Working on the Railway

The corn-colored sun rises over a hay field;
winking light dances on used chrome steel.
Piles of long and twisting nails
and ripped up dirt make way for trails.

Parallel bolts dig into the track,
sound of lumber and metal go whack.
Stones grind against the boards of wood,
copper dust rising from where they stood.

Zigzagged bodies stand along the gravel
looking to where the planks unravel.
Sudor and toil spill from tanned flesh,
and rusty lungs choke for a breath.

The flaccid arms of the railway workers
disdainfully look to the richest shirkers.
Their knuckles are covered in sparks and soot,
their lead-like bodies strain on foot.

They build the railroad one track at a time,
subtle changes etched with every line.
A bit of life they place in each one,
while waving goodbye to the corn-colored sun.

(I'd been wanting to write a poem about a railroad, or railway workers... I meant to do a little bit more about how terrible the conditions were back then for them, but it didn't turn out that way, lol. Anyway, here you are, hope you like-y~~~)

This piece has gorgeous imagery.. however, it was difficult for me to get into it, because in some places, it seemed more about the imagery than the workers. I like your rhyme scheme, even though I'm ordinarily not fond of them, as it seems almost natural- it doesn't dominate your words.

Overall, nice piece, but I would bring out the focus a bit more.

-Coral-

Hey Hibiscus -

Been meaning to go over your pieces for a time now. So, this struck me as a poem just not hitting it right; there is none of that delicate elegancy there, the imagery seems a tad overused/overwritten/awkwardly phrased and - I will admit this a personal aversion, but nevertheless - the rhyming sort of annoyed me. Yet the poem still retains an easy simplicity to it that doesn't make the lines bob up and down too quick (thank you for not using an iambic meter!) - so the rhyming was almost unnoticed till the second stanza. It slipped in gently, which I was grateful for - but when I did notice it, it was just so-so - nothing particularly exciting about it for it to remain. I suppose that you might justify your use of rhyme here as a purposeful stylistic choice to mimic the regularity, the rhythms of the railroad workers...but aesthetically and aurally, I'd still be against it.

The corn-colored sun rises over a hay field;
winking light dances on used chrome steel.

If you're going to slap a scene in front of us this fast, it might pay to keep in mind that a discernible narrator or voice would help your reader connect with it easier earlier on as well. This ominprescient voice does nothing for me. First line tries perhaps a tad too hard to differentiate itself, especially in light of the second which seems even more mundane in comparison. And I do not mean that from the 'content' point of view - more from the style-view, your word choice, phrasing. Dancing light and chrome steel are words we've all heard used in that manner before. At this point, I wonder why I care enough to carry on.

Piles of long and twisting nails
and ripped up dirt make way for trails.

Parallel bolts dig into the track,
sound of lumber and metal go whack.
Stones grind against the boards of wood,
copper dust rising from where they stood.

Zigzagged bodies stand along the gravel
looking to where the planks unravel.
Sudor and toil spill from tanned flesh,
and rusty lungs choke for a breath.

And the poem continues in a similar manner. Description upon description upon description. Where is the life in this? The vibrancy? It's so slow, so sluggish that it's almost collapsing. I know you are trying to - vividly - describe the surroundings, and be assured that it is working fairly well, as far as painting a picture goes. But as for that detailed picture being interesting? No; it just sits there. We can't view reality as apart from ourselves - we always view it through a lens, a mood, a world view; a dull, unfeeling (omniprescient) narrator is a bit of a bore, really. It's just a postcard photo. No human-reality to it, in the sense that the descriptions aren't really infused with something chracteristically human. Sure, word combination becomes vaguely interesting here, but the lack of action is what makes this fall.

Yes. I think that's it. A poem - to work, it must be fluid. For fluidity, we need not just passive sort of verbs, but also something else, some kind of mystery, some feeling driving it along. Otherwise, there's relatively little there for us to grasp on to. A photo in my hands. Taken by a stranger. Clear skies, dirty railway, rusty tracks, hot day. No character. Just a setting, flat and two-dimensional. Inject some kind of intellectual or emotional slant to it, and it will really be something.

The flaccid arms of the railway workers
disdainfully look to the richest shirkers.
Their knuckles are covered in sparks and soot,
their lead-like bodies strain on foot.

They build the railroad one track at a time,
subtle changes etched with every line.
A bit of life they place in each one,
while waving goodbye to the corn-colored sun.

I object to 'this is how it is and it's fine' sort of poems for the reason that they are - for want of a better word - boring. A series of blahs finish here in a final blah, that whispers hazily and disappears off into the distance. There were neither any memorable lines, nor any striking ones. The imagery was patchy; a string of unrelated adjectives, like an eye lingering haphazardly on different parts of a scene, without any overall coherency, overall thought process. Meh.

Perhaps better than saying that it is the vocabulary or its combination, I should say it is the pace and lack of depth. Breadth, yes; depth, no. You want to cut to the core with writing, or if you want to be light and amusing, be discernibly light and amusing. There's too little life here, despite descriptions of railroad workers. They're workers, they're working. Fine. What else?

(By the by, I reckon it'd be interesting - after you've fleshed this out, of course - to morph the format into that totally punctuation-less poem I PMed you, just for amusement . I think it'd add a mad, surreal sort of dash to it, especially if it had a telling voice.)

Anyway, PM me if you want to discuss this, and I shall be happy to do so.

Navita