Drinking Alone on a Friday Night

Drinking Alone on a Friday Night

The wine floods my brain
and I must walk away;
the sight of laughter—
contentment—perplexes
and I enter the dim-lit world,
trading envy for desire.

I drink to forget, momentarily,
yet can't help but imagine
a kiss
soft sweet lingering
a kiss
blind passionate longing,
full of a love suppressed,
a desire two years in the making,
which time tried to bury
but flowered underground till
the earth could contain it no longer.

It burst forth suddenly,
capsizing my unsuspecting soul.
She asked, I answered
her kiss, my caress
a torrent of emotion: then,
a flood of wine: now,
all the while I knew;
my mind knew that
it was a dead-end road
in a dark corner of Possibility
yet couldn’t contain
the bottle of love
after being shaken.

One could count the angstroms
from my nose to hers
and find no uncertainty.

But even the blind can’t
march on forever.

So I drink wine,
just me and my thoughts,
accepting my lot
so long as she may be happy—
need not be I?

Wowsers, I was about to say “Welcome” but you have been a member since, like, forever. I counted. You were the 25th member to join the site. Yowsers!

Anyways, reviewing. I was doing something, wasn’t I?

the sight of laughter

Okay, there really isn’t anything super wrong with this, except that I find myself wondering what laughter looks like. I suppose you could, but ‘sound’ just seems more correct. At least to me.

underground till

I get on everyone about this but ‘till’ means ‘to cultivate’ while ‘til is an abbreviated version of ‘until.’

My major problem with this is how jerky if feels. One pair of lines stood out especially as just feeling very graceless.

She asked, I answered
her kiss, my caress

To me this feels jerky. Not to mention I find myself reading it as “She asked, “I answered her kiss…” if that makes sense when I say this. It seemed to be the only real problem throughout for me.



What this really reminded me of was a Pablo Neruda poem If You Forget Me, at least as far as the theme goes. And that’s awesome because I loved this poem so much I used it when I got the chance to teach 8th grade English for a day. But, yeah, out of all of the aspects of this, I most especially loved the theme over the execution.

Anyways, if you have a question or if my review made absolutely no sense the way it usually does, leave me a message.

To be quite blunt i’de like to point out to lillymoore that poetry is not an art of correctness, i think by saying the sight of laughter your creating this sensation of your meeting the event or the thing, if that makes any sense? Like if laughter where a person that you where to meet. Again just to comment on lillymoore’s comment maybe she should rephrase because she sounds like an idiot. The second line mimics the line before it, almost like rephrasing the same thing, the kiss is her asking, my caress is the answer.

She asked, I answered
her kiss, my caress

I very much like your work Mr. IceCreamMan, this piece in particular is just so exciting and real.

LRA wrote:To be quite blunt i’de like to point out to lillymoore that poetry is not an art of correctness, i think by saying the sight of laughter your creating this sensation of your meeting the event or the thing, if that makes any sense? Like if laughter where a person that you where to meet. Again just to comment on lillymoore’s comment maybe she should rephrase because she sounds like an idiot. The second line mimics the line before it, almost like rephrasing the same thing, the kiss is her asking, my caress is the answer.

She asked, I answered
her kiss, my caress

I very much like your work Mr. IceCreamMan, this piece in particular is just so exciting and real.

Called an opinion, man.

P.S Using "Your an idiot" makes you the idiot.

(Yeah, yeah, I paraphrased.)

Wow. Harsh crit. much guys? Chill.

Just to reflect on what the others have said, i disagree with lilymoore about the jerkiness of those lines. I like what LRA said about the lines mimicking each other, that's cool! To me these lines it showed how you respond to 'her'. In my eyes it strengthened the connection you had with her by you almost attempting to match her every move; She asked, you answered. Her kiss led to your caress. Very cool.

Also, lilymoore, I don't believe the 'sight of laughter' is referring to laughter as a tangible object. As it is followed by the word 'contentment', to me it was encouraging the reader to imagine a content environment filled with laughter which the narrator doesn't understand.

So, anyway, I really liked this. It has a strong story which many people can relate to. That suppressed emotion which everyone has had to feel at least once. Usual this is as far as it goes though. I like how you've moved into how you have managed to grasp that love, even if it were only for a moment. I also like how you then realise that it is a 'dead-end' so to say.

