the language here is quite intriguing, rich, and i agree with dovina that it took a while to work out that the sun was a different entity than the rooster, although that should be obvious. my question to you here is, do we only awaken once, or do we only awaken once as one of these things you mention?

Why the funky "late-" and "ly" on different lines? Maybe to stress your need for new vocabulary. Tongue-dance would be a good metaphor, but since you didn't use it, that gives me the right to steal it. Religion will give you a a scaffold of proper nouns, greetings, and expansive gestures, but then the sentence fumbles, as if the word-dance becomes a twisted twist.

This is a beautiful poem; I love it more each subsequent read. However, I don't really think this is a 'ghazal' by definition, at least by the links on this site. The opening couplet doesn't rhyme (or does it?), and the last lines of each couplet definitely don't rhyme.

I love "turn wooden on the lathe of fact", the best image on poemranker in months and the lynchpin, I think, of this poem. In the original you turned wooden, right? I think that would be better. The rest loses me. I don't know what distinction you're making between November and December (or heart and breast), and can't feel the metaphor of ghosts (which are essentially metaphors, no?) And are you lathing things into firewood? How odd.

I was going to rant about the angel, except you kept it as a leitmotiv. That's something.

'Shaolin ninja on pole'... You've gone and impaled yourself, haven't you?

Hmm. I actually rather like this. The bit about hte grandfather seems almost irrelevant, it would be fine without (arguably). Not all of the punctuation is necessary.

The first line is good. The rest... bwuh.

Tee hee.

I must dsagree with Dovina. The 'I' in Stanza 3 makes perfect sense. SAay it aloud. It might benefit from a hyphen, though. Like this: And I -- all I smell is foil and heather.

'siraling'... Could you perhaps mean 'spiralling'? Qorked on a couple of times, it could be quite decent. Bear in mind that in hearing the word 'spiralling', every English Major worth his or her salt will think of Yeats.

ShamAn. Please. Hmm. Aside from that, 'tis all right.

There's something about 'the sun the other as/rooster crowing' that doesn't quite work. I couldn't pinpoint the proble, but it's there. A comma after 'sun' would simplify it, but perhaps too much.

Marriage is masculine? Gasp! (wait, well, I suppose it is in French...) Now, does this apply to homosexual marriages? Where the idea is that managing to get married is writing a wrong rather than performing one?

'Despite November in my heart/and December at my breast'-- nice. I admit I was going to simply congratulate ou on using November as opposed to another month, but the addition of December actually works.

Hmm. Not my style, but that doesn't mean I can't notice its quality -- a fact a lot of people forget.

Ah, ye gods, ye haven't changed. Wonderful. Where have you been, anyway? Methinks I've rather missed you, Tilde.

I like everything except the word "criminal". I'm foggy on the details, but isn't self-mutilation/suicide actually illegal? So it really IS criminal, not just metaphorically so. If it's not illegal, it still doesn't seem like the best word. I mean, hari-kari (or hari-kari-type mutilation) isn't the first thing that strikes me when I think of the word "criminal". I'd like to see it keep with the street performance theme with a more mutilation-specific or street-performance-specific word. Catburglar fits with "stealing self" but doesn't fit with suicide. Escape artist, maybe? What about those Indian performers? They do stuff like this. Don't let my rambling detract from the fact that I loved reading this. -10-

Again, a good poem, minus the line that tries to fit in everywhere and never quite succeeds. That line is Jesus, we're mere mortals.

An experiment of grief and alcohol.