My place

I sit at the dinner table
in a room bedecked in age old history
Time is a frenzied whirlwind in my ears
Tearing past,
blurring colors and shapes in its frantic flight.
Nothing but a ringing in my ears
And my tears flowing without restraint,
as these images fade into obscurity.

Family members from several generations set this table
Communing with each other.
My kin
To whom I’m bound
Soon they will be gone
And I am obliged to rise and take their place
To contribute to our failing line
and maintain our earthly place.
In my mind I hear their voices resound from within
And I am saddened by our mortality.

So many thousands will cross paths
And I will light a torch onto their path
Then they will pass on,
out of my light forever.
Long will I sit,
Reminiscing our encounter.
And weep salty tears,
numerous as the grains of sand.

Their many voices blur into one
deafening,
intangible sound.
The tears blur my eyes
and I can no longer tell each grain apart.

This world screams its ceaselessness,
I hear its call and I am enticed to answer
To defy,
Walk slowly past this blur of present molding into future
And fade out into history as will we all
To become as indistinguishable
as the grains of sand.

Hi Cameron,

You show good promise as a poet. Of your work I've read, this is one of my favorites. However, occurring in most of your work are the same small detail issues, that, once resolved, will greatly improve your writing.

The phrasing in this piece is not always comfortable. A poem should feel natural to read aloud, even if the subject is not that pleasant.

In my work, I generally prefer a little more punctuation that what you typically use. Just a comma every once in a while to denote phrasing can make a big difference in the delivery of a piece. You might read through this and see where you natural stop or pause, and if it's in the middle of a line, try a comma.

Now for specific places of focus:

Tearing past, blurring colors and shapes in its’ frantic flight

You need no apostrophe here because "its" is in its nature possessive.

My kin whom I am part of

I understand what you mean, but I would choose a different phrasing. I'm not a big fan of this tense.

Than they will pass on out of my light forever

Do you mean "than" or "then"? I'm afraid it's not clear to me.

And weep salty tears, numerous as the grains of sand

What grains of sand? All the grains of sand there have ever been? Though I do like your metaphor in the next line.

Some of your lines are very long, and could be split into two for more impact. I don't have much time now, but I may come back and attend to the line breaks later.

You also might separate some groups into stanzas, just to simplify reading for the reader. If done properly, this will also add impact to your words.

I like the title of this piece very much. Two meanings of "Place"- very clever.

I look forward to reading more of your work!

Oh...regarding that- you will probably get more critiques and help with your work if you critique others' work as well. Generally, we prefer to keep critiques to work at least at a 2 to 1 ratio.