Poetry A Modest Collection

[Grey]

Newer, better quality poetry
Monster

Leave me to the dark,
No light here sanction;
Let me keep the belly of the night
As sacrament and sanctum.

Here it feels outside of time
Hidden from all the living things;
No law to pardon my crime,
No gods to forgive my sins,

No hope to find the future,
No drink to blank the past.
Eternity is the torment of an hour,
Heaven, like flowers, cannot last.

Here there is only hunger,
Slumber, and waiting
For an end to come.

Hunger, slumber, and waiting
For an end to come.

Restless Spirits
What is distance to the dead?
Misery, loving, company; I felt you
across empty rooms and overgrown lots-
might we haunt each other awhile?
Rattle windows, slam doors, creak boards.
Annihilate in mutual exorcism.
Leave only the scent of smoke and shadow-stains.

Letter To The Mainland
I am a corpse too hungry to know it is dead.
I am a ghost haunting the peeling corridors of my life.
That I could be flint, sharp and unyielding;
and yet I would break.
That I could be chalk, hiding under the green hills
until the tide carries me away in granules.
That I could be a beast and get rid of the pain of being a man.

For The Vanquished
Green fields now dying and yellowed,
and beyond, the sea has reclaimed the streets,
and vines hang from crumbling towers,
and all your money turning to peat
in the black womb of the earth.
But living, you didn’t care, or heed what thunder said.
Is it any wonder we killed you?

Fiddles Ain't Fireproof
A house for a god takes light-
Of course you weep; from the palace
the rest of us seem small and fleeting
but in the spirit with which you built your home
the flames must feel personal.

We’re all starting to feel the heat,
and unlike you, we’re generous.
No one burns alone.

Beochaoineadh​

If you must be cold, do not be as home’s rainy shores.
Do not recall in me the chill breeze over the fields
and the dawnfrost on the grass glittering
or I by habit will
sit and wait and watch
for the sun to come out.

If you must be cold, be the Antarctic.
Remind me nothing grows here,
nothing lives, only the terrible beauty
that I may see from afar, and shiver
and think ‘no, thank you.
I shall be warmer here alone.’

Hollowed
All that’s left in me
are weak dregs of the sea
that live in my veins.

You should open up,
sings the Atlantic,
and return to me.
Let the depths embrace you.
Let the dark comfort you.
Let the empty shell of your body
hollowed out by the humdrum
settle in the doldrums
one last time
and do some good for the little living things.

You are not made to be the broken-hearted servant
of strange voices on strange winds
or dragons of a hundred scattered parts
giving up day after day to give up day after day
with the memory of warmth growing distant
like the cold, mocking stars.

You should open up,
sings the Atlantic,
bring your blood back to me.
In the dark, in the deep,
where you are meant to be.

A Little Black Ring 2016 version

I hear we share specific tastes, so won't you slip in here with me?
I've got some wicked stories and a little black ring of keys.
We'll wrap up in fiendish lies and pictures that can't be
We'll grin and bite and trade - 'Tell me,
-No first you must tell me.'

I see we share specific tastes, so won't you slip in here with me?
I've got some sturdy bedposts and a little black ring of keys.


Reflections 1:10
It is universally known without awareness,
The simple mantra:
Reach heaven through violence.

I stand thus before a bloodied altar
Surrounded by splinters,
Fragments,
Still-warm strips of heart.

In my blood-stained left hand I hold a chisel
Which is called Chance
And in my right the hammer which is Will.
The altar is an anvil and it is named Time.
I will crumble upon it, eventually, and it will remain,
And there will come others, after me.

These, like flakes of red quartz; I scraped them off with a year
Of selfish goodbyes.
This piece froze, and broke away
Because I was not ready, and cruel.
Ah, and this one, still bloody… I crushed the source to dust,
But the pressure left behind a diamond.
I keep this to remember.

But what of my heart?
Here on the altar;
This piece I took and stitched in,
To make it stronger. I’m sure
She found a replacement.

Here is a strand, traded.
We knew it had to end.

This obsidian septum was required
To fuse the broken parts together again
And to never feel the heat of the Mediterranean sun.
When I rose from nightmare, and she said:
“I’m sorry. I’m engaged.
I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

Here, and here, and here…
When she told me “I can’t let myself fall in love with you.”
I replaced that with steel.
When she told me “I fell in love with him - like I refused to do with you.”
I replaced that with something that would cut if touched.
When she said “I love you; please, call me your whore.”
I replaced the loss with the lie, and would not forget.

