I like it. . .it's got that cool sad/happy thing going

I love this one! I wish I could write a poem like that. I'll just have to read yours instead.

Whoa! If this was printed out on some kind of card I would use it as a bookmark or something. . .

I think the next time you are at a camp fire or even on a lake at night with a flashlight you should resite this one

this is a lot deeper than it appears at first; it is not merely about a mirror image. the depth of a person is what he portrays succintly here, that there is more to love than the beauty by itself. clever and poignant.

Stanza 3 is absolutely glorious. I'd get rid of stanzas 4 and 8, they detract from the amusement of the rest of it. The end of stanza 4 put me in mind of Crash Test Dummies' 'Here I Stand Before Me'. Great song.

Awesome description, but I didn't like the last line. There's a creepier dimension to this as well, but I'll come back for another look before I go too deep into it because I could be reading it all wrong. Generally super though.

Great opener, I like the simplicity of this - gentle and fragmented like falling asleep. Question with lines 8 and 9 - 'I listen to/if you're gone..' makes no grammatical sense, unless 'if you're gone' is a song you're referring to (in which case you need to show that), which didn't quite fit right with you falling asleep. Not at all bad though.

i suppose you intend to quench the thirst for knowledge, eh? cleverly done, and i noticed progession of the various beverages throughout the day. but there are so many areas of study, where next and what beverage/food will be appropriate? perhaps dietary sciences could have a shot of wheatgrass, and so on... the options are limitless. so much so, you could make several sequels...

I wish you would have focused more on the game comparison. They desensitize the soldiers in their training to not acknowledge the enemy as human. They see them more like video game characters by the time they've had their first couple of kills. A close friend of mine came back from the Gulf War and talked to me about how much fun it was blowing the surrendering Iraqi troops up by shooting them with tank cannons.

Welcome back. You didn't miss much. Have you been in school or some whorehouse in Mexico? Sorry, had to ask after reading the Latin soulish tone of this. Are red lights still used to show she's open for business? That was my first impression, but you've left a Heisenberg uncertainty that could kill a cat. Maybe you mean "June" not "lune." "Your heritage upon my fingertips" good line.

In response to lines 1-22: 'no', and to line 24: 'yes'. Have a comb through this for spelling and punctuation; the spellcheck on Word would pick out all the errors in here, I believe. I suppose it stays fairly true to the title, but you'd do better to pick one of the images here (lines 7-8 or 9 would be good ones) and just write about that specific idea. 8 because you've had about a million views and no votes or comments yet.

Wow, you guys really know how to lord it up while I'm away. 4 comments in the top 20? Anyway This is super-cool, particularly in the way you keep in touch with the lyricism of the quatrain (rather than going all-out poetic) and the whole piece feels very bluesy. The rhyming is nice and strong, I don't like flow/yellow (enunciation differences in the stresses) but 'yellow' is a bastard to rhyme at the best of times. Super rhythm, and I might add that it reminded me strongly of Harry Chapin's 'Sniper'.

Agreed with ALChemy, I also think you don't need to be so direct with 'snakes' - the picture's already there and you could perhaps have got more effect by using a little onomatopoeia (hissing of a fuse, of sands, something like that). Make me work a little more for the reward of capturing the whole scene. Similarly with 'she thinks of her own son', could go a little too full-on with that. It's tricky, getting the show/tell aspect right, but well worth it. Super description though (as to be expected from your poetry!) and you capture the force of the initial quote superbly well.

Made me think of an elderly yet defiant lady (old pictures, 'tired again', porcelain etc.) perhaps having just had an operation on her eyes ('sky strained of all fogged impurities'). Alternatively it could be someone who's just died after a long illness and is seeing the world clearly as a spectre. *reads comments* Okay, so I was half right. You bring good description to it - is it important to you that we see it as someone young talking? If so, it needs to be just a little clearer. 'I am tired again as the sun waltzes over my head making a bow' is utterly gorgeous. Possibly my favourite line of recent times.

This is pretty much the ultimate limerick. Taboo no longer exists.

Sort of Achilles' comprehending, but it feels very much like a gamer's poem (not a bad thing, by the way). The piece wasn't bad, but it's a dramatic poem in not-so-dramatic language. I just felt that it was the sort of poem which is designed to be over-written. Still fairly enjoyable.

'Cue'. Decent rhymes without being overly inventive. I really liked the first stanza and the first half of stanza two. I'd like to see this complete, for sure.

Last line goes on a bit. A bit overwritten ('What truth!'). Not bad though.

Having missed a few weeks' worth of posts, I'll have to take some time out to work through your recent ones. Small nitpicks: line 20 - sun's 'blinked' is awkward where it is. I had to pause to work out if you meant it as a verb, or if it was an adjective (as in 'blinkered'). I assume it's as a verb, in which case I'd put it at the end of the previous line for clarity. 'these disengaged thoughts' - personally I'd leave either 'these' or 'disengaged', it's a bit cumbersome at the moment. 'White pupils'...? Next: I really enjoyed the scene this painted - you bring in a lot of hospital imagery (clouds = sheets/curtains, sun's light = spotlight above bed etc. etc. etc.) and convey the helplessness well. Opening stanza = fantastic, use of the poppies tells us everything we need to know without being anywhere near too direct. If I may borrow from Empson, the way in which you use 'dogs' in interesting from an etymological perspective - the word has changed from being very derisive to becoming a term of affection, and in the poem, the protagonist seems to view the dogs with the same shifting perception. Was that intentional? Final point for now - I like the repeated use of 'white', but think it's too much in the final stanza (plus 'white pupils' didn't work for me). I'd have preferred it if you'd used 'white' once in each stanza after the first; it would have carried the same impact, I think, without getting too repetitive. Top poem though.