I see how you got the Idea that this was about "Love" the concept, and not "Love" the affectionate title for someone you love.

Amen to that.

Exactly my point. ;D I don't suppose it's ever a waste to bless something, but it's a waste to praise the unpraiseworthy. Does that mean my poem's just a nice pair of lines and not really a poem at all.

"love's potatoes" would be too confusing, as if lust/fruit was the potato of love. Get me? "and" needs cutting though, excellent call.

Factory instead of 'manufacturer', and say fuck you to anyone who thinks there should be meaning behind this. We both know it's parody(I swear I've heard "All you need is love, love, love" somewhere, but I have a memory condition known as Chronic Herbtimers which makes me kind of forgetful). Any further modification should come from comparison to the original, and your own voice. Try a messed up Karaoke, and see what you think. Gloves are much more important than love. Would you rather your surgeon have love on his hands, or gloves? Love is a chemical, straight from the genitals. Only as important as we make it. Needless to say twits since the dawn of time, like myself, have made it seem pretty damn important. We're such bastards. <3 Jason

There's more to poetry than grammar you know. I need constructive critisism, not nitpicking. I like the idea about setting it to some kind of pop tune, though. Maybe something by the Beatles?

Ok, zodiac, the rules of language (which my posting history demonstrates are as important to me as they are to you) come not from God™ but from common usage. If something has become common usage, it's not really fair to deliberately refuse to interpret it by its common usage and insist it be interpreted according to rules that applied before it became common usage.

Whatever you say, people who hear it will interpret it in a context that is necessarily different than the context you perceived when you uttered it -- because they are not you in your time and place. If you haven't thought about the various contexts in which people may interpret your words and are surprised and/or hurt by their interpretations, that is your failing. This applies to you no less than to the pimple-writers.

So? Newsflash: no one at all can say anything at all or take any position whatsoever about anything without automatically being tagged in some incorrect way. Even attempts not to take a position will result in your being tagged. Even complete silence will be interpreted and result in your being tagged. That is a fundamental characteristic of human society and the nature of discourse between humans. All you're doing is whining again. Instead of addressing the tags and the reasons people give for tagging, you are whining about being "incorrectly tagged" when you should know full well that everyone gets "incorrectly tagged" no matter what they say.

That is further support for my growing belief that a middle-aged white American woman can say nothing about our black population without automatically being tagged is some incorrect way.

NOTE: my comment might give the impression that harsh drug laws will automatically target Black people. In actual fact, drug use among the black population is roughly equal to that among the white population. It is the overwhelming evidence of selective enforcement that results in the drug laws being perceived as an anti-black pogrom.

You have to remember that that you come from a country that the rest of the world perceives as having an institutional anti-Black pogrom with wide public support, disguised as harsh drug laws. I'm not saying myself that it is true drug laws are deliberately designed to suppress the black population. But having lived in Europe for 4 years I can tell you that it is widely perceived as being deliberate. As a citizen of such a country, you should expect what you say to be interpreted in that context, and expect the reaction to be harsh, regardless of whether or not you yourself actually are prejudiced. Simply imagine the reaction to a writer from a fundamentalist Islamic country writing a poem sneering at how some woman has treated him, irregardless of how legitimate his beef was with the specific woman in his poem.

2) The tone of the narator is so overly submissive to abuse that a reader has to ask if she is really serious when she says "Go ahead . . ." and "It’s a new experience for me, that’s all. Maybe it’s time."

You are saying that my way of expressing a racial issue is naive and that I am not a racist. Good, and quite possibly true. I am coming to disbelieve in the possibility of expressing a racial issue in a passionate way without coming accross as racist. It should be possible, maybe I'll try again.

Hey thanks for the feedback, lol. I tried thinking of an alternative for 'manufacturer', but in the end I just went on feeling. My biggest concern about this poeme is that the original was about love, which is a really important part of the human condition. Gloves are also really important, but they aren't as important as love. I'm concerned the piece might seem a bit shallow in comparison :( Have you got any suggestions?