The First Day of My Life
A wave of the future hits me
like an epiphany of the past.
Everything is clean and new,
like the first snow of winter.
And as I look out on the horizon,
I swear it’s the first day of my life.
Show me effervescent white caps
lying stagnant on the lake’s shore.
Let me see a newborn child
wailing in the presence of reality.
Expose my eyes to newspaper print
and yellowed pages of the present.
Allow me to touch grains of sand
and learn of how they flee my grasp.
Let me feel freshly baked bread,
soft with warmth and affection.
Run my hands over your face
to know of the pain lying beneath.
Make me whiff the musky air
after a majestic spring rain.
Let me smell the aroma of flowers,
and harness their enchanting spell.
Give me the scent of crispy bacon
so tempting in the early morn.
Denude my tongue to sweet cake,
so moist and playful in the mouth.
Let me taste chicken noodle soup
to comfort my body and soul.
Burn my taste buds on hot cocoa,
but let it warm the frigid air inside.
Entice my ears to the complex rhythms
made by performers on the city streets.
Let me hear loud orchestral booms
of the passionate instrumentalists.
Tempt my mind to the sweet song
of light wind rustling tree branches.
Show me all senses of life.
Expose my inexperienced soul
to reason, good deeds and change.
Give the world a positive purpose.
I’m only asking you one thing.
Can you just teach me to live?
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141,367 Literary Works • 674,383 Reviews
Haha, it's not that obscure, and I don't really listen to Bright Eyes. But I'll still be your best friend.
Of course, we get mixed messages in writing. On the one hands, you want to use good verbs, you want to use language well and in interesting ways. But on the other hand...there's a fine line between using well and overusing.
Hey Ringo! You have the joyous honour of receiving my 100th review!
You express yourself extremely well in this poem. Your word choice is astounding:
"Denude my tongue to sweet cake"
However, you have a couple of problems. Firstly, you have way too many adjectives. While you English teachers may praise you for overloading your schoolwork with them, please don't do it in creative writing! Too many adjectives (and even adverbs, for that matter) add dead weight to your writing. If we try and cut out as many as we can in the second stanza as an example, look at the effect it produces:
"Show me effervescent white caps (we can keep 'effervescent', it's unusual)
lying on the lake’s shore. ('stagnant' deleted)
Let me see a child
as it wails in the presence of reality.
Expose my eyes to newspaper print
and the yellowed present." (we don't need 'pages of': the literature image is already implied)
By getting rid of one adjective, a noun phrase and changing a participle into an active verb, we are already producing much more pared down, direct language. This sort of quality is what you should be aiming for in your work.
Also try to cut out passives and replace them with active verbs. E.g. in the sixth stanza:
"Entice my ears to the rhythms
that performers announce from afar."
Something like that. Taking out the passive means you are now SHOWING your actions and not telling them.
On the other hand, I adore your eloquent style and the ending. I am fairly sure your seven stanzas represent the seven ages of man: is this correct?
Overall, great work and look forward to reading lots more!
Gahks
9/10
Cade - an obscure Bright Eyes reference? You're my new best friend.
Anyway, I see where you're coming from. I didn't want to it become monotonous with my word choices, but if that's my primary error, I think I'm good. =P
I'll edit it this sometime, I don't have much to edit so
This is the first day of my life, swear I was born right in the doorway...*sings*
I like the idea behind this poem, and the way you've structured it, but oh god, it's like a thesaurus puked on my computer screen! Good words are fun if used correctly, but when you have one after the other after the other after the other, they look like a muddy mess. I note particularly the use of endless synonyms for "show"--why not use "show"? Repetition and simplicity would serve you better than many trips to the dictionary.
Colleen
Yay, another one of your poems!
The description and the imagery are great here, I can truly imagine the things and the places.
I love that word. Love.
Ah. Sweet.
I can see the freshly baked bread and the cake, I can smell the flowers, I can hear the music. I feel this poem, in other words. I know the warmth of the bread, I know exactly what you mean. This was lovely.
Toward the end, I started to wonder whether this is about the first day of your life, or that you want to learn to live. It got a little confusing. But trust me – you don't have to learn to live, you can do it so well already. At least according to this poem...
Keep up forever!
Demeter xx
Hey, this is very nice! Good work! The metaphors are awesome, the imagery is great...
I don't know what else to say...
Keep up the good work!
I liked it. I don't understand what's making the narrator feel this way, but it's not like the poem leaves me in the dark.
I liked this especially:
[quote=Ringo_rules987]Denude my tongue to sweet cake,
so moist and playful in the mouth. [/quote]
I loved the description! It was everywhere in that dang poem!
The way you split it up into sections for the senses was very clever, and it have a sense of organization, so the reader does not get lost within the poem.
Overall, very nicely done!!
Keep it up, dude!
Jestierically,
Lily
Oh wow.
Great job! I get the feeling that it's either about starting over or having a child.
Which is it? I'm DYING to know! lol
What a perfect way to package all the little things in life that we seem to take for granted in life. It's only that when we don't have them anymore that we notice that they're not there.
Overall one of the best poems I've read on this site. Keep writing!