Lovers and a Pretty Song

Listen to this song as you read for my full intended effect.


Lovers and a Pretty Song

When you hear a pretty song,
it’s like getting an unexpected hug from behind
by an unexpected lover.
You look up and smile at their face
and you see yourself, brighter than before.
They smile back and you feel warmer,
as you forget your fears from yesterday.
“Welcome home,” they whisper.
And there’s a new smile on your face
as you examine your radical feelings inside.
And the choir remains singing,
as the invisible lover leaves your back,
leaving you with their breath on your neck
and their imaginary scent,
drifting from memory.

When you hear that pretty song,
it’s like getting an unexpected hug from behind
by an invisible lover.
You look up and smile at the cloudy sky
and see your day, brighter than before.
The sun smiles back and you feel warm
as you forget the fears from yesterday.
“Welcome home,” the wind seems to whisper.
And there’s a smile on your face
as you look at the radical new colors in your world.
And the choir remains to sing
as the invisible lover leaves your back,
leaving you with the breeze on your neck
and the effervescent scent of summer,
drifting away.





Poem inspired by Welcome Home by Radical Face.

I really like this. I like the relationship of the two stanzas. It's an experience for the reader. It demands a second reading, and that is a very good quality.

One problem I had is your use of "they" and "their" in the first stanza. It's too bad that we don't have a good neuter pronoun in english, but using "they" for a single, ambiguously-gendered person is just not grammatically correct. If ambiguity is necessary for your poem, I guess you had better keep it, but it would seem a lot more natural to me if you just chose a gender for the lover.

When you hear a pretty song,

it’s like getting an unexpected hug from behind

by an unexpected lover.

I don't like the use of "unexpected" two times so close to each other. Why is the lover unexpected? Also, I think it should be hug from a lover, not hug by a lover.

as you examine your radical feelings inside.

And the choir remains singing,

I like the use of "radical" in the next stanza, but here, the line seems a bit bizarre to me. Why are the speaker's feelings radical? I would cut the inside, too. It seems a bit redundant to me. I think the second line here would sound better if you said "keeps singing."

And the choir remains to sing

I understand what this means, but at first, it is a little confusing with sing in the infinitive form.

You look up and smile at their face

and you see yourself, brighter than before.

This is my favorite part!

Hope I didn't seem to harsh. The things I didn't like were tiny in comparison with how beautiful this is and the way that you structured it. Good job!

rachel

Hi, Yoyo! I'm somewhat at a loss here, because I love how you've structured this, and I really like how the second stanza echoes the first so strongly.

But this one idea keeps bothering me (and it's not even an idea inasmuch as it's phrasing ><)

You have:
When you hear a pretty song,
it’s like getting an unexpected hug from behind
by an unexpected lover.

and my brain wants me to tell you to lose the simile and do something more like "When you hear a pretty song/it's an unexpected hug from an unexpected lover" or something to that effect, because the use of the simile as an opening statement and as the continued theme is too weak, I think, for it to carry the poem. So you see how I'm at such a loss! Just thinking about it, that kind of change makes the entire poem read much stronger to me, without changing anything else.

Does that make sense? It almost ties to your title by using "lovers and" because the "and" implies the two are separate, but you're making them one in the poem, so there's a huge tension with that, and I'm not sure you want that tension, but rather the tension of how the song effects the narrator, which is a bit lost in connecting the song as a lover as-is.

Other than that, all I have are word-trimmings, but I know those aren't always wanted, so I'll only do that if you would like me to ^^

You have a lovely poem here, Yoyo! I think I need to stick my nose back in the poetry forms to crit more if yours is any indication of what's being posted! Thanks for a good read!

Bek