Untitled (Maybe Saturday Mornings?)

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The cold
woke my lukewarm body,
set my heart pounding
fighting to heat
the blood rushing to my skin;
the word goosebumps always
made me laugh.
I couldn’t help
but want to fly up into the sky
with the puffs of air;
breath in frosty air-
my sighs seemed to break the iced oxygen
almost like Halloween dry ice,
only instead of candy,
all I looked for was peace within.

Everything seemed so silent,
a Saturday morning when everything else
still slept,
except for that green-bellied bird
over on that dry and barren branch,
a little rebel, breaking the ice-air
with it’s sweet little song.
I looked up at the still white sky,
waking just like the rest of the
see-able world.
Maybe the clouds were just a blanket;
I’d never thought about whether the sky
got cold at night or not. It seemed like
warm summers were the only times it wasn’t covered.

It’d been a long time since everything was so clear;
when life wasn’t hustle-bustle-do-
this-and-that-as-soon-as-you-can.
I resolved to make this a
Saturday morning routine,
in which I would greet the bird before the sun.



I'm gonna look at this in a couple days to make changes, but I'd like to get initial thoughts if you have some time.

Thanks!

Hi Persephoneia,

This is the epitome of mediocre. The weird pseudo-apathetic plodding only runs the message of this poem into the dirt like a rut on a rainy day, and the theme itself is unsupported by any believable imagery.

Persephoneia wrote:Rough.

The cold
woke my lukewarm body,
set my heart pounding
fighting to heat
the blood rushing to my skin;
the word goosebumps always
made me laugh.

Ever walked on glass before? Neither have I, but I imagine that's the most comparable experience to reading the first paragraph of this cringefest. You start with a bang and then proceed to... where? Cold? But what about the rough - a word that doesn't necessarily resonate with any of the images you present immediately afterwards? Much of the potential energy present in that first punch-line word evaporates by the second line.

The meandering thoughts towards goosebumps is unnerving, and not in a good way. Either the narrator has absolutely no grasp of flow or that line is supposed to be representative to "lazy thoughts", per se - whispers and whims that a person feels on a midmorning wake. I'm inclined to believe it's the latter, but it fails to make a lasting point either way.

I couldn’t help
but want to fly up into the sky
with the puffs of air;
breath in frosty air-
my sighs seemed to break the iced oxygen
almost like Halloween dry ice,
only instead of candy,
all I looked for was peace within.

How is the reader supposed to imagine iced oxygen? Yeah, we get it, frosty air, etc. But the technical monkey wrench thrown in to the middle of that paragraph only serves to trip someone up and make him lose concentration. What is the significance of "oxygen"? If by any chance there is some, present it instead of kicking that term into the mix of words and then moving on. More imagery, maybe.

The comparison of Halloween and one's inner soul is a cheap shot. "Kind of like candy, but... peace!" Delete it.

Everything seemed so silent,
a Saturday morning when everything else
still slept,
except for that green-bellied bird
over on that dry and barren branch,
a little rebel, breaking the ice-air
with it’s sweet little song.
I looked up at the still white sky,
waking just like the rest of the
see-able world.
Maybe the clouds were just a blanket;
I’d never thought about whether the sky
got cold at night or not. It seemed like
warm summers were the only times it wasn’t covered.

The presentation of this stanza was so badly done that I won't even bother talking about the content. "Green-bellied", "little rebel", "sweet little", "still white", etc. Purge this section - no, this whole poem - of such useless descriptions and let the images speak for themselves. Telling somebody about still white clouds is absolutely pointless; what else are clouds supposed to be, fast and orange? Save your imagery for those occasions that actually warrant it.

"See able" is a god-awful description. Change it or kill it.

It’d been a long time since everything was so clear;
when life wasn’t hustle-bustle-do-
this-and-that-as-soon-as-you-can.
I resolved to make this a
Saturday morning routine,
in which I would greet the bird before the sun.

I almost stopped reading at the over-hyphenated third line there. The entire stanza seems to be a representation of you beating the reader with a brick again and again, screaming "This is the theme!" into his left ear as loud as possible. Writing the overall meaning of the poem in the last few lines always poses great perils, such as sounding preachy and blunt - which effectively neuters the entire point of the preceding lines. Unfortunately, this is one of those instances. Scratch the last three lines and replace them with... something. I don't know. Anything but what you have currently.

I'm gonna look at this in a couple days to make changes, but I'd like to get initial thoughts if you have some time.

If "throw away" is a valid form of making changes, then by all means do so. This poem is better served being ground down into food for better, stronger pieces later than having any changes made to its core now.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Hey, Coral!

First of all, heads up, I'm a terrible poetry reviewer. But I will make an attempt...
Okay, the first part was nice. I agree with Gal about the iced oxygen part though. Your flow was alright, but I've seen you do better. Maybe you should take some more time and brush up on it, I know you were planning to do that but I think it could have been better. Could have put another few minutes into looking over it and asking yourself some simple questions. Um, it seems like Gal already went through this quite well and I can't pick out anything without sounding repetitive, this bugs me.
The entire poem was nice, the idea was understandable but it wasn't gripping nor was it very exciting to read. Perhaps because the theme of the poem was simply regarding a Saturday morning. But, I did like it. Easy to read poems are the ones I like the best, lol. Wow, sorry for being totally unhelpful. This is why I dislike reviewing poetry. XD
Let me know if you need anything else!

-Shear