Marked

Originally for lilymoore's contest, I liked it, so I decided to post. Enjoy.

Marked;

You're marked—deadly, beautiful, the best type of disease.
You taste of grit, salt of the earth, plague dust;
You remind me indefinitely of Plato,
With sins as great as Wilde and Bosie,
Wrapped up in nothing but stained white.
You complete me, my sickening valentine,
You make the hate in me float away...
Just the touch of you against my tear-streaked lips
Makes the mass of doubt, of clustered worry drain—
Dripping like life blood from my stomach,
Weeping out onto the negative of my shirt.
You are priceless, without a doubt.
And your smell—well, it repels packs of dogs,
The hundreds of volcanoes threatening to erupt.
Your tiny cylinder amazes me,
How can so much bitter-sweetness be found within you?
The tar and gunk that fill you gum up inside me
And I feel as dirty and wonderful as you.
So what if I'll get cancer or emphysema?
Can't run up the stairs when I'm fifty?
I'm happy right now, with you, dear,
My little cigarette extraordinaire.

HorseradishCares wrote:Originally for lilymoore's contest, I liked it, so I decided to post. Enjoy.

Marked;

You're marked—deadly, beautiful, the best type of disease.
You taste of grit, salt of the earth, plague dust; What's plague dust...? That doesn't really make sense to me.
You remind me indefinitely of Plato, the indefinitely kinda ruins the flow and things, you may want to use a smaller word.
With sins as great as Wilde and Bosie,
Wrapped up in nothing but stained white.
You complete me, my sickening valentine, Nice, I like this line a lot.
You make the hate in me float away...
Just the touch of you against my tear-streaked lips
Makes the mass of doubt, of clustered worry drain—
Dripping like life blood from my stomach, from your stomach? I see someone bleeding from their bellybutton, is that what you want, if it is, it's funny and still works. LOL.
Weeping out onto the negative of my shirt.
You are priceless, without a doubt.
And your smell—well, it repels packs of dogs,
The hundreds of volcanoes threatening to erupt.
Your tiny cylinder amazes me,
How can so much bitter-sweetness be found within you?
The tar and gunk that fill you gum up inside me Points for using gum as a verb.
And I feel as dirty and wonderful as you.
So what if I'll get cancer or emphysema?
Can't run up the stairs when I'm fifty?Well, this line is kinda out of place with the rest, since it's speaking with the future where as the rest of the poem speaks in the present?
I'm happy right now, with you, dear,
My little cigarette extraordinaire.

Wow, I thought this poem was about a person. Very nice twist, I enjoyed this. you may want to add some line breaks to make it easier to read.
Nice write.
Good luck, keep writing.
silented1.

This is very Ludo style poem.

The whole blood, sin and disease thing isn't working, for anyone. It's all very cliche.
One thing is that you're making it very choppy with ideas, statements.

You want your imagery to flow, think about it as:

A movie, a rolling clip of whatever your trying to get across. Or, if I flash you 3 seconds of a (more specific) clip then flash you 3 seconds of another specific clip. Which is more effective to get something across? The movie. Because you have to create a train of thought that the reader can just flow with. If they have to climb a wall to continue the flow you're halting them and hacking down any potential for your poem to be meaningful. So what you want to do is have your main idea as your baseline for imagery. Then another concept that you can make images from. So say, in the context of your poem, you choose a run down hospital, or cemetery. And center your images around that. And the next step would be to not abuse those poor punctuation. Commas, ellipsis, dashes, periods. Guh. Let your poem breathe and flow into itself.

Best of luck

Kamas

This was a good poem already, but it feels heavy and bogged-down in the multitudes of disease/dirty images you're throwing at the reader. Does each line need to be so long? Could you cut some out, chop others up, and either speed up the pace or vary the line lengths? Perhaps you could rework the lines so that some sentances begin in the middle of lines.

