep this façade'

Mother said to me -

'You created it'

as I slipped and fell
into the puddle

I created by my own deceit

 

[SeattleRain]

Blossom hangs like pearls
before falling into the lake
lacquered by moonlight.

Beauty, once so precious,
lies swallowed by the iris
deep within us.
------------
am not sure about the last stanza, my original thinking was to have just the first stanza by itself. Help!

The first line, I am not sure what to think of the singular and plural. It is hard for me to imagine a single blossom hanging like pearls.

I like the idea of moonlight lacquered lake- great image -- can see it very clearly, but think the description might be better before the blossom falls-- which I think would be most effective at the end. The moonlight takes too strong of a position at the end, when it is the lake and the blossom you want to emphasize.

I think that it might be a good idea to keep the first stanza by itself, or maybe bring the personification into the first stanza by using a word like swallowed up there. It could give the feel without the extra stanza.

While I love the image of laquered lake, maybe use it somewhere else, use that last line to bring in the swallowing of beauty image. The swallow and iris might not be a good pair, metaphors not well mixed.

I do not know you very well, but I do see your talent, and hope my abrupt observations do not put you off. I am in a bit of a hurry and wanted to get to this before it slips into yesterday's mind.

 

[Sara Crewe]

All thoughts and ideas are welcome.

Topless Under My Sweater

I think he has come for coffee
and to chat about the stripped women
walking through his life. It’s odd

that naked people make me think
of clothes but they sound like outfits
he tried on but changed his mind

when they felt too tight. They lay
crumpled in a closet of memories,
empty shells without form and their

faces have faded from his future.
I have come disguised as a friend
who slides her murmured comments

across the table to pay for his attention.
I wonder if he realizes that all women
are topless under their sweaters.

Tonight I’m in his closet to hold
up the moth-eaten fabric and if he looks
through, he’ll see me behind the holes

in his stories, a naked woman
waiting for him beneath her clothes.



Edited so that people stop yelling at me for changing it.

 

[flyguy69]

Sara Crewe, Topless

I like the first version better, Sara. The second loses, for me, some of the delicate touch I so enjoyed in the first. I can see that you considered more angles by which to connect the metaphor with the story but to the poem’s detriment, I believe. Like dough kneaded too long, an overworked metaphor becomes dense and tiresome.

A mistake I sometimes make is to tell a metaphor and let the story of the poem fill in details and add interest. It should be the other way around. This poem is about a woman’s insecurity and desire, not about clothes. The metaphor is there to bring more of the readers’ senses to bear on the story by likening the events or emotions of the poem to other experiences so they can say “Yes! Transient relationships are like trying on clothes!” But don’t let the metaphor drive the poem.

Areas where this poem can be improved are in line breaking and in word choice. TheRainMan has provided a solid foundation for line-breaking discussion on another thread (and, indeed, all I know I learned from him!). If you treat each line as a unit of the poem you can get a sense for “themes within themes” that determine where you want a reader’s eyes and mind to dwell as they read. A simple approach is to look for natural breaks in speech (caesuras). Unfortunately, those breaks often have little to do with the meanings or sounds of the words, which are the essence of poetry. Another is to break on phrases, so that words become grouped by theme. This works well but quickly becomes boring. A more powerful approach is to look for those themes, select words that best emphasize them, and break on those words. True poetry arises when an author can use those line breaks to pull a reader through a poem by connecting each line and strophe with the next.

An example:

I think he has come for coffee
and to chat about the stripped women
walking through his life. It’s odd….​

You have broken the poem so that readers linger on “coffee,” “women” and “odd,” with lesser emphases on “I,” “and” and “walking.” Yet as I read this strophe, the important elements are the meeting, the nakedness and the oddity. I would, therefore, keep your last break but modify the first two to emphasize those elements.

Word choice is an essential part of a poem’s balance and appeal. The power of the words needs to vary throughout a poem for interest, but needs to oscillate around a constant value for the poem to feel balanced. This poem does that well. But I think you could choose some more interesting words to enliven the poem. You have actually done that in version two with “reveal” instead of “chat about.” Again, in strophe one, words like “come,” “chat” and “walking” don’t pull their weight.

I will not to try to rewrite your poem. I have never found that particularly helpful, and always feel as though the critic robs the author of ownership when they do so. But I hope these thoughts help you to see how I would approach your poem and give you things to consider as you make your own decisions.

 

[Sara Crewe]

I like the first version better, Sara. The second loses, for me, some of the delicate touch I so enjoyed in the first. I can see that you considered more angles by which to connect the metaphor with the story but to the poem’s detriment, I believe. Like dough kneaded too long, an overworked metaphor becomes dense and tiresome.