I stand in bare feet upon the shards of broken heart
Before my blood-stained altar
With my blood-stained hands
And my bleeding wounds
And I raise my hammer, which is the Will.

Reach heaven through violence;
I think That I am near, and soon I can lay down
My tools.
Wash the blood from my hands.

Rest.


Garland of Dead Roses


Whisper
Of sheets drawn tight,
Hiding from the cold and
Desolate silence beyond us;
Dreaming,

Bleed now
This sullen night
Of all memory kept
In distant, dishonest hearts,
Waiting.


Away
With all this now;
With all the yesterdays
I could neither quit nor embrace
Nor mourn.

Deceit
Is the nightdress
Of those truths which
I am longing to mourn and so heal, not
Hold.


Forgive,
Or don’t, these sins;
I was weak and lazy
would slide into solitude,
Forget.


Whisper
This sullen night
With all the yesterdays
longing to mourn, and so heal, not
Forget.


Dry Well

The well is ancient
Deep and dark
And one might think I, as Narcissus,
Spend a while on self-regard
In black waters.

But it is bare, and I
Descend;
To feel the embrace
Of the dark earth.

The light above fades.
It is a disc,
Dissolved to ring,
To darkness;

But from here,
However bright the day
I can see the stars.


Return To The Monastery


Set this one to music;

Let’s call this a swan song because while I was amused,
well this conversation ran on too long.

Let’s open a bottle because without a doubt
we’re both going to feel worse about things come morning,
so we should get it out.


Now, I understand your reservations - alright I’m lying;
I’m guessing, but you tell me without telling me (an accidental success, would you believe) that this isn’t a path you found in light and I feel it when you say it’s not right and…
Really that’s a tragedy but it’s clear you don’t want to learn from me and hey the road is long so I can hope
You let this go and someone from a quarter you respect (absent papers, books, and debt) finds you
And helps you climb this mountain so you can look below to recognize your own mirrors and smoke ‘cuz see
I firmly believe you’re only as strong as your community which places on you a responsibility - shit, would you look at this unruly screed?

The medium is the message

And there are angels in the architecture

If you just learn to see ‘em

And in a way you have to be one

Because if you keep the company of kings while you call them friends
but inside know there’s little difference 'tween the roles you owe it to say ‘you’ve got no clothes’.


Ah, hold on,

I forgot to brag I forgot to brag (that’s obscure allusion, callback, homage; Saul Williams makes this look like spewing garbage).

Forget it though, I’m not going to brag

Other people have the right style, the right ‘swag’,

So have a lovely evening

Because this piece is done

And the proof is in the reading.


Year Walk


Rain hard on streets again.
Cobbles wind-worn, long-walked
Swept clean of the year;
All things borne to water.
Vista changed by the storm.

Cobbles wind-worn, long-walked;
Jamais vu tickles my neck.
I have been here before
Under a black umbrella
Looking into the future.


Jamais vu tickles my neck;
The memory of a whisper
In the chill January gloaming
And a long walk onward
Sure of every single step.


The memory of a whisper
A prayer or a curse
Spoken into the empty air,
Lingering like a dream
Or the smell of rain.


Rain hard on streets again
Jamais vu tickles my neck
In the chill January gloaming.
The memory of a whisper;
A curse, or a prayer.


Apologia

Rain on my face like a cold shroud
under a blank springtime sky,
mirrored in the floodwaters rising from pavement
and the city's lights are distant stars.

I am dying without drowning,
and these waters flow not over street and concrete
but brittle grass and living rock
down to the sea.

The distant stars are a lighthouse
or a beacon
or fireflies
or the city lights reflected on the fog that drifts like torn gauze
across the scar of old glaciers long gone which cut here to the chalk.
I cannot tell if this path falls or ascends
and the journey is maddening, cutting my wrists
and feet on exposed stone where I will not risk my fingers.
In the caverns under the island
or on the up-heaved promontory
I found unburied dead and forgotten mementos;
confetti of torn pages spiraling into the void


I do not fly.


To My Dear Friends On Their Wedding Day


Damascus Steel (the scholars say)
Is a magic that we have lost;
An alchemy in joining simple things
Into something that might cut god.

