I think you can lose "First." Comma after water. The green fleece image for a fish stuffed and mounted on the wall works well, but the complex way you develop it will leave some readers wondering what you mean.

Yes, it's an undisciplined rant. But I like: So I'm a disaster A miserable hackneyed bore And my mind's a whore Describes a "poet" writing to please masses.

You've had the Robert Frost touch in your last few posts; this is the only one in my opinion which creates more than a sense of triviality. Very enjoyable, dear chap.

This is unbelievably depressing, not what I'd usually associate with you.

Nice lyricism, I don't know what the stereotype of a country girl from Colorado is though - I need to travel more.

I don't know if this is how it's meant, but with a little fine-tuning this would make a sweet poem for children.

I am not certain whether 'Kathumping' is meant to be onomatopoeic - Ka-THUMping, or if it should be pronounced Kat-Humping; in which case, who is Kat and what has she done that requires ice?

i like this one. i would suggest switching the order of coffee and donut in line 7; i presume the "black and sweet" refers to the coffee, not the donut. in fact, to maintain the rhyme scheme you have established, switch it to "sweet and black". line 1 refers to her baseball cap, line 2 to her khaki hat. not sure if that is too much about the hat/cap. perhaps line 1 could be "khaki cap" and figure out something else to rhyme with either line 1 or line 3. as ranger said, this has a nice flow, kind of jaunty and carefree. nice.

The process of writing this kind of poem is in answering the question, “What is it that I feel?” Expression through art is an exploration of your experience. But instead, you have tried to make an emotion fit a category. If you want to express the terror that something causes, for example, you should not give it an epithet like “dreadful” for that describes the emotion instead of expressing it. Descriptions express emotions only in the sense that they clarify by generalizing. They groups a particular thing together with other things of the same general sort. Expression, by contrast, marks the distinctions between different things that might be described in the same way. To express your anger is to clarify it in all its particularity. The poet, grappling with a certain emotion says, “I want to get this clear.” She does not want a thing of a certain kind; she wants a certain thing. I could have handed you the cliché, “Show, don’t tell,” but that would be doing the thing I’m asking you not to. I don’t know if any of this interests you, but it has helped me to know how I feel about it.

I think it would be stronger with fewer words. "then to" "to each other" "there is" - What do these add?

You sure u want it back

Must be the vacation from hell. I live on a holed, cracked, narrow, dusty road and kathump along it on my way to work every day I love the ambiguous nature of the last line--makes the reader think. Good work rockmage.

Is the loved one anxious to be gone, or the relatives? works well either way.

Very good.

I love the imagery in this. The last stanza is really good--a great setup for the title--man and house "settling in" together.

votes for despairs

I Love it it's a great poem

its not our goodbye..........your not gonna lose me

I like this, it's wry. I think the apsotrophe should move - "Death's" - unless you do mean deaths in the plural. But hey, it's small thing, and the title is very good.

well death's door....