Sulphur

Misleading causes to crawl on your knees for like priests
on marble cathedral steps with their hollowed bibles,
a leather bound armor bathed in adoration by the outlines
of a translucent body: moving but not feeling for those words
written with gold and gunpowder, letters
curling like chanting lips of civilization
and its end by whip lashed pride and men
trembling like beaten children confessing their sins.
Choice given to them twisted and reformed into an Evangelistic sermon
before dripping through their guttered minds reaching the devil's basilisk -
lurking with a murderous glare cradled in sulphur.
Let him stand against the divine cross.


--

Spoiler

This, by no means, represents my religious ideologies. It's just a (bad) poem.

Err how does sulphur play into this? Exactly? OR is it a referance to flames AKA hell?

silented1 wrote:Err how does sulphur play into this? Exactly? OR is it a referance to flames AKA hell?

You're paying too much attention to the title. But it's in reference to the basilisk, which I mention at the end.

Hi Kammie!

I really liked this poem; your imagery was just breathtaking. It was short and to the point, which is something that I really like in poetry. Nothing really much to critique here, but the transition between the two lines below seems a bit sloppy:

Kamas wrote:on marble cathedral steps with their hollowed bibles,
a leather bound armor bathed in adoration by the outlines

I don't know what exactly you're referring to with the second line. Is it a suit of armor? Are the priests wearing armor? What does this have to do with the two lines before it?

-
Overall, this was really nice. You're a great poet, so keep it up.

-Elinor

Hello, Kamas! Tassen Spellbinder here to have a look at your poem!
I'm going to just copy-paste the lines that I saw things in, and go from there.


Misleading causes to crawl on your knees for like priests
-- Are the causes misleading? Clarify.

on marble cathedral steps with their hollowed bibles,
-- One, I believe bibles needs to be capitalized, unless it's an intentional slight.

a leather bound armor bathed in adoration by the outlines
-- I think you either need to ditch the 'a', or make it 'a leather bound *suit of* armor'.

of a translucent body: moving but not feeling for those words
-- Perhaps it should be 'moving to but not feeling for'? It sounds a tad odd, as is. I had to stop and think for a moment.

curling like chanting lips of civilization
and its end by whip lashed pride and men
-- For these two lines, I think you should put a comma after civilization and ditch the and. Also, should it be whipping?


Choice given to them twisted and reformed into an Evangelistic sermon
-- I think you might need some sort of punctuatio after them.

before dripping through their guttered minds reaching the devil's basilisk -
-- A comma after basilisk might serve better. That depends on what is doing the lurking- the sermon, or the basilisk. The meaning is the same, but the grammar is different, I think.

Hope this helps! PM me if you have questions.

Hello, Kamas.
You say you're not good at poetry and I think that's a load of feathers! -angry glare-

Here's the feeling that I have after reading through this a couple of times. I mean, I am a fan of run-on, frantic sentences in poetry, and I'm sure they get confusing sometimes, but that's the feeling I was mostly left with after your poem. It was winding, long, and that might just add to the tone of your poem, if you meant to leave people contemplating or at least disturbed.

Still, I think that you can organize your words a little better. I felt like a lot of the phrases kept going by repeating present participle verbs (the -ing ones), instead of turning them into descriptive phrases. I think it would be easier to navigate if you could turn some of them into phrases that describe rather than phrases that attempt to continue the action. Here's an example.

dripping through their guttered minds reaching the devil's basilisk -
lurking with a murderous glare cradled in sulphur.

Instead of using 'dripping' AND 'lurking', maybe you could change the second line to 'he lurked with a murderous glare cradled in sulphur'.

One thing that I think is effective about this poem is the lack of punctuation in certain points, like the one we just went over. We wonder, is the glare cradled in sulphur (meaning the basilisk would be sulphur), or is the basilisk cradled in sulphur? It gives a good ambiguity that, I think, fits with the message/topic of this poem.

a leather bound armor bathed in adoration by the outlines
of a translucent body:

I don't like these lines in the midst of all your other imagery. I mean, I know I said that vague was okay before, but this I can't even imagine in my head. It just escapes me completely. D: I think, if it's important to what you wanted to do with the poem, that you should try to rework it so it's easier to understand, or at least a bit more tangible in the imagery.

and its end by whip lashed pride and men

Also, in the progression of your verbs, I didn't get how 'its end' fits. I don't know what other parts of the sentence it related to, or how it furthered the action of the sentence. I think you might want to clear that up with another step or something.

Choice given to them twisted and reformed into an Evangelistic sermon
before dripping through their guttered minds reaching the devil's basilisk -

The choice reaches the basilisk? And you're saying that it's twisted until it's trying to reform this basilisk in the mind? Okay, so this part is a little muddy as well, and I think it's because of the progression of verbs. I know that in poetry, you don't have to use many 'road signs' (like articles or little words like that), but I think you could use some to make this critical section a bit more accessible to the reader.

Overall, I think it's a really good start to an interesting poem, and I appreciate the amount of material you've put into such a small space! Please let me know if you have any questions or if you'd like anything else reviewed! Thanks!

-Hannah-