someone read my poem please

[Elizabeth]

Can someone please tell me the impression they get about the writer of this poem (aka me) and the subject of the poem?
I need an outsider's perspective before I show it to people I know

Thanks in advance

[Elizabeth]

Sept 18, 2010 20:42:33 GMT -5 @Elizabeth said:

Can someone please tell me the impression they get about the writer of this poem (aka me) and the subject of the poem?
I need an outsider's perspective before I show it to people I know

Thanks in advance

From a balcony in New Orleans
“Don’t throw anything away, There is no ‘away’”
-IDSA advertising slogan


Alone, alone with the sunset and the light
Clouds streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Children chatter, cackle, croon at the smell of cigarette
Smoke blows barbecue and Mississippi

River streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Gone somewhere else in a flutter like a flick
Of the filter and a bird on my finger shaking water
Shaking water shaking water off its wing

Shake away the scene flick away throw away these
Scattered drops of cloud, ash, sunset to the ground
I’ll join and fall away throwing out drying out
Leave them leaves crack crackle like bones

Like brittle beads, beatings, like pavement cracks
Packed by plastic packed by shit on a horse’s hoof
Vomit streaming steaming sighing through my eyelid skins
Now framed by a toilet bowl.

[The critique]

It's a good poem as a draft. Good points and everything. maybe you should begin to make it rhyme like...

Alone, alone with the sunset and the light
Clouds streaming, through my eyelids' skin
Chilldren cry and adults smoke
Smoke blows, barbecue and Mississippi croak

[dfzxchjjnxd]

its good but to me it was nice and deep until you swore. swearing to me shows a lack of vocabulary. and maybe rhyming would help

[Disillusioned.Morpheus]

I found it very deep - you kept "personal flow and integrity" as you wrote, even when the cursing came to be. If we spoke in such archaic vernacular- we'd lose the "impact" of the words we wished to convey. Just by reading your poem (I preferred more as a prose, however) I can easily tell it is of someone from modern times even when evident trace of an old soul inside the person makes this person unique in having deep thoughts while just simply puffing a cigarette. The "Shit" word brings us all back to reality that it is still someone in our time, someone of our days and someone who speaks just like us- not some professor or person holding up old structures of vocabulary- - but someone who enjoys a good bottle of beer, a packet of cigarettes and the sense of "boredom"(Ease) we have in our world today. Great work...Rhyming would help a little but aim to keep your original essence.

Don't fall for literary rules of Sonnets and such...Write as you feel, feel as you write and live as you feel!
Live, Love and Laugh, Elizabeth.
That was worth the read.

Mish

[Taylor]

Ignore people telling you to rhyme, I liked it but the reference to the ad I didn't get

[human]

Contemplative and subjectively observant, you notice, or at least you write about, what would qualify as ambient details. The sounds and sights that are normally in the background. My guess is you might be an artist of some sort and have nurtured a tendencey to notice such things.

I am finding the poem rather abstract, but there is a clear subject of perception. The first and second halves of the poem seem to be somewhat opposites of the same subject, being a contrast between positive and negative, respectively. From the balcony, there is an obstructed view that allows views into the distance as well as nearby. Possibly it is also not a very loud environment, without a dominant noise source, and allows listening to multiple sounds, both nearby and far away.

About the structure of the poem; as I read it, I kept feeling that they are broken patterns in the poem. It felt as if the lines had been jumbled up and things were turning up where they shouldn't be. Let me give you some examples:

"Alone, alone with the sunset and the light
Clouds streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Children chatter, cackle, croon at the smell of cigarette
Smoke blows barbecue and Mississippi

River streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Gone somewhere else in a flutter like a flick
Of the filter and a bird on my finger shaking water
Shaking water shaking water off its wing"

For instance I would have expected the lines in bold to be in the same relative positions (ignoring the content meaning of course), something like this:

"Alone, alone with the sunset and the light
Clouds streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Children chatter, cackle, croon at the smell of cigarette
Smoke blows barbecue and Mississippi

Gone somewhere else in a flutter like a flick
River streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Of the filter and a bird on my finger shaking water
Shaking water shaking water off its wing"

And another:

"Alone, alone with the sunset and the light
Clouds streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Children chatter, cackle, croon at the smell of cigarette
Smoke blows barbecue and Mississippi"

Maybe to this:

"Alone, alone with the sunset and the light
Clouds streaming flying through my eyelid skins
Children chatter, cackle, croon at the smell of cigarette
Smoke blows billows barbecue and Mississippi"

I do not know much about poetry or literature, I am just a stranger passing through who found this interesting. Keep that in mind when you read my critique.

My opinion of your work. I love (yes, love) how it is so short yet it still has a lot of scope for dissection and discussion. It is not overly forward and literal, leaving the reader room to make some self interpretation.

Please respond to my post and tell me what you think of my thoughts in turn.

[tkbtm]

i will read your poem if you would read something i just finished, mine is about 4 1/2 pages.