Published February 20, 2020
Florizel
“you must be secret, gentle girl”
but flowers aren’t secret; not bundles of oxlips
and flower de luce, and brazen crown imperial.
you cloth me in bright petals, pink and green and apple red
thin and soft and so delicate.
what if i am not a conveyor of sweet things;
the faded line between your feet and the edge of the stage gets thicker
and my body sinks, sifts closer to the thick earth, velvet seat rotted
and drooping from the weight of tree roots.
i am pierced by rose stems, and my skin melds with the trunk
that holds me close and holds me
down.
i reach for you, gentle girl
with the cooler edges of my innermost thoughts,
shattered moonbeams, broken pieces of straw –
i see the way you look at her and i think, somehow, my prince
is somewhere deep within the crusted soil and you,
my secret keeper, my master of whispered words,
are out on the peppermint sea.
i’ll be your secret, gentle girl. for you, for you, for you.
and i’ll wrap myself in daffodils until they hold more than just pollen.
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141,452 Literary Works • 674,463 Reviews
Hello love,
It's exciting to see you back in town, and even more exciting to see a new poem up. Let's get to it!
On the surface, it's a pretty poem. I really appreciate that you maintained the floral/natural imagery throughout; it can sometimes be a challenge. I feel like there are a lot of ideas floating around and the consistency of the imagery helps ground the reader. At the same time, however, I don't think you did enough because when we dig beneath the surface - and still by the end of the poem - I find myself asking you: What is your intent with this poem? What meaning do you wish to convey to me? And I cannot come up with the answer which is unfortunate.
Perhaps the images, as wonderful as they are, confound what's really going on here. Which is to say, I don't know what's going on here besides maybe longing for an individual? I'm currently obsessed with images being synonymous with meaning and emotion, which is honestly pretty basic (lol), but sometimes going back to basics is nice. Let's look at one of your stanzas, for example:
What is "shattered moonbeams", "broken pieces of straw" - perhaps I'm reading this dimly, but I can't see the value of these phrases besides a pretty picture. "Peppermint sea", too. In my opinion, every word counts in a poem and at this point, while I feel that you have something strong here, I also feel that there is a lot of fluff, too, that you could maybe do without.
Wow, I seem to have fallen back into Reviewing circa 2011. But honestly, there is something lovely here and I'm getting lots of sweetness by the time I come to the end and have processed it all. Favourite part:
I think the structure of these lines perfectly echoes the meaning being conveyed in this one small part.
Overall, pretty piece. I just think you need to focus a little more instead of scattering pretty pictures. I know you can go deeper and I know you're up for the challenge. Or it's very likely I just missed the point entirely so oops! You can choose to take my review with a grain of salt if you wish. Either way, a super solid start and I genuinely hope you revise this because it's beautiful!
Yours,
Lav
ily <3. High key though, it's be 5000 years since I last wrote poetry so I feel you on the scattered bit. It's a bit of a self-serving personal poem alluding a lot to images and moments that I relate to a person which is pretty to me but nonsensical out of context so, uh, my bad.
I'll find a way to ground it a bit further in reality somehow! Your words have inspired me.
DW
I'll be back to review this tomorrow <3
Hi, I really like this poem. For some reason I have a newfound appreciation for poems that are written in lowercase. I know people who have an issue with it, but to me it has that modern touch to it so I really really appreciated this one you wrote. I love how you divided each verse and I guess my favorite ones would be:
"what if i am not a conveyor of sweet things;
the faded line between your feet and the edge of the stage gets thicker"
Also good job with the word choices! Hope you keep writing this kind of poetry.