There are only two little things that got me. In the fifth little stanza, about the blind, it took me a fair few reads to understand what you were trying to convey through this section. Even now, the only conclusion I could draw was that you couldn't keep on pretending to be blind to the fact that what was happening was fake and a dead-end. If this is so, I would move this stanza to after the stanza about bottled love. Structurally that would make more sense.

The second part was the meaning behind the line 'and find no uncertainty'. Do you mean there is no uncertainty that it was a dead-end or that there is no uncertainty of your love for her? There is nothing wrong either way, except that it is very unclear. Depending on what meaning you intended defines where this stanza lies in my eyes. If you intended it to mean there is no uncertainty that you love her I would consider removing the whole stanza. If you mean there is no uncertainty that it is a dead-end then I would leave it where it is.

I really like the repetition of the 'a kiss' in the second stanza. I don't know why. I just do.

I really enjoyed it. It's very emotive and easy to relate to. I've been there... it's not fun. All in all, really good work, although somewhat worrying. I'm not sure you should be drowning your sorrows in wine. Well, not unless it's a very fine wine. And even then, only If I'm invited.

P.s Don't take into consideration my suggestions if this a piece you believe is good. Because it's so emotive, if you change it too much it becomes more a piece of work then a piece of art.

P.p.s sorry If it's all just a ramble. I tend to this when I can't sleep. It's 1.30am now. I have to get up for school in four hours.

Okay, so it seems like there has been a fair bit of discussion as to the meaning or intention of various lines. I'll try to clear some of this up:

The first stanza is literally what happened right before I wrote this poem. I was feeling quite depressed, and sipping wine, but the guys I live with had invited a bunch of friends over and I got to the point where I just couldn't stand seeing them all laughing and happy. So, I got as far away from them as I could and sat down in the dark to write this. Therefore, the phrase "sight of laughter" really means the sight of people laughing. As I walked away from them, my mind switched from being jealous of their happiness to thinking about the reason for my lacking it: "trading envy for desire."

The next two stanzas are very straight-forward. The only thing to really address is the discussion over these lines:

"She asked, I answered
her kiss, my caress
a torrent of emotion: then,
a flood of wine: now"

Actually, reviewers only seem to have commented on the first two, but these four lines go together. Basically, as BeckFletch. astutely pointed out, the lines are full of parallels. "She asked" with "her kiss," "I answered" with "my caress." I'm sorry if the punctuation doesn't seem to indicate this, but I don't like over-using punctuation, especially at the ends of lines. It isn't aesthetically pleasing. I feel like this connection should be clear to anyone reading the poem carefully.

The short stanzas after that probably seem the most detached from the piece. I'm going to try to think of a way to better integrate them, but I guarantee you that they are relevant. It is just that I perhaps haven't included enough information for the situation to be clearly understood.

"One could count the angstroms
from my nose to hers
and find no uncertainty."

Someone asked about my use of the word "uncertainty" in this case, and I must say that it was a bit of a fun play on quantum mechanical physics (I'm a physics major). It does, however, also say exactly what I meant. Angstroms are incredibly small lengths usually used on the atomic scale. In quantum mechanics, when we look at things on such as small level there is a natural--inherent--uncertainty in several variables, including the position. In this stanza, then, I was in a way trying to say that we were exactly where we wanted to be, and that the uncertainty in position was not applicable. But also that there was no uncertainty in our emotions and desires.

"But even the blind can’t
march on forever."

These are my least favorite lines, because I know exactly what I'm trying to say but I don't think I'm doing it effectively. Basically, even if we blindfolded ourselves and didn't think about anything but the moment we were in, it would still be impossible to not realize that it's going nowhere. There is just an inherent sense of doom or whatever looming over. This is, in conjunction with the previous stanza, saying that even though we knew exactly what we wanted, at the same time it was readily apparent that what we wanted was not at all in agreement with what we knew was the right decision.

All right, I hope this helps. Thanks a lot to everyone for the critiques!

Jason

I really really like this. Alot. The first stanza is stunning. I don't really like the second one, it seems a little repetitive, and I think it might be better if you implied the kiss rather that blatantly stating it. Maybe ex. the second stanza all together? I also like how it ends in a question.