For everyone who doesn't already know, Elliott Smith committed suicide by stabbing himself in the chest with a knife.

Hot damn!

The beginning and the end grab me with a cozy feeling of verisimilitude. If oNLy the midDLe kEPt paCE, I think you'd have something.

you might find your soul buried beneath your language skills if you bothered to look for them. I think the lack of sensation left in the wake of pain is a theme that CAN be handled without cliche, but it takes flawless execution to do so. And a bit more imagination.

it appears the real play is acted out in the gallery.

so lovely to read. i give it an eight.

Live life fast and get more life. Is that it? Well you've said it well, but it doesn't fit my frying pan. Slow and easy gets more done, I say.

I really like it

i really think you could improve the broken car simile - other than that, really well done.

something here stumps me: "And shadows curling through vista The river, black, snaked in daylight." captital v on vanilla? even with those nits - a rockin 9

would be cool if u made this from the perspective of a small rodent.

This reminds me, in style though not in message, of W.S. Merwin I give this poem a seven in part because it is frank, with little imagery which is not a vice in and of itself (if it were Pushkin would not be the great poet he is) but also, the words do not seem to use their sound to enhance the poem and to conjure up the thought for themselves. What I mean by this can be better illustrated by example. Take Robert Frost when talking about a woman who slept with a nightlight on: Good gloom on her was thrown away. These sounds work together perfectly and inimitably. One feels they are somehow "right" for what is said. If you don't use a lot of imagery, try for what I am tempted to call word-music

I'm sorry, but this is prose with line-breaks.

Better. 8 Now the mad ocean breaks his teeth on stone

I'm not sure why, but the word "penumbrally" doesen't seem to work in its place when the stress is shifted over to the secondary accent for rhyme's sake

I like "benumbing". and now for the other Khrushchevian shoe, comrade: "throw spikes up" reminds one too much of vomit, and the "up" if you weren't counting sylables would never have stayed. And it implies the trees are performing some action, rather than presenting an image. Maybe thats the idea, that we readers happen upon this scene as the trees push through the earth vomiting spikes [up]. Then after they are like torture racks, the same trees are like wheels - that groan [away]. More lousy tacked on prepositions - newbie mistakes. This thing screams out "I don't want to be a sonnet, please take all this gratuitus fluff and burn it like a book of matches that burn like a puppy left too close to a very hot, flaming object, like a fireplace.

You're quite right about that there, angst is all it is. I don't claim that it is anything else. What prepositions exactly?

cool title, engaging read. Was this a rewrite?

Well written, has a nice feel. I am left a little confused by the ending. You go from language as fire to language as soft stanzas to language as the wind.

It is OK, relating of a fairly meaningless but nevertheless charming story. By the way unless your mum is a soul reever I very much doubt she 'brought you to life'.