Young Writers Society

rough throat sinus nose throbbing head.
it's country Paris - caramel dirt, menthe grass,
tiny crumbling cottages.
it was awkward goodbyes amidst tired red eyes.
le ciel est l'eau et chocolat blanc
and pepper specks of birds are tossed into it devouringly.
turquoise curtains expose houses now like blocks of unreality,
chunky rainbow butterfly on a fence
and clichés dart around the bus i sit here in my own crooked frame.
it's lucid green bushes
it's playing cards
it's doors with the paint scraped off.
time wears on, a mass of orange solitude.
written: Saturday 2nd October 2004, 11:10am

The difficulty I had with this is that I didn't know what it was talking about. My French isn't that great, but from the title I knew it was something about a cake, and that one foreign line, something about water and white chocolate (?). So I read the poem a couple times, and for about the first 2/3 of it, the cake idea fit. The descriptions were metaphorically decorations on the cake. The part I got confused was after you mentioned being on the bus, because I didn't know what those following lines had to do with the previous themes.

The one suggestion I have is the line

and clichés dart around the bus i sit here in my own crooked frame.

I think you should put a comma or period after "bus," since the part after it is a separate idea, and maybe put "I sit here in my own crooked frame" as its own line.

The trouble with writing is that it makes complete sense to the author, but to people who have no idea what's happening, it's pretty confusing. I think if you can give the readers a clearer idea, it'll come across stronger.

Well, I really don't understand the poem at all--

1. My french is really bad and
2. its really not clear...its consitently unclear, actually.

All the repetition of "its..." makes it really unclear. I really like the imagery, but I still really don't get the poem, because I really have no clue as to what "it" is.

i understood the french.

this was just a mesh of very pretty words thrown together. nothing special but that doesn't mean it was bad.

you can do write beautifully sometimes, but this was very mediocre.