the other kind of love

sharp kisses of steel wire against flesh
metal burning the wrists cold
the iron will of the ropes and
the mounting anguish of every joint

and as the fire roars and brightens there's
moans mixed with screams
blood mixed with tears and
sweat mixed with something else

these are just the same old words trying to paint impossible pictures
there are only twenty six letters in the alphabet
there are ten thousand flavours of pain
and every one is beautiful

just like you

Hi, Fire, I'm June,


This poem as it is isn't doing anything for me. I can tell what it is that you're trying to get at here, but to be entirely honest, I don't feel the passion of the words in the words. I don't feel the beauty or the flavors of pain here -- all I feel, dear, is a pool of words that refuse to take me in.

One of the greatest things about writing is that you command the words. You have the ability to indulge us in the emotion of the story, and here you're just not doing it. To put it bluntly, your line "these are just the same old words trying to paint impossible pictures" describes this poem in its entirety very well, and that's my problem with it. Take your words and make them show us what this is about.

Steel kissing flesh is good, it opens our mind to the image, but you sound redundant when you return with "metal burning" and "iron will". I understand what image you're trying to get at, but ask yourself: What does this sort of love make me feel? The poem alone isn't exciting, I don't feel the pain and the passion that you're implying is here, dear, so I think that you need to make this come alive with more imagery, more words that are less used. Make it vibrant, make it alive, and let the words paint a picture that speaks for itself.

Hope that wasn't too harsh, and hope that helped some!
June

Alright Fire,

I missed your last request, so I'll try to make it up to you by reviewing this piece.

Devices

There's a beauty in the construction of a metaphor and symbolism in poetry. Managing to describe something else through another story. To bring some sort of sensation from say, a fruit skin to describe the sensation of human skin. Creating some sort of alternate framework to wrap around another idea so it invokes experience, feeling etc. It's that kind of webbing that makes poetry successful.

What do you do instead of stating to me simply (with a slight creativity) about wrist cutting, or hanging?

the iron will of the ropes

Determine what you want to talk about, let's go with the idea of the rope.
What is the rope made of, how does it feel against your skin, what does it look like? Help me visualize it. The idea of, say hanging yourself is tempting you, well then make the loop something seductive. You don't even have to state it's a rope, because if done well an object or action can mean more than its literal meaning.

Next,

Cliches

There's always, whether it be prose or poetry, topics overused because it's where everyone starts off and where half of writers never lift themselves above. Romance and Death and Sadness. Sound familiar? Why is it those topics, well because everyone knows them. Of course it doesn't mean you can't talk about love, or death, or being sad. Of course not, in reality arguably 95% of any poetry written encompasses something about that. The difference between saying "I love X because of 1+2" in some poetic manner is VERY different then presenting that to the reader, make them see it, feel it, experience some snippet of said romance. Simply insinuating love isn't going to make me experience it all the more. I want to feel a. the moment this happens b. the moment the poetic persona is in when you imagined this.

Simply laying it out in front of us, even if you're insinuating things isn't going to transport your reader anywhere or translate any sort of sentiment, which I see as the most basic purpose of poetry.

Take me somewhere, appeal to taste, smell, sight, hearing. Appeal to my emotions. Don't make me a grocery lists of this and that and expect me to feel anything for your piece aside from boredom.

Best,

Kamas

EDIT: You pointed out that I made this sound like I interpretted this as a suicide poem, if that's my tone I'm sorry. I'm just not all to familiar with BDSM.

Hey there, Fire.

I may just be a very strange Lumi, but I don’t think this is a suicide poem at all—in fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and take it more along the lines of a masochistic love poem and talk about it that way.

My major issue with this piece is that you do a lot of noun tossing. In fact, the entire first stanza is nothing but a list of descriptors. That bothers me because it doesn’t typically do justice to tying everything together in a poem. It merely flashes this cascade of sensations and then let’s them die off, much like a flare gun. So I want to consider that this is the issue with this piece—a lack of presence.

I want you to test out the first stanza by giving it a structure other than just a dump of phrases. Give it some grammatical structure, narrate it—do something. You have nice descriptions, but I want some application for them.

I have an issue with your final phrase of stanza two—the way you use ‘something else’ to describe something that needs describing accurately. I can imagine what it is, but it’s not typically good poetic practice to take a cop-out like something else. You could get away with it in prose, but poetry demands its descriptions for sensationalism, and if you don’t provide, you get eaten up!

Stanza three (the last stanza and the last line) is beautiful, though it has a little less coherency compared to the rest of the poem. I think you can tie this in pretty well with the work you’ll do on stanza one. I like this last stanza, but I want it to tie In the motifs with the remainder of the piece. Maybe another stanza could do the trick before this, but as far as endings go, stanza three is golden.

I like what you have, and I’d really like to know if this is about what I think it is, heh. I may just be reading things wrong, but that’s the joy of poetry!

Keep writing, and be sure to let me know if you have any questions.

-Lumi

Awesome poem.

The only thing you need to do is add punctuation and capitalization! Otherwise I think it flows really well and the whole thing fits together wonderfully.
Great job

Keep writing,
Alzora

HI! I'm Sierra, and I'll be you're reviewer today
Hehe, I know I'm only thirteen and this is rated 18+, but rules are meant to be broken
Personally, I like the lack of capitals at the beginning of all the sentences. That was intentional, right? It made the narrator seem just a little more crazy. I can kind of see their point of view. This is scary and kind of phycotic, but I like it. It's beautiful in a dark, messed up way. Especially the ending. It freaked me out, but in a good way. Like a horror movie. My only nitpick would be:

metal burning the wrists cold

because I don't think it makes sense. How can something burn cold?
Sparkles,
Sierra

Great job, I felt the intensity and passion in the words, I thought it was legen..... wait for it..... dary. 8/10 Keep Writing!