Blue Lightning's Light

I lay my body on cement,
And close my icy eyes.
The cold explores my skin,
A bitter wind blows by.

I hear rustling of leaves,
I feel specks of fallen dreams.
All the while think,
In a cemetery of stone.

Cherubs watch me as I move,
But mausoleums block me in.
I try to crack the mortar,
Every strike goes deeper in.

Forever is in the place,
I rest my broken mind.
No more to be vivacious,
But instead - Sequoias.

Under the rocks I'm not,
Below the soil, no!
No Latin eulogies will here be said,
No engravings worth chiseling in.

Every time you see the rain,
Consider a second thought.
When you see blue lightning,
Notice the mortar's crack.

I really liked this. The flow was flawless, each word was perfectly chosen. (I can never manage to incorporate any of these features into my own poetry.) All I can really say is that you are a true poet. I'm just a little confused though, at first I though this was going to be at the point of view of a corpse or something like that, but then you lost me along the way. Maybe I'm just being ignorant... Anyway, great poem! I loved it

Here as promised Jon!

I'm going to break this down, stanza by stanza.

I lay my body on cement,
And close my icy eyes.
The cold explores my skin,
A bitter wind blows by.

I loved this stanza. It set the whole mood for the poem. You've set tone, theme and atmosphere in these four lines. Very nice work!

I hear rustling of leaves,
I feel specks of fallen dreams.
All the while think,
I a cemetery of stone.

Alright, still in the nice atmosphere and tone, but you've lost the 2/4 line rhyme you had in the first stanza.

Cherubs watch me as I move,
But mausoleums block me in.
I try to crack the mortar,
Every strike goes deeper in.

Back to the 2/4 line rhyme, even though you did repeat the same word to rhyme it. I find you're starting to loose some of the atmosphere in here, but the tone of death and coldness is still there.

Forever is in the place,
I rest my broken mind.
No more to be vivacious,
But instead - Sequoias.

You're beginning to set up a pattern here, one I haven't seen. Alternating between 2/4 rhymes and blank verse.

With the word "Sequoias" you begin to get into some deeper meaning, that I'm just getting as I review this. I believe what you're going for is the tall, everlasting quality of those trees, correct?

Under the rocks I'm not,
Below the soil, no!
No Latin eulogies will here be said,
No engravings worth chiseling in.

And now you have broken any rhyme pattern you had set up, unfortunately. Personally, I consider this stanza to be two things: it has got some of the most meaning packed into those lines, but at the same time I consider it your weakest stanza. Not only have you broken the rather unusual rhyme pattern (that I mentioned before), this lack of rhyme (which we have begun to expect) is jarring.

The meaning, however, with the several metaphors and memories make this a very rich stanza. Almost too rich. I'm having a very hard time understanding it, even after reading it five times.

Every time you see the rain,
Consider a second thought.
When you see blue lightning,
Notice the mortar's crack.

I'm not going to say anything about the rhymes, since if you follow the pattern this should have been blank verse anyway.

Now you are back to the atmosphere and meaning of the first two stanzas. Back to the cold, forgotten memories and back to what it takes to be remembered. How every time lightning flashes (the lightning is made cold by the "blue" reference), there will be a memory of a task done in previous days.

~~

Overall, this was one of the most multi-layered poems I have seen. Some very nice work, but you should be careful that all of those meanings can make sense in our heads, too.

Questions? PM me.

~Rosey

Here's my critique. I leave a number in the area I want to make a comment on, scroll down and see the comment, make sense?
Okay, here I go.

wisemann210 wrote:I lay my body on cement,
And close my icy eyes.
The cold explores my skin,
A bitter wind blows by. 1)

I hear rustling of leaves,
I feel specks of fallen dreams.
All the while think,
I a cemetery of stone. 2)

Cherubs watch me as I move,
But mausoleums block me in.
I try to crack the mortar,
Every strike goes deeper in. 3)

Forever is in the place,
I rest my broken mind.
No more to be vivacious,
But instead - Sequoias. 4)

Under the rocks I'm not,
Below the soil, no!
No Latin eulogies will here be said,
No engravings worth chiseling in.

Every time you see the rain,
Consider a second thought.
When you see blue lightning,
Notice the mortar's crack.

1)What happened? You start out rhyming..somehow it feels quite lopsided to read such a beautiful, natural rhyme in the first stanza, then suddenly go to free-verse, it just feels very strange, a big break in the flow you had just established.


2)What does that mean? The "I a..." I really just don't get it, there must've been some sort of typo there.


3)This whole stanza evades my understanding...what? I'm with you on the cherubs thing, you mean statues, right? How do mausoleums block you? I thought you were lying very still.


4) Okay, now I am really confused...you rest your broken mind? What? If lightning is the 'I', then it isn't resting its broken mind if you mean by that it's dead? I really, really, don't get it. I don't...really...it sounds great and certainly very poetic, but it just doesn't make sense. Nor do I know what Sequoias means, I can't see why it is relevant or..I just don't get the point.

The rest...well...it just didn't seem to make much sense. You're obviously very good at description, which you really seem to make the most of, but the thing is, everything you're describing in this poem doesn't flow right..it sort of...it's good description, but...I just don't really understand what is going on in this.

Hey, Jon. Sorry for the delay! D: I'm horrible, I really am. :C

After reading through this once, I have to admit that the message kind of escaped me. I don't know if there was meant to be a theme that tied every stanza together, because if there wasn't, I didn't find it. There was good imagery and some lovely phrases, but over all, I was lost.

Forever is in the place,

I rest my broken mind.

No more to be vivacious,

But instead - Sequoias.



Under the rocks I'm not,

Below the soil, no!

No Latin eulogies will here be said,

No engravings worth chiseling in.



Every time you see the rain,

Consider a second thought.

When you see blue lightning,

Notice the mortar's crack.

These stanzas are especially loose for me. The first, I can see cemetery imagery in all the stanzas, but these break it up. Sequoias? I didn't catch it. Some of the wording in the first part of that stanza is weird too. Is Forever a place? Or is 'forever' describing the state of a place. Hmmm. I suppose I just didn't catch it.

What you should work on though, is punctuation. Try taking it apart and putting it into prose form and then punctuating it how you would punctuate sentences in prose. Then, break it where you broke it before, but you'll probably have much better punctuation then.

I enjoyed reading it, so don't change it too much. I mean, if you knew exactly what you were writing and the reader didn't understand, it is the reader's fault -- you can't completely change your message because someone doesn't understand.

Let me know if you ever want anything else reviewed! =D Or if you have any questions about this critique. Good work ~ Keep it up.

-Hannah-

i really liked this. but i have a few questions about the words you used <you see, im not very good with words that are big and not trivial>
in the.....fourth stanza, what does vivacious mean? and then in teh second-to-last one, does eulogies mean sayings? or have to do with speech?
like i said, this was really awesome.

Thankyou!

Music -- Vivacious is a word used to describe someone who is lively and really happy. A eulogy is a speech/words said at a funeral.


I'm glad you guys lked it!


---Jon---