LastPaladin Fortress of Dreams Surreality (NaPo Thread)

I'm entering NaPo, here's my first entry. The title is questionable but had to put some sort of title. You can choose a title if you wish.

April 1st: The Chosen Deceivers

Political turmoil renders the planet,
as Iran and Israel play Russian
Roulette, both with a button
or a gun, ready to begin
Judgement day.

Hey, Paladin! Glad to see you joined NaPo. ^___^ I'll get to reviewing your other poem shortly. Anyways, you don't HAVE to choose a title, but a wise YWSian once told me that the title is like an extension of the poem. It can reveal a hidden meaning or give a clue about an element of the poem, so if you want to make it useful, you could try to treat it as a bonus line, or you could make it 'untitled'.

In either case, I like this short poem because it's succint but it brings out emotions through charged phrases and, of course, what's going on around us today. Just checking: did you mean renders or rends? ^_^

Looking forward to following this thread~

Thank you Hannah now today.

2nd April: Bittersweet Covenant

Fate has decreed with a sardonic grin,
that my decisions in life meaning nothing.
I can't avoid the future, present and past.
I must embrace it all, and not hide.

But to be cause of the Titanic crash
the Hidinburg explosion the death
of Bonny and Clyde, I don't wish.

This movie is too long, for my
taste, the emotions to too riveting
for this kid. I want to yell fast forward,
rewind, or even pause.

The minds eye doesn't lie...
I must do all this, must not
flee. For avoiding the curse
avoiding the truth, is a great
game, but eventually even
Snakes and Ladders end.

Oh, I really liked the comparison in the last stanza. It brought it all home, for me. The first stanza, however, read too much like a journal entry and was not global enough for my taste. The second stanza didn't seem to fit at all, because then it blew out into the universe, something that readers recognize even if they can't explain.

I don't know. I suppose I might have missed the meaning, but I do enjoy the mention of Snakes and Ladders. ^___^

-Hannah-

April 3rd: Curious Eye

Hidden mirages viewed by a lens,
of tragedy of love, of broken
hearts. Shutters never lie.
In a moment it's taken,
the event captured by
and logged in ether.

Facades are shields,
we live by and hide.

You see truths that,
never occur to most,
but the camera lens
and it's flash have
become your eyes.

Oooooh, gosh, I'm sitting here with my camera hanging around my neck and for that I wish you would have gone more into this poem. You hint at the people on the other side, and with all your talk of love, of curiosity, I thought you might describe at least one faded face that is transferred onto film by the lens. Think about expanding that one, if you'd like. ^_^

This poem theme is extremely subtle so whoever can guess the meaning of it, deserves a cookie.

April 4th: Rusted Aspirations

Random synapsis flood the mind,
memories of past call from the
hourglass, as the sands the long
fallen scream in chorus.

Thinking hard about it all,
what happened, why it happened?
Is a pain, for even if they're answered,
it's never the same.

The accident still in my mind,
the bike rusted and dead.
Never to be used, until
such time.

I never did learn how to ride
a bike.

I can't understand it, and I think it's mostly because the first stanza threw me off by being incorrect? I can't follow the sentence. I guess I can't get it. D:

-Hannah-

I don't like this one, but can't seem to think of any good ideas right now.

April 5th: The Fools Sadness

A jester sits on a rock alone,
water washes over, and
wetness envelopes his face.
As tears of memories long
gone, haunt him now, and
never bring a smile.

The man of joy is dead,
surrounding his body
is many faces, of joy
of sadness, of terrible
feelings that rape
the soul.

Water washes over and whips
him off the rock and a message is
scratched into the rock.

'Laugh at me? That hurts, well laugh no
more you ingrates.'

I liked the idea of this fifth poem, but it didn't make me feel what I thought it should make me feel. I saw so many sad words 'rape, sadness, terrible, hurts, tears, haunt, never, alone', but none of them made me feel, and I think that if you revisit this poem, you should try to rewrite it without resting on those normal words, and bring about sadness somehow without them. ^_^

-Hannah-

Bit late by UK standards, but better late than never.

