parade (16+)

Hannah,

Hannah, Hannah, Hannah - what came first, the poem or the title? :3 Indeed, I felt the title really connected these images for me. I can see how quite literally, it's just a line of characters, and they're all quite costumed up, eh?

I'm gonna do a Pengu and pretend that you're dead and go through this review with my own thought wonderings, because for some reason, I found this piece had a lot of dark themes. You rated it a 16 , so I'm wondering whether or not some of these were intentional!

This speaker wants to love all of these people, I can't help but imagine like a gigantic orgy or something (but that's prolly just how my mind goes)- and the thing is, it's "I want..., I want..., I want..." throughout, which makes me interpret this piece as though she wants to, but she can't. There's some kind of emotional disconnect there, and truly that seems to be the conflict that kind of holds me to this piece like moth to flame. And by emotional disconnect I mean, it's not truly love that she is seeking. She wants all of these things, she wants to love all of these things, but I truly think the speaker doesn't really know what she wants, and maybe she cannot know.

The disconnect, you see it in her myriad of choices of the people she wants and the reasons she wants them. She seems to be describing just any and everybody, misfits and all, but not what she needs or what she can respect, so as to truly fall in love with them. That's what kept me from the more simple interpretation of the speaker maybe just desiring to love people who are "real" or human, or flawed -- that's kind of what I first thought of upon the first read-through, but there's no deep level of understanding or sympathy or love that is being expressed, which keeps me away from that idea and more towards the idea of just that she cannot love these people. She will want to, but she cannot.

For example, the monk's secretive smoking habit implies he has a desire for the materials, which is conflicting to his supposed beliefs; he's false to say the least. I like how you open the poem up with "deception", and that's what she is supposedly "wanting" - again, emotional disconnect here.

The second stanza, wanting to love a little girl - it could be pedophilia , but that's more forced on to go along with this interpretation (of orgies! :3), rather than something I'm seriously suggesting - the tone just doesn't lend itself to go in that direction, and is most likely to mean like a motherly, or non-sexual love. Still, if it's a longing for a motherly type of love (as indicated by the wanting to buy her dresses/care for a dependent) it's an emotional disconnect, because the speaker cannot or does not have such a thing.

Your third stanza is not my favorite - for whatever reason, when I read "mathematician" and "marks on the wrist" I was thinking like - oh, is he writing little "Fs" on her wrists? XD and then I realized, oh no, he's the abusive boyfriend - which lends to that deception theme again, because you don't really think those pasty-faced, lanky poindexters could be capable of such things. But it seems kind of odd, because you didn't carry the deceptive/not-what-it-appears motif through your second stanza, so it's like you're hopping. Yeah, but this stanza is the typical abusive boyfriend/doing harmful things -> emotional disconnect, definitely.

Your fourth stanza is LOLs I dun even. <3
One thing though, I'm not a fan of sprawling scrawls - it's too intentional. In the sense that the words should feel natural as though they've grown out of the ground to form these pretty patterns, not as though they've been uprooted from somewhere else and planted in that particular spot. You want to maintain the subtlety that you've got going on. As for my thoughts on this guy. I'm just going to say that this guy is not even human. So that's not even an emotional disconnect, that's like a biological disconnect.

I love the fifth stanza too, though this one is obvious too. Gold digger. There's no love here. Emotional disconnect.

The last two stanzas sort of try to braid all of these ideas all together. I suppose I get the sense that the speaker wants to love so badly, she's more in love with the idea of love (kisses like fireworks? Oh yucccck. Unless it was an intentional cheesy line to show the flaw in the speaker's perception, then ooooh nice! B)

Maybe the parade then are the caricatures of all the people she's dated in the past, whom she's wanted to love. But you could never fall in love with someone having those sorts of expectations/ideals. So yay! Poem cracked yeah rite, it's 3am and I bet you're face palming right now

:3 LOL. Apologies for the wayyyy off-base review. Well, at least you could say you had fun. No other reviewer of yours could possibly think of orgies.

~ as always, Audy

Hi there.

Oh my goodness the last stanza. Whoa.

Your first stanza is great, too.

This whole poem is pretty great in general, actually.

The only things I would look at changing are two stanzas in particular.
The mathematician stanza could use more specific details. You have excellent details and images in the alien stanza, but the mathematician one seems rather vague. Don't get me wrong, I still like it, but it's missing the magic you bring to the other stanzas.
The second to last stanza isn't doing it for me. If I were you, I'd omit it completely. It's very vague. Even the person you're talking about is vague. They're just a "someone," for heaven's sake. (I do like the last line of that stanza, though.)
One last thing: In the alien stanza, omit the "he" in front of the fifth line of the stanza.

(I just looked at another review, and it seems like you replaced "asshole" with "mathematician." Don't use mathematician. I know why that was throwing me off, now. If you change mathematician to something similar to what you had before, I feel like it would work better with the stanza.(perhaps "jackass" or "criminal"? just suggestions.))

I really enjoyed reading this. I hope that this review was useful to you.

Hi Hannah!

I have a lot to say about this poem so I'll go stanza by stanza.

