when i ate the mold - III

Hai :3

This is brutal in the best way!! There’s this sharp, eerie rhythm to it that makes it feel like a march toward something inescapable. Every line has this finality to it, like a prophecy. I love the contrast between nature imagery (fruit / butterfly traps / grass) and the violence threaded throughout ~~ Like, it makes everything feel so wrong in a way that’s just perfect with the language throughout!! It's not easy to sit through, but it's still beautiful enough to reflect on fully.

^^^ I'm also really curious how this pairs with the last poem I read from this? I read your comment about this specific poem being a commentary on war, so I wonder if the "mighty man" in the previous poem was a soldier? Or maybe some kind of reflection of the rigid ideals placed on men like that? Hmm...

i have already planted my
haunted feet in cold hard boots

I love this first stanza!! The idea of planting feet gives this sense of something irreversible, something rooted, but then you hit us with haunted feet, and suddenly it’s like these boots aren’t just worn, they’re possessed. There’s already this suggestion of being trapped inside something, maybe something violent. I think it’s giving transformation, but in a sinister, almost militaristic way. The suits feel uniform, stripping away identity, turning these people into something else, something unnatural. War does do that, doesn't it?

in the blackened grass he crawls
and falls and slithers to and fro
crimson slashes bloom and grow

The movement here is so desperate, so inhuman, and I love how that dehumanizes the men even more. There is a very specific way that you turn violence into something organic, into something that grows and takes root in these men. I adore that!! It makes wounds feel like something inevitable, something that feeds off of the world itself; in relation, I also think that makes the actions of being a soldier feel inevitable too. War, something based in senseless violence, is second nature to the soldiers. It is everything that they are now, and they can never go back.

^^^ Like I said, the movement here is amazing, but “to and fro” feels too whimsical for this? To me, it has a playful connotation that clashes with the visceral horror. I could see that working in an ironic way, but I don't think there is enough of that irony in the other stanzas to make that work fully. It makes war feel like a playground game rather than a nightmare, which could work depending on what you want to get across here ~~ I could see either working in a cynical way.

so throw away unripened fruit
loot and shoot and kill with boots
those forms die in dirty black suits

What an ending!!

That phrasing is so dismissive, so cold. It reduces people, innocence, potential into something disposable. There’s zero hesitation, zero softness; it’s pure, mechanical destruction. I especially love how you call back to the first stanza as well, and it's like whatever transformation took place has led to their ruin. It ties everything together in a way that’s just… devastating!! Like, the imagery is both visceral and surreal, the violence is poetic but so impersonal, and it’s chilling.

This is such a mean poem, and I am using that word positively!! There’s a sense of cycles here: creation and destruction, rebirth but only into something monstrous. It’s eerie, relentless, and just SO well written. Amazing work!! <3

- Payton