If I wanted to
I could fly away,
just like the night on the horizon.
I could leave everything.
let's be honest, these tangible things
as I lift off, are nothing but nuscances,
they are things I sense through receptors
and pain of pressure.
I can glide
through the leaves and needles
like butter on a hot knife.
I can't really "feel" as I fly though,
not like my skin
indented by your nails
and frayed across as it molts
from the heat of the scratches you leave.
I can feel differently
like awareness and a lack
of being there, a break
from where I can be, to the other side.
I can sense the Earth
and the tug of our friction
keeping me close as a cushion
tied 'round its back,
a huge convex bowl
holding me up like it's magnetic
and I am metal shrapnel,
but I am more liquid than solid.
I can be whatever shape you want
a girl, a robot, a monster
but I might not always fill my container.
I am not a gas, I have my limits
Although I may be air
Unable to escape the gravity of home
as I flow into your lungs, and feed you.
If I wanted to
I could swim as the wind
rounding about the earth
and just for the hell of it
I can focus in
and feel the absence of me
as I am displaced by my skin.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,773 Reviews
You already know you're a good poet so you get no warnings. I'm in a tear it down mood and I can't do it with my poem so I'm doing it with yours.
Specifics
1. I'm normally very opposed to filler words like 'just' but I'm hesitant on saying nix it this time because that hesitancy is the right mood for this poem. Or rather that sense that something can be insignificant or important and there's not much of a line between which. So I like it but I think you should put a comma at the end of line one and I'd say lose the word 'vanish' from the third line.
2.
I want you to be more dramatic here and less literal. I want those lines to read something like:
I could leave everything
and I would have left nothing
3. You don't get to use just twice. Change it to 'only'. Other than that these are my favourite lines so far. Love the half rhyme.
4.
I'm not sure about 'less gas than air' it feels like a big jump after deciding that the persona is liquid and I think there needs to be a transition line from liquid to gas. I'm also not sure vessel is the right choice of word. I feel like it should be something more along the line of 'tethers' or 'shell'. Vessel feels too neutral and that might have been the point, to be all distant and stuff, but I think it's too under the radar.
Overall
I like this. There's not as much to tear down as I would have liked in fact
~Heather
XD Thank you so much for your help with this. I really appreciate the review. It made me smile. Hell, I'm still grinning <3
Alright! I cleaned it up <3
Beautiful! And I forgot to say before that I love that you had the line-break at 'break'. Subtle little things like that are what make me love poetry.
Hey there! Cap'n Salt Water here for a review!
First off, this is amazing! There is really no nitpick, recommendations, or concerns, really. I really love your poem. It very inspiration and has a lot of imagination. It is something every poetry fan should read and thank you for recommending this for me to read! Great job! I would love to see more of your literary poetic masterpieces. Don't give up and always write, Aley!
-CaptainSaltWater
Aley! Hey, Aley love!
I was struck with an interesting thought while I was reading this and thinking about the poem of yours I previously reviewed. I'm wondering -- hear me out -- if you might want to communicate these thoughts in a form other than pure poetry? There's a lot of philosophy in these lines and it seems like you want to get your audience thinking and understanding the philosophy rather than necessarily feeling the same emotion. I say this because both poems have been focused on YOUR experience of these emotions -- both were written with I narrators. You want to share your experience of this philosophy and let other people understand one story of it.
What would you think about writing a creative essay about these topics? An essay definitely does not mean void of poetic language. You would be able to include some of the exact same concepts and images, but you could also expand your philosophy and experience out to a specific story as well as taking the reader along a straight-forward-journey through understanding the concept consciously.
Otherwise, if your goal is to have the reader feel this emotion as you felt it, you might have to drop the I-narrator. It works to be a little distancing here. An odd thing about writing is that we accept "I narrators" as separate beings from us and have a much easier time empathizing with third person characters, haha.
Other than that, I would work on making space and direction clear in your images. In the stanza about the magnet and bowl holding you up, I couldn't find the image in my mind to match those words because I didn't know the positioning of the different things involved.
I hope these thoughts are helpful to you, Aley. I love the tone of your recent stuff!
PM me or reply here w/ questions, etc.
Good luck and keep writing!
Hannah
This poem is really interesting conceptually, and is, for the most part, very well executed. However, there are a few instances of imagery that feel somewhat out of place in the poem, as well as a few tiny syntax errors.
"and at the same time, it is all nothing" This line is very oddly structured and somewhat difficult to read. Because I'm sure exactly what your intent with this line was, I can't offer much I the way of suggestion, but I would recommend changing it.
"...molts / from the heat of the scratch you leave"
I'm not entirely sure what's going on in this sentence. I know that the narrator's skin is "frayed" but molting is something entirely different, and while the association with wings fits the theme of the poem, I'd recommend finding a more suitable replacement. Additionally, scratches aren't typically heated. Something along the lines of "sting" would probably work better while preserving your original meaning.
"tied round it's back"
This line contains the only syntactical/grammatical errors I've noticed in this poem, but I think it's still worth pointing out. Because "round" is being used as an abbreviation of "around" rather than pointing out circular qualities, it should be written as 'round, to indicate that a letter was omitted. Additionally, "it's" shouldn't be apostrophized here, because it's indicating possession rather than omission of words.
I apologize if my criticisms seem nit-picky, and I'd like to end this review by saying that this is a really lovely poem - your surrealistic take on the nigh-universal human desire for flight and the freedom that comes with it is a pleasure to read.