My Lifetime Collection of You

Spoiler

So I wasn't thinking when I wrote this I just wrote... and this is what became of it. Read and Enjoy and perhaps leave me some helpful criticism

My Lifetime Collection of You

I harvest every golden tear
And specialize in vengeance,
There’s so little time left
Before you go – you won’t return.

I record your every laughter
So that no one can wipe my smile away.
There’s no room for rational thoughts
And in this world of emptiness
I keep a place that is filled with you,
That space lacks of everything but love.

I never really thought of damnation
Always filled with a trunk load of salvation-
But it’s all over now – it’s all gone.

I bottle your flowery, sweet-sugar scent
And my dreams of you are glued to my retina.
I go down by the riverside-
And watch the tears you spilt wash up the shore.

The night falls upon me and reminds me of determination
The decision to rid myself of all happiness I’ve collected.
I can’t keep this smile glued to my lips-
For it isn’t real, for it isn’t here, for it has past – long time ago.

I must empty my bottles of you,
Must loose what I’ve harvested from you
And wipe my retina clean of you.
I have to lose the key to your heart and soul.

I tried so hard, so very, very hard,
To forgive but never forget-
I stashed you up in my wine cellar-
I collected you as if you were stamps,
As if you were precious coins.

I tried so hard, so very, very hard-
To keep you here with me,
Somewhere along the line
I must've forgotten
To open up my heart
While you were still here.
 

This was really good and you managed to get your message out of here. In a way, the message got converted when you got to the stanza that says

I tried to convert to Hinduism-
I wanted to believe in reincarnation,
But I have no faith left to give to any god,
To any religion – I am lost to this world.

From that point, I got confused because your message got a little warped. It seemed like you were talking about letting go of some type of religion. I would look over that stanza.

Also, I'm a little confused is if this person's lover has died or did they just break up. In the beginning, its as if the speaker's lover had died and then when I got to the end, it made me think that their lover must just have broken up with them. Just try to get a straight message out there. I think about different interpretations about poems which is good for a reader to do so you can fix it or not, your choice.

Other than that, I could sort of relate to this poem and I really enjoyed it. Keep writing.

Hi Demoness!

I was reading along, reading along...and then BAM, I hit the fourth stanza. This is where you start injecting some imagery into the piece, when your language becomes vivid enough to make this relationship unique. Up until that point, I'm having trouble holding onto the words because of a lack of rhythm or fluidity, and I find myself thinking I've seen this all before. "World of emptiness" and "so little time left" and "it's all over know"-- these are cliches, and melodramatic ones at that. They're applicable to this situation, and I see why you used them here (to establish the situation and catch readers up on what's going on) but I find the beginning simply not poetic enough to hold my attention.

Come the fourth stanza and I find some gems. Dreams glued to the retina-- love it. Tears washing up on the shore-- I've probably heard that one before, but it's still fresh and it's still pretty.

And then the fifth stanza comes...and you lose me again, until stanza eight, which I enjoyed. The idea of "collecting you as if you were stamps" is a nice one, and same with the lines around it. But everything between and everything after leaves me feeling lukewarm. Why? Not because they're bad lines, and not because it's a bad poem. Just because it feels stiff.

In between this rigid, capitalize-every-line format and your habit to only line break after a complete thought, like where a comma would be, we're losing the true meaning of the poem. The heart of it. The basic idea-- that she had something good that she let get away, and that now that it's gone, she has to stop clinging to him. It's a beautiful idea with the potential to leak imagery and bleed emotion, but I feel like it's all too rigid. With the exception of the fourth and eighth stanzas, not much in here is original or eye-opening or earth-shattering. Stanza two serves more to tell readers what's going on than to really devote enough time to showing it; stanza six repeats images we've already seen; stanza seven's mention of Hinduism is far too specific and pulls readers out of the poem to wonder at this detour the story's taken; and stanza eight is repetitive of seven, offering a kind of "punch line" at the end that I feel the poem could be better off without. Instead of outright telling your readers at the end "I must've forgotten to open my heart while you were still here", try to work that same sentiment in using more evocative language.

Description! Metaphors! Similes! Allusions! Alliteration! Patterns! Characterization! These things are your friends. These things will turn a very sweet yet slightly dull poem into something that makes readers clutch at their hearts and wipe their eyes. You have the basic framework here-- a clear idea to work with, a clear direction to go to. Just work on the words themselves and making them poetic.

Good job, and PM me for anything!

~Evi