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Relief (Ventilation Shaft rewrite) (Free verse) by cyan9

The wicked glared at the glowing drops of steel That dripped from the scarred charred anvil. Beads of tempered steel streaked through rimose veins Into crevice like crimson forks of lightning in the rain. Stepping back into the wardrobe to retreat from the storm, The wicked steel beings raped the weakling fawn. Exercising demons brought a rush to their iron brains, A relief to those who struggled through each day. Entangled in a fantasy world where each could go bezerk, Sodomising talking animals as they lay there in the dirt. Void of responsibility that let hearts fly free, Released to do their dark little things in a world, A world that does not cause us any misery. Lying in the snow beneath oak and willow While frost crawled over their burning hearts, Lying to themselves and lying to their brothers, Advising people on the problems of each other. Beauty poured down all day And they missed it as they played, Wishing for something real The alloyed creatures got back to their evil.

zodiac 9-Dec-05/3:32 AM
Here's my critique:

1. The first two stanzas aren't real sentences. Don't overuse present participle (ie, "-ing") phrases. It weakens your verbs. Not to mention, you'll forget to make it a sentence.

2. You don't actually have something coming from the charcoal sky, only something that's LIKE cool ash. You need to at least drop "as" and have cool ash coming, or say what it is you're comparing to ash. On a similar note, it takes more than half the poem to get that it's the strangler "glaring" at the drops of steel, or almost half a poem too long.

3. The ending may be true enough, but I can tell you know it's going to get you in trouble with almost everybody. Basically you've placed the entire responsibility for "remedying" the situation on your strangler, who should (it's implied) just be able to decide to change and do it. By extension, that diminishes or frivolizes his complaints and disdain when they don't need to be. Whatever Bush and his smug aristocrat cronies prattle on about it, the reality of the situation is not that all these whining disdainful downtrodden should just one day up and decide to fix themselves and stop whining so much. At least, that may be the reality of the situation, but I'm not going to say it even as a joke.

Otherwise, it's good writing. Keep on the ball about your grammar, sentence structure, your message, holding your images together (I just noticed, "calming the very soul" is a very weak and off-message thing to say at that point.) I think you can take my word that I got all your subtle metaphors and such. Yet, I'm going to go with wilco. -8-




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