A/N: Apologies for the clumsy formatting; I typed this out on a phone. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you left a criticism-filled review; the poem in itself is also pretty clumsy.
~*~
here is a memoir
in scarlet paint.
proceed with caution
and avoid wet lines.
if anyone asks, I did not welcome you;
you merely arrived. it was all pure —
coincidence
that i found myself
on your doorstep, early Monday morning, the sky sewing
its grey coverlet up
over a city that could not care less.
chimneys belching smoke, steel-faced skyscrapers
glistening.
[your doorknob was cold.]
in my left hand i held a suitcase filled with heartbeats; my wallet
empty, my eyes dry;
a clump of ivy festered where my heart
had been yesterday, thin scars
tracing across my skin
from where i had tried to take all being
from my body.
[i hoped you would see this. i hoped i would gain your
sympathy. my hand grazed your doorknob.
i knocked.]
no one came to the door.
so i left.
when people ask me who i was, I tell them
that i am not the same person i was yesterday.
and yet i hope that vestiges remain,
a magnetic flux of soul
caught by the sun.
i will scour the world 'til i find them. i have--
travelled the world thirteen times over, searching
for a piece of soul, a pair of eyes
that drowned in the pulsating sea of people
seven years ago.
i searched in the high valleys, the low ones, the villages by the Indian ocean
that breathe sweat and life and death and circles
going round and round and round and--
never ending.
i travelled the world thirteen times over. it's anti-climactic to say
but you never heard me. i suppose i always knew
it was a futile attempt, scraping at the surface of a far-off constellation
and hoping stars would drop from the sky.
[or that stars would catch on my nails
and tear at my fraying skin.]
the only constant things i have seen around the globe are the earth and the sky,
but they, too, are changing. i forget the number of times i have fallen asleep
to the swaying of the sun
and the lingering cloud-threads, stretching like hammocks
below the ozone.
But sleep does not come as easily these days. there are--
nights where i dream of anger and stone walls, and lies carved in so deep that
curtains of moss i have to drape over the surface. if i etched a rune
in the sand at Cox's Bazaar, i wonder if you would notice.
i search through a million seas, wading and yelling in blindness;
the only replies i get are broken green-glass bottles
with no letters inside.
i sit by the gravel gravesides and weep
and people gaze at me.
the strange girl with the dark hair and pale face, the knobbly knees
and the tears that rip scars across her features.
'Aye, an alien she is.'
'Strange people who come here.'
'Who is she, why is she here?'
all the voices drown out the rumbling in my head.
there are thunderstorms and hurricanes crawling over the horizon.
i finger the cloud-threads hesitantly. my days have become a constant cycle of weeping and hoping and falling asleep to the sun.
when i am rust and eclipse, you will find me.
and people will gather my skin
to make tapestries with;
and pin them to my coffin with dead newspaper print bones,
and take my bag of heartbeats
to
remember
me
by.
while I wait for your voice, my hands gathering daffodils, my nails catching dirt (and not stars).
(Someday,
when I have found all the pieces of
who-i-will-be, I shall cry
to show you the way roses bloom from the holes in my skin.)
[and this time, you will open the door.]
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Canary word: Present
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,731 Reviews
Timmy here. :3
Yes, I am going to attempt the impossible - as usual. I am going to try and leave you a review that actually helps you out, and doesn't just leave you with a pile of fluff. Although, bear with me. There isn't anything to critique so far from me, and I will probably find some little thing to squeak out before I leave. Strange to say, but here's hoping. xD
I suppose I should begin.
You say left hand, like it is important - like it adds something. And I will admit that I was expecting for you to have something in the character's right hand, too. Just because you mentioned specific hands. Is there a reason for the left hand? Or did it just flow? Because it does flow nicely for me. ^.^
*coughscoughs* Yeah, you spelled climatic wrong. Although my dictionary tells me climactic is a word. Although it won't give me a definition. >.< I will just assume you meant climatic, because that is what usually goes with anti and the thingymajigur you have there.
Hmm. You changed tenses towards the end of the sentence, or at least it seems that way, how you're speaking of what happens now. Instead of being confused, I am liking it. :3
There. I have read through the piece one time, looking for something wrong with it. Since I am not a poetry expert, I only see the obvious things - and things that probably don't help much. Especially since Lumi has already done his magic on this piece. Let's take another look at the piece, go through and read one more time, and see what I come up with. hee-hee
When I read through the opening passage there, I don't get the feeling like I do with the other bolded parts. I don't feel satisfied, and it doesn't seem as full. Now I like the lines a ton, but they seem somewhat empty. Like they could be expanded, and made with more you. The "wet lines" part is a good example, mesa thinks. Because it can mean multiple things. The first time I read it through, long before I came to review, I thought you were implying that there was wet paint. The second time, I thought you were referring to tears wetting the lines. And if it's paint, it totally makes me think of a newly painted parking lot. xD Oh, and scarlet paint makes me think of blood. ^.^ Like, the trials and suffering poured into the memoir. I will proceed with caution to the next part. Yesh.