A mistake I sometimes make is to tell a metaphor and let the story of the poem fill in details and add interest. It should be the other way around. This poem is about a woman’s insecurity and desire, not about clothes. The metaphor is there to bring more of the readers’ senses to bear on the story by likening the events or emotions of the poem to other experiences so they can say “Yes! Transient relationships are like trying on clothes!” But don’t let the metaphor drive the poem.

Areas where this poem can be improved are in line breaking and in word choice. TheRainMan has provided a solid foundation for line-breaking discussion on another thread (and, indeed, all I know I learned from him!). If you treat each line as a unit of the poem you can get a sense for “themes within themes” that determine where you want a reader’s eyes and mind to dwell as they read. A simple approach is to look for natural breaks in speech (caesuras). Unfortunately, those breaks often have little to do with the meanings or sounds of the words, which are the essence of poetry. Another is to break on phrases, so that words become grouped by theme. This works well but quickly becomes boring. A more powerful approach is to look for those themes, select words that best emphasize them, and break on those words. True poetry arises when an author can use those line breaks to pull a reader through a poem by connecting each line and strophe with the next.

An example:

I think he has come for coffee
and to chat about the stripped women
walking through his life. It’s odd….​

You have broken the poem so that readers linger on “coffee,” “women” and “odd,” with lesser emphases on “I,” “and” and “walking.” Yet as I read this strophe, the important elements are the meeting, the nakedness and the oddity. I would, therefore, keep your last break but modify the first two to emphasize those elements.

Word choice is an essential part of a poem’s balance and appeal. The power of the words needs to vary throughout a poem for interest, but needs to oscillate around a constant value for the poem to feel balanced. This poem does that well. But I think you could choose some more interesting words to enliven the poem. You have actually done that in version two with “reveal” instead of “chat about.” Again, in strophe one, words like “come,” “chat” and “walking” don’t pull their weight.

I will not to try to rewrite your poem. I have never found that particularly helpful, and always feel as though the critic robs the author of ownership when they do so. But I hope these thoughts help you to see how I would approach your poem and give you things to consider as you make your own decisions.

Thanks, Fly. I had a feeling that the edited version may have been weaker. I always save version one in case I get all lost and confused in version two. Your words about the metaphor not driving the poem were very wise.

I will go back and take a look at word choices and the line breaks. Thanks so much for your time, I appreciate it very much.

 

[clutching_calliope]

searching for some meaning

.....

 

[clutching_calliope]

.....

 

[annaswirls]

..........

 

[vampiredust]

Portrait Of The Unfolding Soul

She defaced her body
with injected graffitti:
cracked hearts, rusted
butterflies and faded
dragons.
When I left, she tried
to scrub away the images
left behind, but there was
always one she couldn't remove:
a kiss, appliqued on her womb -
a timeless reminder
of the innocence unfolding
in her.

 

[vampiredust]

Black Oxygen

Hypnotists wearing masks
inject rain in my eroding
veins, filling the cavities
of my emptiness.

My originality is washed away,
replaced by a subliminal need
to serve, to follow.

I am a hollow corpse,
gargling on the choking
discontent, drowning in the memory
of what could have been.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Lucy of Eyes

.....

 

[clutching_calliope]

Resist

.....

 

[flyguy69]

This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist
Beckons my tongue-tip to taste and here trace
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

Hazy morn, the fog a quilt, soupy mist.
A humid arm lays heady in my lap.
This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist.

Insomniac’s dawn drawn with rough red twists,
Violent violet veins, depth of your sleep and
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

God’s great cannon sounds, the heavens cry, “List
Your sins, subtract from fair and humble acts.”
This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist.

Lightning slices ragged gray to persist
It reigns more jagged than this razor on
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

Toothy blade. Your forearm without fist.
Can a faulty dam contain storm waters?
This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist.
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

*this is my first attempt at a villanelle. If there any lover's of this form in the ether, I'd love some feedback.

I'd respond, but my hands have grown strangely numb.

 

[Tzara]

Lucy chugs westward,
destination nuptials.
The groom isn’t her idea
of fun. “Don’t you think, Mom,
that I should take the Almighty
for a partner instead?”

Momma says nope, he’s bringing some goats.
But trickle down plagues, Lucy’s ma
saw death and Lucy to the mall of Agatha went.
She bought some worry stones
and a dreamcatcher.
A miracle, faithandbegorrah! Lucy
saves the day and they all eat cake.
The cake was lemon, there was laundry
on the line.

Lucy gets what she wants, no pagan,
no marriage but the man
has a no-return policy on the ring.

The cops show up,
along with the cameramen,
and take poor Luce
off in cuffs. Bad boys was playing
on the radio, it was night,
the neighbours whispered.