April 6th: Purposeful Mind

Intropective realities confuse,
dreams of times been, times
had, times that ring like a story.

Though there is no ending, to
the growing madness, no end
to the masks worn in reality.
As each day, a new tale dawns,
a new feeling erupts from fables
and imagination.

When it sadly seems the mind is
on that mission, to murder you
with each labor you bear. Then
my son insanity is a given.

I knocked this off really quick, not completely sure of a theme, but here it is.

April 7th: The Death of Reason

Ardent supportors scream and cheer,
it was meant to clear, that this year
would be different, that here it
would change. But when Babylon
fell it became obvious,
the crown jewel stolen
and we were beholden
to death of a Nation.

It was devastation.

This is quite dark but it came to me and Hannah told me to write a poem which showed a scene.

April 8th: Watercolour Beauty

Paint a beautiful picture
with marriage a family
a lovely little cottage in
a world untouched by
our dim realities.

With a stream outside
flowing forever by, with
fresh water Salmon and
cute little ducks.

A beautiful oak nearby,
where owls hoot and the
kids climb. Pictruesque and
sweet. No pain or heartbreak.

Paint a lovely masterpiece,
where the family go out
on picnics, and the Mother
and Father romance still blooms.

The kids learn to respect this world,
never harbor anger or resent, instead
they just live by life, growing and maturing
to eventually move on and marry.

See a black white movie in the city now.
the pretty boy and girl now in the city,
one has adopted a habit his parents hate,
the girl is losing her sanity.

Escape back to the picture you remember,
back to the scenic redwood cottage with
a handmade veranda, where the two kids
grew with no care in the world.

See the bleak reality of it all.

See the girl now in a abusive life,
the boy has been so many times to
death door, and she is hating
him more.

Mother and Father grow old alone,
their happiness gone to the dogs,
for it was a year ago there son died,
of a drug overdose of what they don't
know. And the little girl heart so pure
decade ago, now she is battered and
beaten painting a picture of that little
cottage on a street, all to make ends
meet.

Good title, and this is a thought-provoking poem. It flows well, but I think it would do better in three sections - one at the start depicting the CURRENT (crappy) sate of everyone's life, the next depicting the happy family, and the next back to the present - or something along those lines. At the start, when I read it, the former few stanzas were unbearably predictable: the cottage, the stream, the salmon, the ducks, the oak, the picturesque scene, no worries in the world (which, by the way, you don't need to explicitly state - we will assume this from the rest of your idyllic description), climbing trees, picnics, romance between mother and father - we've heard it all before.

What is slightly fresher is that negative spin you put on everything in the second part of your poem; the boy has bad habits, the girl is going crazy, abuse, death, suicide maybe, drugs, violence - all this can be stated in less direct words. You don't need to say things as they are to get your point across. In fact, you will get your point across much better if you are subtle, keeping a cap on things - not glorifying their past happy life (keeping it light and sweet and simple, and not cliche) and by not overdoing their terrible fate - in both cases, the poem will have a stronger effect. Like I said, I like the approach to the topic - happiness, to mistakes, to tuning a blind eye and denial, to confrontation and consequences - much like a Greek tragedy, but think about rewording and reworking to lift it up out of its 'literal' language.

What I would recommend considering in your next attempt at an image (if you choose to attempt that again), would be to get rid of the story altogether. Try to immerse yourself in just images, colors, shapes, lines, shadows, and highlights. Paint a scene that we can smell by comparing it to smells that we can actually smell (since we can't smell through the computer). Now, poems generally need a little of both, but I think it would be good for you to get away from just story-based poetry. Take a look at Kamas's NaPo thread and read through some of the earlier posts to see what I mean, okay? ^_^

-Hannah-