The Ethos of the stars

just something i wrote in math, really rough and needs editing

The Ethos of the Stars

The salty musk of tears,
Shaking rasp of breath
His broken body
The Ethos of the Stars

Jagged looming sky
Over freshly dug earth.
Mollusks alive and screaming
In the liquid storm

Feverish hands
As spades are tossed and turned.
Dark lost figures walk away
Into the sky

Beneath padded feet
The stench of flesh resides.
Between the ballad of life and death,
Of racing blood and silent heart,

Something awakes

Hi Zaddie Caso! June here!

So! I think you have a pretty nice start here with decent images and such to play for your audience! However, there's a few things here that I'd like to comment on.

The salty musk of tears,

Shaking rasp of breath

Half eaten heart

The Ethos of the Stars

Here, I really like the images that each of these lines can represent. They're clean images, that can symbolize lots of things if you will, but!

I think they sound like fragments as it stands. For instance, all of these lines should build up to something, dear. It's like you're giving us a line that can be a full thought, should be a full thought, but instead you leave us hanging.

By this I mean that your last line in this stanza should tie these all in. In poetry, you're absolutely free to create an image in fragments and stanzas, but one of the best things you can do is create an image stanza by stanza.

For now! This first stanza is pretty much a fragment! See, You have "The salty musk of tears, / Shaking rasp of breath /half eaten heart /The Ethos of the Stars" But, what is the point of all of these words? You're saying all of this, but they're not doing anything.

However! If you said something like: The salty musk of tears, /Shaking rasp of breath /Half eaten heart /The Ethos of the Stars [Build up to an image that we're making] you'll have a cleaner, more stable stanza to lie upon.

Jagged looming sky

Over freshly dug earth

Molluscs alive and screaming

In the liquid storm

In the third line, I think you mean mollusks?

Same here! You're creating pretty lines, but you're not telling us what they're all doing. It's not a bad thing to have it this way, but you're really raising our expectations of the final line for this poem, and if the poem doesn't live up to it, you can easily disappoint.

Think of these as a sentence, dear! You want to complete a full thought with the sentence, not just give us images. Your images are cool, don't get me wrong, but they're a big fragmented.

Feverish hands

As spades are tossed and turned

Dark lost figures walk away

Into the sky

I like the imagery here! ^_^

But, yet again! Your lines kind of sound like fragments. I know this is a style and what not, but I feel like you're throwing us all of these cool images and words that we're supposed to grasp, yet, you're not giving us anything to grasp them with.

Ask yourself, why are these figures walking into the sky? Tell us this! or at least hint at it, dearie.

Beneath padded feet

The stench of flesh resides

Between the ballad of life and death

Of racing blood and silent heart,
Something awakes

Eep, pretty interesting here.

Honestly, this stanza had a more "closed" feel to it, which is good, because it's the final stanza! However, I'm not so sure it's done this poem justice!

I really like the words you used, you have beautiful structure here, and you show a lot of potential to have a beautiful poem here. As I so redundantly mentioned, you seem to have fragments, and while I think you can build a poem out of fragments, I would most definitely love to see some full thoughts in here.

Seemingly! The only full thought we have is at the end, and even then, it's an itty bit fragmented and doesn't tie up all of the previous images. It's beautiful, really, but the audience can easily have a hard time connected with this, dear.

Aside from that! You have a nice way with words. Though this poem's punctuation could be argued to be improved, I think it was nicely structured. Keep it up, Zaddie!

June

I'm not sure, your first two stanzas are so intense. They contain so much imagery, but at the same time I'm not really sure what that imagery is. I know it's show not tell, but could you give me a hint? I was just giving a poet a hard time for giving way too much away, but really at least in that one I knew what it was about. You dance around so much in your first two stanzas. It's all very powerful, very beautiful, but it doesn't really seem to have much point.
Your second two stanzas don't really don't give the first two justice. It's like you've suddenly dropped the thesaurus and your writing what you really want. (by the way I'm having to be picky, juniper got everything.) The whole problem is to me they just didn't seem to fit, plus feverish hands, Izzy? Sorry it just seems like you've taken a lot in from English lessons.
My problem is it seems like there is a split right down the middle,
1st and 2nd verse = Beautiful, vivid imagery, but kind of pointless
3rd and 4th verse = The point of the story, but where's that imagery gone?

I do really like this as a poem, its genius, but its those little structural differences that are my only problem, its just kind of cold and hard to connect with, it seem a lot like just words, words that don't all fit perfectly. Knowing you, I'd say you might just be trying a little too hard. try rewriting it without thinking about using the word ethos, maybe your new friends use it but I think that your being a little too inconsistent with it.

Mads