“We hear you’re engaged to the Big Man,”
and they plucked out an eye,
just like the four and twenty ravens
baked into a pie. It made a small sucking noise
as it eased out of her skull.
The pie was mincemeat, and the cops
each had a slice
before taking her other eye. The eye
was blue, the pie was warm.

Lucy of the eyes, with diadem?

 

[flyguy69]

Lucy of the eyes, with diadem?

Cool av! Who is it?




Nevermind-- BB just filled us in!

 

[flyguy69]

Bear Medicine

Whether irate God
or Nature, god-like
in its mercilessness, no story reveals
the administrator of our anguish.
Only that we fell

soft-skinned against the world
and lay there bleeding, pleading
for intercession. Our mouths
circled the endless vowels
of our wonder. No wonder--

the path of the righteous is narrow
while the plain of wickedness
stretches wide beyond our sight,
and it is easy to conjecture
our fault: we blasphemed

a short-tempered creator, hands still wet
with the clay of our making, and he squeezed
the flesh in his fist, our breath shortening
and our eyes bulging in bewilderment.
Or perhaps we forgot to care

and let seeds scatter
on hardpan, each meal more meager
than the last until our ribs revealed
like rungs. Without knowledge we threw ourselves

on the mountain's hard feet and cried
Mercy! But where Nature
or God, nature-like
in his indifference, turned only stone
ears, the story picks up

that Noho lifted his listening head
to our cry: Teach us
your ceremony, the long sweat
deep in your den. Let sin bead
on our skin till we are purged
of it. The story relays he descended,
and with curved claws carved from the ground

a lodge: a holy hole
to heal us. We sang
into the smoke and curled up
our promise to never do it
again if we could only understand

what it was. And Noho taught:
that we might think the world
clay, that we might mold it
in the image of our shin bones
and never falter was our fault.

So we surrendered
to the stones and the heat our conceit
of God and Nature and turned
instead to the tasks of each day: gathering
seeds and giving thanks.

 

[champagne1982]

You have managed to marry two very different size threads in this poem. You have taken the middle eastern creationist belief and knotted it together, in a way the Jesuit would be proud, with North American Aboriginal creationism. Brother Bear is the more noble of beings, I think and Mother Earth more nurturing. Blessed is the human who can make room at their hearth for all. I reserve comment on the clay building materials of your poem. Right now, I cannot imagine how you could tell the story better.

by flyguy69
Bear Medicine

Whether irate God
or Nature, god-like
in its mercilessness, no story reveals
the administrator of our anguish.
Only that we fell

soft-skinned against the world
and lay there bleeding, pleading
for intercession. Our mouths
circled the endless vowels
of our wonder. No wonder--

the path of the righteous is narrow
while the plain of wickedness
stretches wide beyond our sight,
and it is easy to conjecture
our fault: we blasphemed

a short-tempered creator, hands still wet
with the clay of our making, and he squeezed
the flesh in his fist, our breath shortening
and our eyes bulging in bewilderment.
Or perhaps we forgot to care

and let seeds scatter
on hardpan, each meal more meager
than the last until our ribs revealed
like rungs. Without knowledge we threw ourselves

on the mountain's hard feet and cried
Mercy! But where Nature
or God, nature-like
in his indifference, turned only stone
ears, the story picks up

that Noho lifted his listening head
to our cry: Teach us
your ceremony, the long sweat
deep in your den. Let sin bead
on our skin till we are purged
of it. The story relays he descended,
and with curved claws carved from the ground

a lodge: a holy hole
to heal us. We sang
into the smoke and curled up
our promise to never do it
again if we could only understand

what it was. And Noho taught:
that we might think the world
clay, that we might mold it
in the image of our shin bones
and never falter was our fault.

So we surrendered
to the stones and the heat our conceit
of God and Nature and turned
instead to the tasks of each day: gathering
seeds and giving thanks.

 

[Tzara]

This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist
Beckons my tongue-tip to taste and here trace
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

Hazy morn, the fog a quilt, soupy mist.
A humid arm lays heady in my lap.
This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist.

Insomniac’s dawn drawn with rough red twists,
Violent violet veins, depth of your sleep and
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

God’s great cannon sounds, the heavens cry, “List
Your sins, subtract from fair and humble acts.”
This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist.

Lightning slices ragged gray to persist
It reigns more jagged than this razor on
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

Toothy blade. Your forearm without fist.
Can a faulty dam contain storm waters?
This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist.
The bracelets of my good fortune. (Resist.)

*this is my first attempt at a villanelle. If there any lover's of this form in the ether, I'd love some feedback.

Hey, Calli. I don't know the form well. I like this poem though. Uh, "like" may be a bit tepid a comment. It left my, um, fingertips a bit warm.

I like the repetition, especially "This, this, this" echoed at the end of the line with "wrist." I think that works well. I don't, however, like "Resist" in parentheses. I think that detracts from the presentation of the poem. Italics, maybe? Like

This, this, this. The skin of your inner wrist
Beckons my tongue-tip to taste and here trace
The bracelets of my good fortune. Resist.​

Or maybe not. You're the poet, after all.

And while I love alliteration and assonance, I almost find "Violent violet veins" a bit much, in the sense that I think it detracts from my reading the line—I get distracted following this and rather forget about the thrust of the poem. It's nice wordplay, but perhaps too flashy for the poem as a whole.

I also want to question "God's great cannon sounds" and possibly make it "canon." I know, I know that your original makes sense. Maybe you're being more subtle than me. Entirely possible, even likely in fact.

I have to say that the skin of my inner wrist has never felt such, um, tryst.

Er, what?

A poem that actually is erotic. Not an easy thing to do.

Nice job.

 

[vampiredust]

The Poet

All feedback, suggestions etc is welcome
---------------------------
"Poetry is a tonic for the soul"

He sits in his blackened room,
trying to carve words for the memory
of her, but nothing seems to fit.Wandering

through the lifeless streets and countryside,
all he can hear are empty whispers. His mind
starts to sketch the scene like an invisible

painter ; branches become blackened claws,
the sun becomes a bowl of melted fire trapped
in a glass box. The dormant feelings reawaken

once more and he sees her memory everywhere.
Everything becomes more than just an image,
it becomes an expression of the feeling burning inside.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Thank you, Tzara

.....

 

[KR]

Twelveoone sent me here...

Quarry

Predator, you scent prey,
doe-eyed quarry strolling meditatively,
musing upon the cud of her thoughts
Prowling behind, your covetous eyes follow
the languid shift of muscles under skin
the color of milky quartz, lucent
within the praying hunter's reach
Your fingers curl, longing to reap a harvest
of agonized cries and pleasured moans
To draw nourishment from the flesh
of the doe-eyed one whose heart
resembles uncut stone,
If you can

Sculptor, you surely pray,
you could make of your cock a chisel
the hammer of your body pounds against
Splitting stone from the doe-eyed quarry
walls pitted with scars from picks and rails
Acts of violence necessary to elevate
the heart of stone, inviolate
to the rim, within the preying artist's reach
Your fingers curl 'round rasp and burr
eager to harvest dust and chips
To carve your dream from the living flesh
of the uncut stone,
If you can

Lover, preying, praying
your fingers explore the quarry's mossy ledge
seeking the shaded twilight depths
of the woman-shaped canyon
flooded with nectar for which you thirst
Soul saturated with esurience,
tongue craving the taste of sunbeams enfleshed
Will you assault it with your tools, attempt
to conquer and shape the stone like so much clay
Or will you drive, sleek and fine,
into the quarry pond, hoping to surface,
spent, upon the shore of your desire,
If you can


I wrote the first version of this poem and decided it needed more work, particularly on the transition from quarry & predator to quarry & stone-worker and from there to the lover and mixed quarry/quarry imagery. I rarely edit poems, I usually leave them alone once they are written, because once I've written them down, they leave me alone. But this one... well, I thought with some work it could be quite powerful.

This second revision (posted above) I am very pleased with, though not quite 100%. There are two things that I think are not quite right...

The preying/praying in the third section is a clumsy attempt to tie into the prior sections of the poem, to tie in the lover as sculptor and predator, as one who creates and destroys, who shapes and feeds, who strives to claim and to devour the divine within the 'other' he desires. I am note quite sure how to 'fix' it

As for the other, I deliberately placed that cock-as-chisel verbiage there. I know it jars. I want it to jar. I think I can accept that jarring note. Maybe. But I'm thinking of changing the lines:

you could make of your cock a chisel
the hammer of your body pounds against
to
you could make of your cock a chisel,
of your body a hammer, pounding

I considered looking for more fluid, metaphorical translations of that image, but when it comes down to it, I like that jar. It reminds me of hammering a chisel, of that shock running up the arm, running up the mind. The poem has its own irregular syncopation, and then that jarring, forceful drive. There is dissonance in it, for certain, but it is not cognitive dissonance, I think, or not to me, but rather aesthetic, and sometimes a moment of aesthetic dissonance throws everything else into relief, revealing the outlines of harmonies in ways we would not normally notice... But then, I am not a poet, I am a scientist-turned-accountant with a monkey who likes to write on her back, so what do I know?

Any feedback on how to improve this poem is welcome. Thank you, 1201, for twice recommending I use this thread.

KR

 

[annaswirls]

I I'm glad the original erotic poem showed through in the villanelle, if only a bit. I stitched it from an old piece called "Nothing to Comment On" which was posted once upon a time here at Lit. Funny how people take you at your word...I think Tatha was the only one to comment.

hey baby I thought you looked familiar.
hmmm still not sure from where
​