funerals

beautiful guitars and mesmeric music taught you the ninetyseventytwo style,
and since you could only afford unlicensed radio time
you refused to cut your hair and a lovechild was born that wouldn't die
until thirty years later.

you lived with twohundredandfiftythousand other people, but you only
needed one to make your heart and your soul sing for eternity.
the acidic taste of late teens and university campuses taught
you how to die, but you learnt how to love all by yourself.

there are more stars and more stripes in the world than can be counted
and though police sunglasses have fallen by the wayside you're still strong
your children have been enslaved by the media, but you just smile
and remember that you were captured in just the same way.

for all the blood and sweat spilt over the battlefields, there's still a connection
between fate and reality, between want and need,
between you and me, and that's all the world really needs to breathe with
before we hide beneath the earth and only the flowers remember our name.

Two words: BRIL-LIANT.

Ok...I lied...one word...but still. Dude, I may have to quote this somewhere

damn. I'll come back in a few days (weeks) and attempt a coherent critique.

(ok, so this will be a bit coherent if I'm lucky)

This sounds almost hippie-ish to me..

you lived with twohundredandfiftythousand other people
commune.. or an army.

The first stanza seems like two ideas to me, but I probably don't know entirely what you're talking about. The radio line threw me off.. but if I think about it, it does work.

[/attempt at coherency]wait.. whoa. I just read this again, but thinking about something else while I read, and.. jeesh. makes me think of something (vague, yes?) Like.. I can't explain it, really. but man, was that a werid connection. Nam war stories.. 70's and hippies.. parents time..

ok, let me break this down according to my 'revelation'.
beautiful guitars and mesmeric music taught you the ninetyseventytwo style,
and since you could only afford unlicensed radio time
you refused to cut your hair and a lovechild was born that wouldn't die
until thirty years later.
the music of the seventies. a job, or something along those lines, met someone.. lose it after that. perhaps.. no, I'm not sure about this. thirty years.. could be how long a band was together, or how long something was together. and idea, people.

you lived with twohundredandfiftythousand other people, but you only
needed one to make your heart and your soul sing for eternity.
the acidic taste of late teens and university campuses taught
you how to die, but you learnt how to love all by yourself.
I'll go with my original thought of commune or army (or even college inconjunction with the rest of the stanza)here, and two people.. sounds like one is gone.. growing up, and realisation of something. sounds like love, to me, but whose? and learnt annoys me, but I think that's becuase we don't use that, usually, just learned.

there are more stars and more stripes in the world than can be counted
and though police sunglasses have fallen by the wayside you're still strong
your children have been enslaved by the media, but you just smile
and remember that you were captured in just the same way.
stars and stripes make me think of america. children enslaved by the media sounds hippie again, and "captured in the same way" sounds that was as well, but also like a generational movement...

for all the blood and sweat spilt over the battlefields, there's still a connection
between fate and reality, between want and need,
between you and me, and that's all the world really needs to breathe with
before we hide beneath the earth and only the flowers remember our name.
ok, this is where my thoughts rather were lost. first line sounds like war, what kind of war, I'm not sure. could be social, could be more "traditional" war-fare (literal, but the time period..). after that, sounds like a connection (no duh).. love, would be my guess, at least that's what it sounds like to me. flowers could be interuperted as a hippie thing, but I thought of flowers on a grave, kudos to the title.

Ok, this sounds to me like a generational type thing, but not ours.. judging from the date (1972) and the fact you said the time period, if not that date specifically. The death of a generation, or a cause, or a love.

yes, this was fun for me. Interperting things is always a challenge, though, beucase I know how I read this, its how you as the author meant this, and how everyone else reads this. Anyhoo, that's what I got out of this, and I could go on a bit more, but my head now hurts from so much thinking and so many ideas.

This poem has a lot of unnecessary verbage in it. "Just," for instance, is superfluous and ultimately detracts from the poem's meaning. You have words, lines, and even stanzas that are simply too much. You want sharp, biting insights, not melancholic mysticism.

What bothers me the most about this poem is its narrator. I'm hoping he's not too close to who you are, and I'm hoping you're not really getting caught up into the whole Bukowski-esque glamorizing of the alcoholic (suicide victim, apathetic, etc.) and the doomed.

I'm hardly a big star, but I know you can do better than this.

Okay, that part of the lecture over with, here are my own adjustments:

shiny guitars and hypnotic music taught you the ninetyseventytwo style,
but you could only afford unlicensed radio time so
you refused to cut your hair, and a lovechild was bred that would not die
for thirty years.

the stars and stripes can no longer be counted
and though police sunglasses have fallen, you're strong,
though your children are slaves to the media you smile
and remember that you were captured in the same way.

you lived with twohundredandfiftythousand other people,
but you only needed one to make you sing.

and for all the blood and sweat spilled, there is still a connection
between want and need, between you and me,
and that's all the world really needs to breathe
before only the flowers remember our names.

Notice that I removed a lot of direct reference, leaving the poem more to the reader's imagination. Also, (and this is something you must do on your own) I tried to minimize the tenor of depression and self-pity. Though your poems never explicitly state it, the feel I always get from them is one of intense 'beating-myself-up', which is undesirable because it is overdone. This one, though, really struck me. The gap between 1972 and the present led me to the conclusion that you are one of her children (in a metaphoric sense).

HOWEVER, all this aside, there are some good, solid images in this piece, and a few witty lines that could be developed into a subtle metaphor later on down the line.

I dare you to rewrite the poem from here, and let the narrator NOT dig at himself and NOT destroy himself and it will be more interesting. Move lines, move stanzas, but most importantly, study each word -- think about its purpose and necessity to the poem, and get rid of those that are unimportant and useless.

Well Mesh I already went through it with you..

And thanks a lot Brad, I'll keep what you said in mind, the version you have produced seems more succinct...I should probably try revising my poems. I spill them out in a minute or two and just forget them

beautiful guitars and mesmeric music taught you the ninetyseventytwo style,
and since you could only afford unlicensed radio time
you refused to cut your hair and a lovechild was born that wouldn't die
until thirty years later.

This makes me think of someone who was quite a hippy, because of the long hair and "lovechild" also gives me that impression. I think about a male person ("refused to cut your hair") and usually it's significant if a male is refusing to cut his hair. I love the way you create a good image of someone and their background in just one, four line stanza
I find it tedious and tiring to read poems which have a lot of descriptive writing and is long winded. This is very good because I can almost see the character and know what you are talking about after just 4 lines.

Stars and stripes gives me an image of Americans in general, although it may not mean that, but it is the image it gives me.
"Though the police sunglasses have fallen by the wayside you're still strong"
This suggests struggle with prejudice and discrimination in (possibly) America and that even though all this is going on, the hippy and his community are still staying strong.

your children have been enslaved by the media, but you just smile
and remember that you were captured in just the same way.

This is a sweet line as it suggests a fond memory of back when he was a child and this is shown through the beginning of the poem almost to the end of his life, almost like a requiem.

The only suggestion that I can make is grammar and punctuation in your work. Where there is a new sentence, use a capital letter etc. unless it is intentional of course

This is a touching poem throughout. I very much look forward to reading more of your work.

Janice