Recipe for Self-Love
Ticking, ticking.
I walk up the via Dolorosa,
Trespassing the Segovia Viaduct,
Until I run out of crevices to trace.
Clocks tick ceramic minutes
Carved into melodious mosaic
Ding-dong doorbells
Opening to who-knows-where,
Not daring to remain shut.
***
Rain drips down my surrealist hive,
Whilst I sing the blues' jive,
And still the doors don't shut.
I’ll shut thee out. Don't enter.
I don’t want your sweater;
Go get wetter outside.
I decide to traverse the riverside,
Tracing the streets near the bridge.
That awful bridge;
Bridges are needed in poems, however.
***
The fucking bells won't shut up
They clack away in my mind!
I'm sick of tracing the cracks,
The sacraments of a dying rack,
With all its ornaments on display.
The birds came out to play.
***
Tick-tock round the clock
The cuckoos’ clock
The dogs bark
I found a lark
I named it Mark
Oh hark!
Can you hear that?
The bells finally shut up, but now?
All I can hear is
That wretched
Stretched
Madrid’s curvature
Time's overture
Luscious pasture
The suicide venture
The timeless adventure
To hell with bridges.
I'm sick of burning them.
***
Unencumbered by despair,
Proclaiming it isn't fair.
If you push people off of bridges,
There's seldom anyone left,
to trace the ridges.
Then you're stuck with yourself.
Forced to better yourself.
So you might as well dream
Of wishing wells,
And love that never dwells
On its remains,
All else maimed.
Therefore,
Perhaps I should try to
Love thyself
Kiss myself
Have hope
Have faith
In crystal chalices
And broad daylight...
***
... Just don’t forget
About Segovia Viaduct,
And beget kindness to all.
Clocks chime better
In silver light;
Sacred conduct
Ensures peace of mind.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,739 Reviews
Good morning 😊
This has been in the Green Room for a while so even I, a non-poet, will now try my hand at looking at it ^^
I love this phrasing, this adjective:
Interesting to read that the doors wont stay shut yet the narrator shuts ppl out. An invitation, that is denied the moment someone takes you up on that offer…
Hah! This line speaks to me because I hate it when the church bells ring and ring and ring *grumble* If they were at least playing a melody! But it’s just noise :/
I can clearly see you are doing something with the rhyming scheme and the way the lines are ordered. There’s thought behind it, especially when the wording gets simple. But it goes over my head so I am more left confused and frustrated ^^°
In the beginning, I thought that maybe the poem was drawing a parallel between sound and places, and I think this is a motif that goes through all the verses. Sounds that trigger reactions, that signal change or a specific event.
These are some of the thoughts I had while reading 😊
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Hai :3
Oh oh oh this is such a fun, spiraling poem!! I love how it feels almost like a clock coming apart in the middle of a city. There’s this really fascinating mix of sacred imagery, urban architecture, nursery-rhyme soundplay, and something much darker underneath it all. The poem starts with pilgrimage and ends with a kind of ethical command, but in between, it keeps slipping into bells, birds, barking dogs, doors, and time. It feels restless in a really compelling way!!
This opening is SO intriguing. “Ticking, ticking” immediately makes the poem feel haunted by time, but then “via Dolorosa” brings in this sacred suffering, like the speaker is walking through a private stations-of-the-cross moment. I love that contrast!! It makes Madrid feel almost mythic, not just a place but a site of pain, memory, and passage.
“Trespassing the Segovia Viaduct” is such a striking phrase, too. Trespassing implies the speaker is somewhere forbidden, or emotionally crossing a boundary they maybe should not cross. The viaduct feels architectural, historical, and ominous all at once. Then “crevices to trace” gives such a tactile quality, like the speaker is touching the city for proof, searching the cracks for meaning. Gorgeous!!
^^^ Tiny thought: “via Dolorosa” and “Segovia Viaduct” are both very loaded images, so I’d love to see the relationship between them sharpened even more. Is the viaduct becoming the speaker’s personal Via Dolorosa? Is the act of tracing crevices a kind of prayer? There’s so much emotional potential there!!
This tonal shift is really interesting!! It suddenly becomes defensive, almost childish, almost theatrical. “Thee” gives it this old-fashioned mock-formality, while “go get wetter outside” feels blunt and odd and funny. I like how the poem lets seriousness and absurdity exist together ~~ It makes the speaker’s mind feel unstable in an intentional way, as if the poem is resisting one clean emotional register.
^^^ I wonder who the “you” is here. Time? Death? A person? The intrusive thought attached to the viaduct? The ambiguity works, but because the command is so direct, I found myself wanting one more clue. Even a small image could make this moment hit harder.
This ending is fascinating because it doesn’t fully escape the darkness. It says: have hope, have faith, but don’t forget. That’s important!! The Segovia Viaduct returns like a warning, a memorial, a symbol of the place where despair and survival meet. I love how the poem refuses to make healing feel like erasure. Peace of mind comes not from forgetting the edge, but from remembering it and choosing kindness anyway.
“Beget kindness / To all; sacred conduct” feels almost like a moral vow, too. The poem begins as a walk and ends as a commandment. That arc is really satisfying, especially with all the religious undertones threaded through the piece!!
^^^ I might consider tightening the final phrasing just a little. “Beget kindness / To all” has a lovely archaic quality, but it is slightly formal compared to the more vivid earlier images. Maybe that formality is exactly the point!! But I wonder what would happen if the ending kept one concrete image from the poem: a doorbell, a chalice, a clock, a crevice, a bird, et cetera. Something tangible could make the final moral land even harder.
Overall, this is such a compelling, eerie poem!! It feels like a pilgrimage through Madrid, but also through a mind trying not to be swallowed by time, memory, or even despair. I’d love to see you keep leaning into that sensory strangeness while giving the darkest emotional turns a little more room to echo. This is haunting and playful and sacred in such a cool way. Awesome work!! <3
- Payton
This poem is nice, and the message of self love (or at least i hope its self love) is a good concept! Though it is a really difficult to figure out it's about self love without the title. This might just be a me thing, but the ending was the only thing I really got from the whole thing. I also think it is a little difficult to tell the tone or mood of the lines.
Good job though! I can tell efford and hard work was put into this. The Segovia Viaduct refrence was very nice too, I really liked that :0
The poem moving between light wordplay and darker undertones, especially in its reference to the Segovia Viaduct and shifts in tone gives an unstable but intentional emotion feeling. Also the ticking clocks and recurring sound patterns create a sense of pressure beneath the playful lines.
I think your poem's strength is its musical flow and imagery, though the meaning can feel diffuse at times due to its sort of associative structure.