Saccharine

Saccharine

Honeyed words, slipping off a sugary tongue
Amber, syrupy syllables gloss the air into a nebulous sheen.
Ephemeral thoughts are branded everlasting,
Illusions of grandeur crystallized in marble.

Speak with florid zest and they will listen.
Mark with gilded letters, and you will catch the world.

These amorphous declarations soothe all the opinionated denizens of conformity.
This speech of glass distracts the masses with savory adulation, a travesty of affection.

Your blatant merit may loom enthralling as of yet, but, colorless to the knowing,
It too shall expire into vapid fallacy,
Dust to callow dust resigning,
Lapsing into time’s impassive sieve.

Comments & reviews · 2
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Kale
Review
Kale wrote a review · Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:35 pm

Hey there. I'd just like to say first that you have a very interesting take on this poem with how you describe various intangible concepts by taste. Unfortunately, these intangible concepts remain pretty intangible despite the taste descriptors. Part of this is due to your word choice - while your vocabulary is impressive, it's not very accessible to most of your readers, as Amaryllis' review pointed out. Also, a lot of the words you selected are in and of themselves pretty abstract. What, for example, is zest? How is it being expressed? By extension, your imagery, though lovely, was quite abstract. How are illusions crystallized into marble? How does the abstract become concrete? You're missing a vital connection here.

Abstractness aside, I really enjoyed your word choice. Each word flowed well into the other, and it gave this poem a sort of ethereal feel, which suits this. Some of the lines struck me as a touch wordy due to length, and I think you could be a bit more creative with where you place linebreaks, but overall, the structure itself was quite solid.

Really, the only issue I see with this poem is the inaccessible imagery. Work on making it more tangible and connected (but no necessarily literal), and this poem will be much stronger, I think.

User avatar
Amaryllis
Review

I liked this. It's all swooshy and smooth sounding. The only problem I had with it was this: although the large, uncommon words sounded nice, I also found myself going "hey, wait, what does that sentence mean?" and it distracted from the poem. I could get the general gist of it, but I had to read it twice.

I liked these lines especially:

Dust to callow dust resigning,
Lapsing into time’s impassive sieve.


Overall, I liked it. Keep writing! :)

Ryllie



Don't gobblefunk around with words.
— Roald Dahl