If anything can be more perfect then this line, by all means, do show me.
Um, the at isn't necessary here.
And... this is the only place in the poem where I see awkward and clumsy wording. The only place. It does read oddly to me, and I think some things should've been switched around. Perhaps: lies carved in so deep i had to drap curtains of moss over the surface was what you meant? Seems to flowwww much more betterish.
And I have reached the extent of my critique of this poem. >.< Here is your criticism-filled review. xD And I can never write a proper review for you, Dory, because your pieces are always written so perfectly. The only reason I can find anything to say about them except for wiping the tears from the screen and continuing on is because you ask for something not-as-nice. And I always take so long to review these pieces of yours because I look at them hesitantly for days, not knowing what to say. You truly write the best poetry ever that bring the emotion like nothing else. ;_; I stick to what I said previously. You need to make a compilation of these poems and publish them, because then the world would come to know what I do.
I cannot take a piece of yours and call it my favorite poem of all time, and that's simply because they're all too good to choose above the rest of them.
~Darth Timmyjake
It actually is anti-climactic. XD Anti-climatic is perverse to the climate; I was talking about an anti-climax, ahaha.
Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews <33 I owe you so many, I've lost count.
xD Ohhhh... okay. hee-hee That does make more sense.
I have more time then you do, and you don't have a laptop right now. Tis okay. <333
This is a poem with a lot of potential. Literally speaking, if you had traveled around the world thirteen times, I'm pretty sure you'd know a hell of a lot and seen a lot. I hear the emotion all through the poem, which makes it that much better. In a way, it seems as if you may be trying to get someone's attention. By trying to take your life (thin scars across my skin where I tried to take all my being) no person is worth you taking your life. It may be hard now, but things will only get worst before they get better.
just three words ....YOU ARE GENIUS
This is a great poem! I've never been much of a poet, though I have given a few feeble attempts. I'll probably post my most recent one. Anyway, great poem. No criticism.
The clumsiness almost helps this poem come to life.
It was a very interesting read, it feels like its a conversation between two people!
I rarely felt lost whilst reading this, it all pieced together really well and I could read this over and over again (I've already read this 4 times and each time has left me feeling different things)
I love your style.
Keep it up!
I know I said I was coming for you, but this is going to be short and to the point.
What you've done is found a flow and format that works well for your poetry because it just does. Consider it an non-quantifiable thing that happens to poetry during the course of evolution. Right now you are at an apex of flow, but you're also at an apex of excess. You're right in calling this a memoir because there's way too much of it for the succinct beast that is poetry. I'm not saying that poetry can't be long because that's not true; I don't believe it, you shouldn't believe it, and I hope your reviewers don't believe it. That said, I want you to acknowledge with a strong spirit that there is coverage and then there is excess.
When we find a flow that is so smooth for our poetry, it's hard to tell ourselves to continue evolving. It's true. But this style gives a hand to meandering lines and clumsy thought structure. You have to approach this and know what you need and what you don't. You have to approach this and say "This can exist in another reality." You have to approach this and cut. It's not easy at first, but after time you learn to edit yourself as you're writing; and if that doesn't work, you edit upon second glances. This isn't an instigation to delete anything you've put work into, but rather to sort and prune to find what is load-bearing and what is decoration.
Your stanza about falling/crying/being called an alien: it doesn't belong. It meanders and takes your reader into another experience altogether. Consider that your first line of attack.
Beyond cutting the fat, figure out your line breaks and white space. They're not necessarily a problem right now, but they're definitely on my watch list.
My inbox is open if you'd like a more thorough dissection.
Ty
Ah, thank you for this! I had a feeling that the middle-ish part of the poem was straying too Northeast, but wasn't sure whether to cut it out. I shall edit this soon. ^_^
Is there a conversation between two people between the gray bolded and regular fonts?
Let's start with the beginning:
"here is a memoir
in scarlet paint.
proceed with caution
and avoid wet lines.
if anyone asks, I did not welcome you;
you merely arrived. it was all pure —"
The idea that this poem will represent a memoir is neat, first off. Let's talk about your word choice. Memoirs are most often books, printed and written. When you leave "memoir" to be the last word of the first line, readers are forced to stick with that image of BOOK until they scan the second line. In the second line, readers will see the word "paint" and then think of paintings, pictures, and visuals - something different than BOOK. This sudden and unexpected change causes an uncomfortable tension between what you first introduced and then what you really meant. There's dissonance.
I would suggest including the word "drawn" after "memoir" (and the reason I don't suggest "painted" after "memoir" is to avoid repetition with "paint" in the line below the first). It's perfectly alright that you have a visual rather than traditional/written memoir, to have a memoir "drawn in scarlet paint," but it is necessary to remember that memoirs are not usually visual projects. If your memoir will be drawn (or painted), this should be specified because it is different than the norm.
