Reflections on Refracting

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Is it possible that you hate yourself,
have to,
only to counteract how much you’re loved?
Tears! Melt-in-your-mouth and musical,
run into your rum;
a mug held between teeth, between breaths,
between you and me
--We! Are ambulance hitchhikers in this Robocop world.
I put the id in coincidence.
The pit in epithet
so kiss my class, simple-bodied believer
and wipe away the chalk-outline lies.

But back to that place, its happenings:
Tragedy is quite the bartender.
The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.
Ernest Hemingway




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Hm...What can I say about this? Well, I liked this. Not the best though of
your work.

-- M.B.Author
Listen to advice and except discipline so that you
may be wise for the rest of your life
-- Proverbs 19:20




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I may not understand what you are meaning to say but upon looking hard I think that I do. Is this about alcoholics who drink themselves to near death? You know how I am--spot on or not at all.

I really loved the use of the word hate and have in L1 and L2, which may be only because it reminds me of German word play, du hasst and du haßt, which sound the same. Spoken, you can't tell which the person is saying, apart from context...

Should L10 have a period at the end?

I loved the idea of ambulance hitchhikers, and the repetition of between. (And, so it seems, I have trouble reading the word ambulance and understand what it is... it took me a few moments, it looked odd. I think I have a brain issue, hehe.)

It feels kind of wordy. But it works. I dare say the words drown the meaning, or perhaps it is drowned and it works... I don't know. You may want to consider trying, either with this one or in the future, to get your stanza's, in pattern and rhythm and meter, to reflect the meaning of the poem. It's beautiful if done well.

I don't like the mention of Robocop, perhaps because it is a bothersome word and you are single out your audience. If they, like me, haven't seen that, they may think you are on crack and not understand it. I also didn't like the last four lines of the first stanza, although the last two eventually redeemed themselves for me.

I don't know, I'm not sure entirely what I think, so this is more a ramble than anything. Perhaps, expect something else from me in a few days. You know how I am; I like letting your words sit in my mind.
“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo



A person is more than their experiences, stacked up like stones... Our best moments are the foundations we use to reach for the sky.
— Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson