Hot tears stream down raw caverns of flesh,
Simmering as they soak into sleeve and shirt,
Drenching an already heavy corpse in memory and loss.
Black. Black is the fist which punches
Blood around a hopeless shell; hollowed from months of false hope.Of neglect.
Accept it. Accept it and drag your ravaged frame from one day to the next
In hope that future tides will engulf and lift
Spirits, and bring a renaissance of passion for an acquaintance new.
Stare into the night and awaken alone, as the brain screens
Images of your rose, hastily plucked and put on display
By a rotund bachelor with words of new tides.
Alas, a happy moment think I will never exist,
In the absence of her electric lips.
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,856 Reviews
Hi there!
I love how much emotion you have in this poem, it practically smacks you in the face the moment you start reading. Often emotion is something that poetry lacks (surprising, I know) while technical aspects are great. Here, I think you've got the opposite.
While the emotion is clear in the poem you've stuffed the lines so thoroughly, with that beautifully evocative imagery, that it's hard to read. We're having to wade through all the bits and pieces to find your base message and your basic poem.
I think if you'd consider stipping this poem of all the description - not permanently, mind! - to see how your poem looks without the frilly bits that makes it poetry, it may help. I think what you need is to find the words that fit your poem perfectly, poetry is all about word usage. Right now you have too many words and too many images, and they take away from your poem's meaning and the emotion therein.
This is definitely a good start! I think you need to strip it back a little to let it breathe without the extra words and images.
If you change this, please let me know!
~Penguin.
Hi Alex! Welcome to YWS!
In this poem, you show us a brutal image and keep on describing what is going on, but you never actually give us an idea of why it is going on, nor do you give any hints as to what could be going on! To make things worse, you use imagery that is slightly cliche (hot tears, blackness, blood, rose) in your imagery which gives us an even iffier idea about what you're saying. Not that hot tears, blackness, blood, and roses are generally bad and should be avoided as far as topics go, but there should be something else to go with it too. So put some of what makes you unique in it and really spice it up. It'll be better, honest.
Hey! Reddy here for a review...
Okay, let's cut straight to the chase. All in all, this was a nice piece. The rhythm was very nice, and I liked the imagery, mostly.
However, some of the metaphors and similes that you used were a bit cliche, and the amount of imagery got a bit overwhelming, not to say confusing.
"Drenching an already heavy corpse in memory and loss."
This was one of the lines that confused me the most. Is the corpse you speak of sorrow? Anger? Is it even an image, or did you actually mean corpse?
The only other problem was that your point of view seems to shift. You go from third person to first person at about the half way point in the poem.
Other than that, I loved it. I'd like to read more!
~RedBird
Hiya, Classy here! Let's see what we can do...
I just wanted to point out these two lines. I think the underlined letters in these would sound much more powerful as their own line. It seems like this is a ranting poem, a lyric poem, right? So with this, since you are saying what you want, if you want a line to stand out more than the others, you need to empashze it. This is how I would write these two lines:
Black.
Black is the first which punches...
Accept it.
Accept it and drag...
Do you see now the words have a certain punch to them? They will really stick in your readers minds.
I really liked this poem. I especially like the title, though. I would get rid of the ellipses, but other than that, great title.
I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say in this poem... You go from what sounds like death and torture to missing a loved one? If you are trying to say that love is like death, that is a bit cliche, and you need to expand on it so I get it more easily.
Nice poem! Keep writing.
Classy
Hullo Alex. Welcome to YWS and all that. ^_^
I'm glad you've already posted something literary - 'tis a good way to dive right in, so to speak.
As to the poem itself, it's rather too jumbled in style and weighted by imagery and adjectives not to hit the ear like a load of clay. In its first line, it strikes a dead-centre cliche with 'hot tears' and then goes on to overwhelm by describing -er, a face, yes? - as 'raw caverns of flesh'.
Are cheeks chapped then? Or is the one crying got wounds that gape open all over his features? Or hers? It seems to imply abuse.
But it also hops with its voice and POV. Whose point of view and voice ARE we hearing afterall? Er, what corpse?
It rather switches up tone from the first four lines into what follows as well -- from an abrupt, violent - but rather direct - tone into something that begins to flower with 'alas' and other archaic bits.
I'd read it aloud, honestly. Listen to the words. Pick out a voice, yes? and if you can't find one, toss it out and begin again. ^_^ Oy, I see quite a bit of feeling in it; but perhaps not yours. Poetry is yours, you know. Don't write for another or in another's tone.
IMP