Hi Clo,
Yeah... no. The more times I read this, the more mind-numbingly pretentious and sloppy it becomes in my mind. That's not something you want your reader to feel.
Clo wrote:Though waking up often is a difficult task,
the heaviness and blissfully blank way
my mind lays out limp in all directions
is so much appreciated that I do wish
I could go on waking up forever and
never make it through the front doorway.
I sit at the kitchen table, hands splayed,
praying that my cereal bowl, object of my attention
will wipe away all the thoughts creeping
and cooing along my worn-out synapses –
if I think of nothing but soggy oat flakes
then maybe I will forget all the tension
This is almost sickening to read. "often is a difficult task", "the heaviness and blissfully blank way", "is so much appreciated that", etc. Pare this down, cut it like you're making bacon strips out of a pig. These phrases are immensely un-imaginative and don't really portray anything that the rest of the stanzas cannot. You had some good parts in there, like the synapses and the oat flakes, but they were overshadows by these blisteringly bad phrases that you threw in. Throw them out. Put in some imagery; your first stanza only has one instance of semi-maybe-kinda-imagery in a sea of five poetic lines. Not working.
that sticks between each notch in my back,
making me slump forward and carefully take
a spoonful of breakfast that I slowly chew
for when I am finished there's the next step –
put on my jacket and turned toward the door.
I want the waking, but not the being awake.
Okay, yeah, we get it, you're tired and kind of depressed. You don't need to hammer in this point over and over again with the "slump forward", "slowly" - that sort of stuff. This is where the poem begins to sound fake, as if you're desperately trying to act like someone who's world-weary but can only think up of dry cliches to represent it. The last line is a little cute but doesn't at all pull off a victory, considering how sub-par the rest of the work was.
So... re-do this. Please. Also, it's good to see you back.
Hope that helped,
Galerius
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