Driftwood

Salty seas and golden days,
Drifting in an ocean filled
With drops of melted sunshine.
Carved by waves of manic
Delight, bleached by seconds of
Stillness. Until I am stripped
Bone bare, ivory white and
Marble smooth; I’m born anew.
I’m carried on wistful currents
As the moon waxes and wanes,
Dripping milky dust: silver
To the sun’s golden treasures.
In a week I traverse the
Distance, from my home to a
Foreign land, a world of
Ebony bark; and next day,
I’m in the twisted mangroves.
The days fall together as
My riches make me heavy –
Waterlogged and bloated with
Diamonds shed by kings and queens.
The ocean spits me on a shore
And the sun, once golden,
Evaporates my marrow.
Pirate eyes and platinum
Smiles tell me all their secrets.
But I, the only true nomad
Cannot bleed out my sorrows.

Splodey wrote a poem! Zomg *happy day*

This is really nice, I must say I really enjoyed the imagery you created here.
Really love the language you used to create that imagery is great too. Now there are some words that aren't original, for example:

As the moon waxes and wanes

It is a lovely line, but it's a line that's been seen before, used in the more creative poems to describe the moon.
Think of it as a imaginative cliche.

Also, you cut your stanzas at places that make it a little hacked up to read, it forces the reader to pause at parts they should pause. For example:

Drifting in an ocean filled
With drops of melted sunshine.

Delight, bleached by seconds of
Stillness. Until I am stripped

Those both force the reader to pause, don't worry about even lines at the moment! It really comes with practice. Focus on the flow before you worry about anything else.

Really, those are the two things I could rake my brain for. I always love poems that create such contrasting image in my head. Lovely job my dear.

Kamas

Hey Ellie! I loved your poem, but I just have two problems with it.

melted sunshine

For some reason this just doesn't sit right with me. The sonud of it doesn't really potray the beauty it's supposed too. Instead, I think of macaroni and cheese that has sat down for too long. Try to find something else to describe it. For example, 'the blurry sunshine,''fading sunshine' or anything else you can think of.

platinum Smiles

This is the second simile I'm not too sure about. When people describe smiiles, they usually use the adjectives golden, million-dollar, perfect or bright. 'Platinum' doesn't really make me think of a smile.

Other then that, great job, and i'm hoping to read more of your poems soon!
PM me if you have questions.

Wow, Ellie. I'm pleasantly surprised. Pretty impressed by this.

This is beautiful. You do an excellent job with personification in this poem. I hate to touch structure, but I have to say, if you made your lines a bit longer (meaning using less breaks) this poem would have an easier flow, better read to it.

Pretty language here; trim the parts that don't move the story forward, because they straddle the line between flowery speech and good stuff. Trim narrative parts that can stand to get lost because they carry a bit of deadwood, and deadwood is no good. Avoid cliches, too. None of that sunshiny smily stuff will get you places, dear. Originality is key.

Aaand, that's it! I really appreciated this, Eli. Could use a touch of revision here to sand out the rough edges. Perhaps it may be because I'm a sucker for the sea and such, but in my opinion? It's a wonderful poem.

Best--

June

Hey Pen! Here as requested. ^_^ Thanks for using my thread.

So, first of all, is this meant not to be broken up into any stanzas? I think your ideas might be easier to organize and appreciate if they were broken up a bit. Then again, I know some of YWS's formatting options have changed recently, so this could just be a technical difficulty kind of thing.

In fact, all of the line breaks were a bit funky. I'm assuming this was purposeful? Anyway, here, for example:

Carved by waves of manic
Delight, bleached by seconds of
Stillness. Until I am stripped

I agree with the other reviewers in that you'd do well to focus less on trying to keep your lines the same length, and more on keeping an even flow. Right now you're chopping ideas in half to fit the rhythm, but, really, your rhythm will be even better if you keep certain phrases and thoughts together. ^_^ To heck with line length! It's the substance that matters.

I really liked certain images you have-- you seem to pair adjectives and nouns very interestingly to come up with a unique description. 'Melted sunshine', 'bleached by seconds of stillness' and 'platinum smiles' are some of my favorites. ^^

Lastly:

Dripping milky dust: silver
To the sun’s golden treasures.
In a week I traverse the
Distance, from my home to a

There seems to be a disconnect between these two images. First, the moon is dripping onto the sun's treasures (which I interpreted to by earth) and then suddenly your driftwood is traveling? It's too jumpy. The journey doesn't stem smoothly from the mention of the sun and moon-- try to find a way to build a bridge between the ideas instead of just jumping from thought to thought.

Lastly, capitalization! Scrap all the capitalization at the start of each line. =P Others might say differently, because it's really a matter of opinion, but the format you have seems very forced right now. Capitalize where the sentence would generally be capitalized, or where you want to stress something. Don't capitalize just because it's the first word in a line! That's no fun.

Hope that helped! This had tons of potential. Just work on overcoming rhythm boundaries and letting those ideas flow naturally.

~Evi

Expo dear, here I am, to give you my first review in ages!
Aaah, I remember back when you were just a newb, and now *sniffs* my little poet is growing up! You've improved so much since you came here, and this piece is definitely proof of that.

That said, I do certainly have some suggestions.
My favourite thing about this poem is the story. Your descriptions are lovely, but this is one poem that I feel would be better without the exaggerated decoration, especially the first few lines. They sound lovely, but they are very exaggerated and flowery. What you need is a suspenseful beginning line to draw the reader in, just like someone would do with a story.

Where structure is concerned, I agree with June that it would read more smoothly if you had longer lines (aka fewer line breaks). I would also change any fragments there into full sentences. I think that would help give the poem more of a concrete feel, where fragments make it feel more vague.

Other than that, you did a wonderful job with this! Anytime I can do a review for you, let me know, even if you don't post the piece. =]