"i want to love a monk
who blows smoke
and crushes cigarettes on the hidden folds
of his yellow robes"

Very interesting. I like the sort of contradiction you make here, because most people think of monks as peaceful, clean beings, and not smokers, so it makes the reader think about what this stanza really means. It also packs a punch for the first stanza.

"i want to love a girl
and buy her dresses to watch her twirl
and slip her feet into flats
and let her stand on my toes when we dance."

Love this imagery. Beautiful and nostalgic. Lovely. The last line in this stanza is one of my favorites in the whole poem. The only problem I have is with the third line, maybe it's just me, but I'm not to crazy about using "flats"; it seems like....I'm not sure, maybe a too modern term for your poem, though maybe you just needed a word that rhymed. Either way, wonderful stanza.

"I want to love an asshole
who leaves marks on my wrists
and pushes me down to make me forgive him
so we can ride away fast in the morning
and eat something bad for our bodies
at sunrise"

I like this line, because I think it's a very "real" feeling some people have, and it's raw and powerful. I have the same complaints though, as the reviewer below me with the awkward usage of "asshole" and the whole "eat something bad for our bodies" thing, though maybe this is just some sort of metaphor.

"i want to love an alien
who looks up at the stars and dreams of cowboys
riding comets with spurs to goad them on
and in his earthly incarnation
he writes sprawling scrawl in notebooks;
i'll tell him i will be his penpal,
and i'll leave his letter on my desk for months"

Wow. A very bizarre stanza, but for some reason I just really, really like it. Not much to say, other than it's very cool, unique, creative, and a burst of fun after a more gloomy image.

"i want to love a man who thinks i am a glass doll
and just once be draped in a dress that cost more
than a year of school
and he will rent me diamonds
and he will wear cologne, and i will never take my makeup off
in front of him"

Very sad, but very well written. "Glass doll" sets a perfect image of this man who will treat his lover as something delicate and beautiful. We also see this powerful want that comes across very well. At the end, we see an underlying sadness. Maybe this person gets all these beautiful things, but doesn't feel truly loved because they are too afraid to even take their makeup off in front of him, because maybe they won't be his "glass doll" anymore. That's just my take at least, maybe it's not what you intended. Anyway, no complaints.

"i want to love a woman who is dying
and who shaves her head
and takes me to exotic places
and slips inside me when she likes
because she cannot wait for others to be gone"

Different, but I like it. Sets a different mood entirely. Sad and quiet.

i want to love someone who
has always wanted me to love them
and whose eyes light up when they see me smile.
and who gives me dying things like flowers and fruit.

Once again, just beautiful. I'm not sure I like the last line though, it disrupts the flow and is an awkward way to end such a lovely stanza.

i want to love a memory
who will teach me i am a masochist
because he will hurt me every day
and never even know
that i am crushing my skull into a wall
over the thought of him
every day

No comments really. In fact, that entire stanza is uneccessary in my opinion.

i want to love a star
and dissolve
when
we
kiss

Perfect way to end. Ties everything together in a spectacular way. One of my favorite parts of the poem; I like the phrasing as well.

All and all, it was a pleasure to read this poem. Great, vivid images and I enjoyed getting a different story and feeling in each stanza. I also liked that way the gender of the person really couldn't be determinded and it switched back between the two. Very cool. Hope my review helped some. Keep writing, as you certainly have talent!

All the best,
Silver

Interesting. Here we go:

- The title doesn't bother me as much; it just kind of conjures this image of all these "lovers" in a kind of flamboyant medieval parade with all these characters in it.

-

i want to love a monk
who blows smoke
and crushes cigarettes on the hidden folds
of his yellow robes.

i want to love an asshole

and eat something bad for our bodies
at sunrise.

and just once be draped in a dress that cost more
than a year of school

Hi Hannah! I've always been quite averse to poetry which leaves me feeling uncertain about its meaning after I've read it. Indeed, as I began this poem that's what crossed my mind but as it gathered pace I began to understand. Ostensibly, this poem is about 'love' (by the bye, what's with the random title?). From the poem I gathered that you were describing some of the various forms that love takes, good or bad. The finest stanza, for me, was the one which states: "I want to love someone who / has always wanted me to love them" - I thought the last line was magical. I understood that different people want to 'love' different things even if they hurt them; indeed, every stanza but the first conveyed this: why a monk???? Who in this world wants to love a smoking-monk?? Anyway, a fine poem. Though I always blanch at noticing an absence of metre! Still, a solid poem with some fine themes!

This was a difficult read, but yet another impressive feat by Hannah the poetress. Seriously, you write really freaking good poetry. :3

Anyway, the flow of this and the word choice was incredible, as always. Really impactful and thought-provoking. It makes a very pretty, abstract view of 'love', and the way that people see it.

There are a few things I would like to challenge, however. The title makes no sense to me. I realize that, often in your works, the titles are an abstract view on the poem- but I feel like this one doesn't reflect on it at all. Maybe I'm missing something, or there's a personal meaning behind this- but I don't understand why you chose it. I won't suggest anything, as I'll probably embarass myself.

Though the narrator is a whisp of thoughts and philosophy, and shows homosexual tendancies wither way- I feel the gender is a little bit to up in the air. Some lines make me feel like their female, some male. I dunno, you probably meant to do that. If you did, you did a great job of confusing me!

Keep writing inspiring poetry!