Any reason for the double spacing? it did make this a little hard to read. I ended up just squishing it back together to critique, as you can see. It might be like that when you copy it from word or whatever program; if that's the case, it would be nice if you fixed the formatting before posting. If the spacing is for some artistic reason ...
1
Light lives on you, like a
water bug, flashing, here now,
gone in a
flash.
Blink.
The sun echoes [s]so[/s] radiantly in you,
reflecting what is and what
will be.
You have something here that approaches being nice and gets a little bogged down. "So" as a description is inherently weak and should very rarely be used in poetry if at all. "The sun echoes radiantly in you" is nice, but feels like it could be more active - like there's a better word than "radiantly" lurking around the corner.
The repetition of flash/flashing is jarring; You could find some better replacement for "flashing". I think you could cut 'flash. blink.' as well, or integrate that blink feeling better into this part. It doesn't seem to fit.
2
A soft breeze stirs, lifting my
hair from my face. I can feel you here
with me, like so often in my dreams. I
love you.
Stillness. The breeze pauses— you’re
gone.
Take out the linebreaks, and this is good prose. It doesn't have enough weight to carry itself as poetry though. The breeze as a reminder of the dead or missing is a device that's been used over and over again; while it's pretty and familiar and not-quite-cliche its getting there. If you want to use this, and it does fit will with the overall feeling of the poem, you have to put something new into the metaphor.
quote from Lorca:
The dead put on wings of moss.
The cloudy wind and the clear wind
are two pheasants that fly through towers
and the day is a wounded young boy.
strange and amazing -- but also a hint to what's possible with imagery and metaphor.
I think you should really start tinkering with your linebreaks; try long lines, short lines, a mix like this, breaking on punctuation, breaking in the middle of words if you have to. The enjambment here is awkward, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Why does sky get a line of its own? Why isn't "I'm not here" all together on a line, which would give it more emphasis and clarity?3
Bunches of flowers floating in the air, branches
transparent and far from view.
White pompoms for faerie cheerleaders as Apollo races the
sun across the sky. I’m
not here. I’m high up in the sky, floating
above everything. Just me, until He places me
back on the ground, gently as though it were a cloud,
dropping me back down from the heaven that is the
sky.
This part is much more 'poetic' than the ones preceding it; I like how there's more of a scene and more in the language to be interested in. I think you could concentrate more imagery on the floating in the sk thing, because I don't get much about that [I'm going to assume that its an imagination/emotional state] I sounds like it should be important to the poem; a turning point, a revelation, an important feeling. But that's not coming across in the words.
L5 seems very typically "happy", like it's deliberately trying to be a charicature of itself. You don't need "radiantly" -- gleams is a strong word, concise, carrying its weight, and adverbs are generally considered poetic "fat". Same with "happy" and "sporty" - "sounds of girls" would be more eloquent, even. Again, why is "with" on its own line?4
Flower petals line the creek, uncaringly as though they had
always been there. Small droplets of rain
hit the surface, then fade away. No sun gleams
[s]radiantly[/s] in the sky, but the stream still runs for Her children of the waves.
Happy sounds of sporty girls and the constant chirping of robins fill the air
with
a music like no other—the vivace movement of the symphony of life.
Rain heavies as it begins to parade, an
army marching on the world.
L7: "vivace movement" is nice, but "symphony of life" sounds too heavy-handed; something more subtle would work better here, especially when the main focus is the rain. It's an idea that people have seen before so either make it new or let it receed a bit; they won't need it spelled out for them.
However - before you go tweaking that stuff - How does this part go along with the story of the person who was lost? It ads to the feeling and describes the creek; but I think you could take that two-line description of the creek and merge it with the part that's coming up. The rain might be pretty but its not important to the story. When you write a poem in parts they have to line up; it doesn't have to be like chapters or anything, but the parts should all end up fitting together. This part barely makes the cut.
5
Water ripples around rocks and grasses,
every curve and bump of the stream changing its
shape, forming each small outward bound wave of cool crispness.
Nothing stays the same yet everything is
constant, always flowing yet changing speed with
each
passing
second.
Nice, but prosaic. If this were going somewhere else - if it were part of a connection - then this kind of smooth plainness would work well. But standing on its own in poetry it doesn't fly.
6
The birds make their daily chirps,
some light,
some croaking.
This peace does not move me; how
could it, with the shrieking,
clanging,
banging of my kind? Don’t
they know? It’s useless; they make
meaning that is not there, fill their lives with ideas,
hopes,
truths which will never be.
The "croaking" chirps [how are chirps croaking anyway?] don't sound much like peace to me, so that took me by surprise. the last five lines of this part is very general and without any backing to this assertion. How do they make the meaning? what meanings? This could have something to do with 'god and the departed' like in the next part or in the beginning; beliefs about death or the afterlife, perhaps, something you think that people have wrong ... maybe that you have wrong. But you need to make that jump. It isn't there in the poem yet.
7
You say god and the departed are in the breeze,
toying with our existence, showing us
they’re there: you’re wrong. I can feel a
warm embrace in the sun which hugs me,
fills me with
light. The wicked are those pure, white clouds that
keep you from me; soldiers come with the rain,
chanting,
“It’s time” and “Duty calls”. We dance with them, a
welcomed escape. But as for now, as I
leave the disturbed peace of the creek, I shall
never forget the warm embrace which shall soon
line my skin, a reminder of
you
Aha! And here it is! This could very well stand on its own as a poem, or with a few of the parts from this poem. This brings together all the ideas well and you do bring something new to the breeze idea: "toying with our existence" is good.
So, hopefully this is enough to go on, because there are a lot of things that you can do with this poem. You could take the parts individually or in twos or threes and work on them as seperate poems. You could focus on whoever was lost and the feeling of them -- which is the most interesting and evocative thing in this poem -- and cut out the parts and pieces which don't further that idea. OR, you could keep it at this length and develop the weaker parts so that this has other points of interest in the parts that don't deal with the idea that opens and closes the poem; what makes the creek so important? That question was never really answered and so if you develop the whole poem it will be something to think about.
Points: 890
Reviews: 91
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