I have never seriously denied being a Christian. But you tend to take everything -=Dark_Angel=-, P.I. says incredibly seriously. If you must know I'm of Irish Catholic descent, and have been going to mass pretty much all my life. Perhaps the only difference between myself and other Catholics is that I don't go to confession as often. I put this down to the fact that while I come from a wealthy family, many members of the congregation where I live are quite poor, and while Catholicism held their families together, I suspect alcohol and poor education made temptation all the more, well, tempting. Forgive them Lord, they know not what they do etc. I don't hold it against them, and I don't think I'm any better for leading what some might consider a more righteous lifestyle. Compared to God, we're all "unbelievably appalling".

Look, here's the typical reaction to this poem now: "This is just like Byron's, only not as good." Of course you don't HAVE to change anything. But you do have to change it if you don't want people to think "This is just like Byron's, only not as good."

I'm not sure exactly what you think the subject is, but this conversation was STARTED days ago by the phrases "on average" and "spatial awareness." Ergo, the subject. I suspect you know you don't have a leg to stand on to argue either of these, and that's why you're trying to get away from them. That, or you're higher than I've imagined possible. Please, please, stop responding to everybody's comments with things like "Many men are good at matching a dress to earrings. Many women can beat a man to death with his own shoes". We're talking about AVERAGES. PS-This not only reflects poorly on yourself. It reflects poorly on your kind. PPS-You're bound to be getting an idea of where you're wrong on averages by now. If so, you're bound to say zodiac contradicted himself right there. If we're distinguishing individual women from the average, how can I reflect poorly. Here's how: (Sum of all women's reasoning faculties minus Dovina's)/(Women in the world minus Dovina) > (Sum of all women's reasoning faculties including Dovina's)/(Women in the world)

What other reason would there be for a God? To manage my insect life for me? To make sure I don't suddenly fall off the ground and hurtle at incredible velocity into the big solid underside of some cloud? Part of the definition of God is 'Big person who lives in heaven and judges who to put in heaven and who to condemn to wool trousers and too-tight stocking caps forever'. The number of people who've altogether EVER lived on earth who believed in God but didn't believe in some afterlife or other is, like, zero. Where we all run around contradicting ourselves all over the place is thinking there is some great afterlife, we're all going to be saved, whoever's not saved deserves it, and it sucks when God whemies some poor bastard, sinner or not, out the other side. If you believe in any God, that's simply garbage. PS-Considering that I don't really believe in God, I probably am a very silly person.

You've got some good lines here, and I think if you work on it some more, you might be able to get more cohesion. The stream of thought thing works, but oftentimes you still have to revise it so that it makes sense to the reader on some level. I can pick out things here that I understand, but then it goes to something else. I rarely edit my writing based on what people want and I rarely reveal what they are about. My feeling on it is that you need to derive your own meaning from it. At least in abstract cases. Some poems are good because you get it and some are good because everything works, even though you might not understand it. Worth working on.

Nope, Kenny Loggins.