Black Roses
Like a red rose, your mind is riddled with thorns. The thorns that pierce my desolate soul.
Like a black rose, you are cloaked and shadowed by the night, but you are not cloaked by the dawnless morning.
Like a red rose, your hands are painted by monochrome blood. The superficial blood that drips from my pale skin.
Like a black rose, you are devoured and consumed by the darkness issuing from your soul
Black Roses
Red Roses
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139,276 Literary Works • 672,524 Reviews
I think this is really good, except for the first stanza where you say "like a red rose, your mind is riddled with thorns" This indicates black roses don't have thorns, and even though it backs up stanza 3, it has nothing to do with the colour of the rose. Maybe try something that describes the colour. You did pretty good on the rest for that manner. There is something about this that is awkward, instead of doing every other AND having the dot then black rose or red rose it should be obvious as to which you are talking about. Maybe try putting commas instead. This is only my opinion. Keep up the good work
I loved finding this: "red thorns, black blood drips." Pulled that from your linked words. I like your use with words, but I found the bullets distracting me and I had to keep re-reading sentences. Going to go read s'more of your works now. Tata!
Hi, J.C. here for a review!
Well, I must say, if you are one to enjoy cryptic language, this surely fits the bill. Personally, I'm not so keen on the whole depressed and dark side of life, but this piece is unique enough to keep it from being cliche.
Firs of all, I must congratulate you on your formatting. All too many people don't do anything in the way of formatting, while some do only the very basics, and it is a rare person that is brave enough to step out of the norm and do something spontaneous and, in my book, freaking amazing! You've killed the competition with this poem-the competition being my negative side-and the formatting is surely the nail in the coffin.
I have learned recently to never try to interpret someone's writing, especially when it is something such as this. My interpretation is usually wrong anyways. I'd almost like to have a Q and A with you about this poem, as there is so much to understand, but beyond all of that, I can sense the meaning and the feeling put into this. So many people think that just because they mash some extensive, vague words together which sound a bit folkish, they have a masterpiece and it's going to be emotional and epic.
Here, though, it is the simplistic parts which carry the most meaning. The trick to cryptic writing is not a modge podge of explosive language, but rather a beautifully crafted piece filled with easy to understand words, but with just enough pepper to make the reader wonder. I like to think of it as making a soup. If you take all of the great spices and herbs and throw them all in, the soup will taste terrible. Not because the spices were bad, but because the mixture wasn't right. Rather, you take something simple, such as a chicken stock, and add a few tidbits of dill here, a sprinkle of thyme there, some lemon zest around the corner, and badda-bing badda-boom! Masterpiece.
If this were an auditorium, I would definitely be standing on my feet and screaming ENCORE! Seriously, it's rare that I find a work of art such as this, especially a poem, that fits all the bills and makes all the cuts. This piece, though not quite the best I've ever read, is one of the better ones I've found on this site, and there are plenty of good ones to be sure.
Thank you CesareBorgia!
At first I was a bit hesitant to read this because roses in poetry are done to death. But I can happily say that this wasn't a total cliche, which is nice.
I don't know if you didn't this on purpose or if I have a glitch or something, but I don't understand why you have the words red roses and blacks rose hyperlinked to this page. Like, it makes no sense since it takes you back to the page from which you came. When posting writing on the internet, the use of links can be very beneficial, but that totally threw me off.
Technical things aside, I liked the format and the consistency. The switching between the two and comparing with description is pretty cool.
Main problem though is that there is a reference to souls for both roses and that to me just seemed borderline cliche. Like, you just thought of roses in poetry and wanted more description and were like "everyone talks about souls, I'll do that too."
But you do have a bit of descriptive words that are so commonly used and considered cliche (ex. darkness, soul, blood, shadowed, pale) and you kind of keep repeating them and it's like you didn't take this very seriously.
The way you arranged the words was nice, but you may want to change the words to be something a bit more original or unique. That way the piece will be stronger and leave a better effect on the reader.
Overall, just work a bit on using more original ideas. You format is really cool and you are good at structure. Just actual content needs an upgrade.
I just checked, and please disregard the link thing, I figured out that it's my browser being a piece of poop.
Yo, Cesare. Let's jam.
Normally, I take a decent thirty minutes or so to pry into a piece and analyze its guts; however, you've more or less robbed me of the chance to do so with this piece because everything is pried apart and explained...which leaves me wondering what the point is. Anyway, let's get to it.
Your first metaphor for the red rose is both boring and inaccurate. All roses have thorns (unless the thorns are removed...which changed the metaphor). You have no need for the second part of this line to be its own sentence fragment. You can get away with "Like a red rose, your mind is riddled with thorns that pierce my desolate soul." Given that, the line is clunky and unnecessarily so: you can easily remix the word chosen for desolate to become barren, empty, deserted, etc. Desolate is dramatic and contrived. If you want me to believe that your soul is desolate, give me a reason. Give me an image, a story, a situation that shows that your soul is just the most desolate husk of humanity that has ever been.
Your second run doesn't make sense. You are cloaked by the night, but not the dawnless morning?? I can understand dawnless (even though it's not a word) as an adjective for morning--it implies the lack of sunlight; however, I don't understand why your You isn't cloaked by the dark morning. There's a point of being mysterious with poetry, then there's not making sense. This is a major case of the latter.
Part four throws in this weirdly intense and random theme of self-harm. And beyond that, the blood is superficial. Why? Why should I care that you bled for this person? Why did you bleed for this person?
The final part returns to the You being cloaked and consumed and devoured by darkness...and it revisits the soul motif, but it doesn't bring anything new to it. It really, seriously feels like you just threw pieces together to sound like you attempted poetry. There's no emotion or lesson to be had here. I'm sure you can do better than this. Scrap and start from zero. None of this is salvageable.
Lumi
Okay.
Happy Review Day!
Rurouni here to review!
Alright. This was good. I liked it. The only nitpicks I have are the links, which just link to this page. If they are important, put them in italics or bold.
And the dots. Did you have a formatting issue or is it part of the poem? If its part of the poem, its kind of cool and I would keep it.
Its a neat poem, and I liked it.
Happy Review Day!
~Always...
Shad
First off howdy and happy review day now lets get started, first off while some will say you should keep the black roses parts with the black roses parts and same wit the red. I think that the way you formatted this aided in the speakers thoughts and the power in the words. I enjoyed the imagery you displayed by doing, " The superficial blood that drips from my pale skin. " I found this imagery chilling to the spine and made this piece enjoyable even if it is incredibly dark. Not sure why thought some words are different colors but still nice because it helps emphasize the words such as blood, drips, black rose. Well done, The only negative was the reasoning behind the beginning with,
"Black roses
Red roses"
Then going in to everything. I do not think you need the bullet points as well, but that is up to you. Other than that I found this piece very well done and very fascinating.