I would agree with Kamas that the poem is cliched, but mostly the last half. The first five to seven lines are my favorite--rife with good metaphors and images ("You taste of grit, salt of the earth, plague dust;" and "With sins as great as Wilde and Bosie,") but unfortunately the second half degenerates into reptitious confirmations of disease and filth. You hit on the former pattern with the volcano line, but it's the exception to the rule.

Also, this is stylistic and therefore up to you, but I would only capitalize the first letter of each sentence as opposed to each line. The vertical string of capital letters adds to the monotony.

Good job so far. Reconnect with your wonderful first half and this could be great.

Strange a abnormal poem, yet I like nevertheless.
Still not to sure what the meaning is maybe thats the greatness of this.
The flow of this poem was crisp and haven't felt any bumps along the way.
Great Work and keep writing!
-Dawn

Loved the peom. Great work. Good Imagery. Good emotion. AT first I found my self wrapped around someone and the one he loves and then it all changed when I read the last line. It's a cigerette and someone enjoying it right?

There was a particular line that mentioned how "it repels a pack of dogs." I couldn't see how a cigerette could repel a pack of dogs. My dog hangs out with my Pa-pa while he smokes all the time and he never seems bothered by it. Oh well. . . .

Good Poem. Keep It Up! (:

It's sick and sweet. It is perfect.

Truly well done.

Very engrossing and portrays love really well.

Keep it up

~Retro disco666

Hey there!

Cliche? You could genuinely say that about any poem. What counts is how well you've written it. Here, I think you've done that fairly well. Your word choice, although not original, is very good. It contrasts inevitably with the message you are putting across, though at some points it becomes confusing because the wrong words are used in your poetry. Such as here:

You taste of grit, salt of the earth, plague dust;

I have no idea what plague dust is and I can't imagine it. All you've done really is made reference to a deadly disease in an effort to contradict the emotion of love, yet you haven't really pulled it off. Also, "salt of the earth" seems completely out of context. Though, at some points, your word choice thrives such as here:

You complete me, my sickening valentine,

This is much better. It's as though your hesitant to let yourself believe that they complete you so you insult them, push them away as if trying to resist temptation. It's very well portrayed and illustrated so it sounds good and the effect, in turn, is good.

Your tiny cylinder amazes me,

I don't get it.

Can't run up the stairs when I'm fifty?

Unfortunately, I agree with Eddie (silented1). This is completely out of context and it's annoying because it disrupts the pace and rhythm you have built up ready for your finish. I think it needs to be removed.

I'm happy right now, with you, dear,
My little cigarette extraordinaire.

I can see what you're getting at here, but ultimately it looks as though an effort to rhyme your ending has taken over from your word choice focus. It's a poor ending because it's confusing and merely compares something that is, once again, a negativity. The constant comparison to negatives, ultimately, gets tiring.

So, I hope this helped, keep writing,
Ben

Hey Horseradish!

So I really do like the idea of this poem. I wasn't quite expecting that little twist at the end. But if I'm being honest, that was all I really saw in this poem that's worth keeping at the moment. An idea.

I'm just not feeling the layers upon layers of imagery that you're throwing at me with every single new line. It gets constricting in a way, trying to decipher each one and then apply it to all of the other images and make sense of it.

What I would suggest would be to first, split this into stanzas. Find the places where you feel you're going slightly "off-topic," or where how you're trying to say something changes, and start a new line. Create little "paragraphs" for the reader to attack, one at a time.

Second, just lay off the imagery! Give it a rest for a while. Don't worry about using so much of it all at once. Sit back and really think about which you really need for your message to come through cleanly.

I liked the idea of the poem. I wasn't expecting the ending twists.

A few things I'd suggest for improvement:

1) Stanzas: Splitting your poem into stanzas would make it easier to read. It also makes the poem look cleaner.

2) Imagery: The layers of imagery was too much. Instead of putting a new image in each line, try putting one or two images in each stanza.

Good work though!

- RedRaven