Starting at "coincidence:" I don't understand why we're in the city? Why is this person trying to meet with this other person? Is it romantic? Is it out of a personal debt? Is it to tie up loose ends created in the past?
"in my left hand i held a suitcase filled with heartbeats; my wallet
empty, my eyes dry;
a clump of ivy festered where my heart
had been yesterday, thin scars
tracing across my skin
from where i had tried to take all being
from my body."
Grammar moment: Semicolons are used to replace comma-ands or comma-buts etc. For example, "I swam, and I ran" is the same as "I swam; I ran." Perhaps moving "my wallet" to the line below it and rewriting the line as "My wallet was empty and my eyes, dry" could do instead. The change would make the line more clear, and it would get rid of that unnecessary semicolon usage.
I don't care for ivy "festering," by the way. Ivy may grow, and as it is a climbing plant it may climb, too, but it does not "fester." Boils fester. Sores fester. Diseases may fester, but plants do not. You've written the ivy in a "clump," so why not say it "tangles" where the heart had been?
Dramatic words like "fester" may sound more poetic in some way or another, but when words are used for the sake of how nice they sound while lacking real contribution to how the work progresses or connection to the context in which these dramatic words are placed, I feel like these words leave the work a little empty of the depth it could have had.
I have this same issue with "my hand grazed your doorknob." Grazed? Gently swept over? Casually, momentarily felt? In the line after, you're knocking. Knocking is very solid. It's firm. What this follows from should reflect that same firmness.
"I reached for the doorknob and stopped.
I knocked."
You've still got your hesitation to throw open the door with this change. In addition, you don't have to switch awkwardly from gently grazing to hardened knocking. You reach. You stop. You knock.
"no one came to the door.
so i left."
I just think this part's cool.
"when people ask me who i was, I tell them
that i am not the same person i was yesterday.
and yet i hope that vestiges remain,
a magnetic flux of soul
caught by the sun.
i will scour the world 'til i find them. i have--"
Was that one capitalized I a typo? I'm joking. About this section that I've quoted off, I want to talk about "vestiges," "magnetic flux," "sun," and "scour the world 'til i find them." The vestiges are the "magnetic flux of soul," and that's fine, but I think you're conflating "magnetic" with something metal or metallic that may be reflective and may be "caught by the sun," but you're not specific about this.
Otherwise, if you mean to say that the sun attracts magnetic flux, this isn't accurate. The sun as it spins, like the Earth, may have magnetic field lines, but it creates these on its own and does not capture them. Either way, the line, because of this ambiguity, is sort of confusing.
As well, I'm confused about what you mean by "scour the world 'til i find them." Do you mean find the vestiges? Do you mean find the person who you were trying to give a letter to earlier on?
"[or that stars would catch on my nails
and tear at my fraying skin.]"
From the passage above this quote, I wish I knew why you chose the number thirteen. Aside from that wondering, "fraying skin" should be reconsidered. Old? Decrepit? Withered? Fraying describes the loose little splintering and fuzzing edges on cloth that hasn't been sealed, and it's difficult to imagine skin doing this because skin has no particular "edges." Even open cuts don't fray.
"the only replies i get are broken green-glass bottles
with no letters inside."
I wish "only" wasn't there. If you only mention one kind of reply, it will be assumed that these are the only replies you get.
"'Aye, an alien she is.'
'Strange people who come here.'
'Who is she, why is she here?'"
This may be my favorite part.
Now, last bit of review!
"(Someday,
when I have found all the pieces of
who-i-will-be, I shall cry
to show you the way roses bloom from the holes in my skin.)"
Let's make the finale of this poem definitive: "who-i-am" instead of "who-i-will-be." Also, "holes in my skin" sounds too close to perfect puncture wounds, I think. If you mean "holes" as in "missing pieces," why not write "to show you the way roses bloom where I was once lost" ?
Okay! Phew! I tried to separate the chunks of this review, so everything could be more easily read. I hope I could help a little with what you thought was "clumsy." I could have written more, but this was already getting pretty long. I'm sorry if my own writing, here, was a bit clumsy! If you have any questions/disagreements, I'd love to talk.
Happy writing!
Thank you for the review! I am aware that many aspects of this poem may be scientifically incorrect, but that was partly what I was going for: a fantastical approach. I appreciate the criticism though, and shall most definitely take it into consideration when j edit!
Ooh, also: welcome to YWS!
What have you been drinking that enhances your poetry skills and can I have some of it pls
Why to people say, sorry this is a clumsy/bad poem and needs work, a.k.a is sucks, but then bam you read it and it is pure amazing stuff. WOW that was a great poem, and you wrote it on a phone
Great job, I am really impressed by the skill that went into this 
I kinda like its clumsiness to be honest. This is weird, sad, but nice. It made my day:)
I would try and help with this, but I suck at poems, so....
Have a great day!!
Jack