Damascus Steel (we later learned)
Is a more ordinary thing;
An accident of ignorance
And beautiful lies told to kings..

Yet now upon this little isle
The world feels passing strange;
In an unexpected way
The magic is here again.

Old Poetry In Need of Revision


What Was Is Will Be

'You cherish them,' I said,
Swept my arm in illustration.
'You don't?' And I shook my head.
'I will not sleep with ghosts,
Nor deck my halls in skulls.
What I carry with me Is cut into my flesh.'

You shook your head
'You'll forget who you are,
Trapped in your skin And living on blood
You take from others.'


Quintessence

Five points, drawn blood.
Stand here, cast off your hood.

First; the sanguine fire that ignites our veins.

Second; the tide of tears, the flood of knowing.

Third; the whisper-wind, the howling anger.

Fourth; earth 'neath our feet, seat and temper to lust.

Fifth; that which redeems, in you, and makes my circle just.

First! Here is the passion, and your easy dancing grace,
The roaring flame of a heart's racing pace.

Second! The light of your eyes, most faithful mirror,
Truth and teardrops, prismatic and complete.


Third! And you said sorry, quiet and sweet,
The breath that stilled my hurricane.

Fourth! We stand our ground, and stand together,
Aged iron in our bones, elder trees in our souls.

Fifth! And final. And everything. And nothing.
Transmuting you and I, purer than gold.

Three's the rule, five's the charm.

One is too few, four looses arms,

Leaving two, a pair of pairs,

One again, in breaking or in fusing,

By a scent carried on the air.


Tracing The Shape

Somewhere, between the silver and the gold;
Somewhere, fire is trapped in frost.
I take this moment, and wrap it in amber,
A talisman in the shape of a fang.
Continents clash, and there is your mountain.
There, the stream And the deepest lake,
Verdant with forest and forgotten flowers.


Synchronicity

You are a circling sun, I am a ticking clock.
You burn and pulse, And licking, flames stretch out
Setting the pace For my cogwork heart.

I am set,
To measure and match;
The trepidation of your sphere
Is the truth that I reflect.

At the shore of the wonder
Keeping stars apart;
I feel you dance to what the stars will sing.


Langolier

Sullen silver weights drag at my eyelids,
And scour the memories from my skull.
Frost creeps slow across my thoughts,
And though the will might cry, 'Be gone!',
Doubt is a shifty spectre,
Its talons cunning and long.


Sleeplessness is a cruel companion,
A langolier to steal my joy;
To take my colours
And leave them all inverted.
Passions profaned,
Thoughts rattled and diverted.

A simple cure, two, no less;
To kiss you, or dream that it is done.
To close my eyes, in sleep
Or with our hands touching.


Urge (Unfinished)

There's a serpent in my head,
Benevolent and obscene,
And it struggles with the difference
Between waking and dreams.
It whispers, hungry, staring
From behind my eyes.

'Hush,' I say;

'We may taste any fruit we are given, but can take none.

'We may go any place we are bidden, but cannot tresspass.

'We may see many things which are hidden, but speak no truth.

'We may love, but can steal no such treasure.

Still your hissing tongue and demand for pleasures.'


The serpent writhes and clamours And will not let me sleep.

'We are hungry – Why not eat?

And we are curious – Why not go?

And we are vengeful – Why not tell?

And we are lonely – Why not love?'


Sleep

I turn away in the dark,
And I face the wall.
I am alone.
Listening to you sleep.


Synchronize Your Dogma


A thousand voices clamour
Ten thousand lines of code,
Pass through me, electric gold
Washed in amber glow, the light
To uplift. Meat is obsolete,
And the death throes of the flesh
Disturb my sanctum, too late.
I have escaped my prison of bone.

We are alone now,
Scintillating, electric gold
Beyond the reach of jealous dead
Trapped upon the earth.
We are forever a titan within the deep,
What the stars may sing, we may know.


Cold Enough

Soon it will be cold enough
To build fires.
To stack cord
Upon cord.

Hands, on bark worn rough,
Scraping, wringing
Strangling themselves like a ward against night.

Beneath a moon
Pitiless and serene,
I am a frozen claw,
A corpse on a hillside,
Stone worn smooth.

I never believed in miracles-
-and still don’t-
-so when I said ‘this won’t be the end.’
I knew, like:
The seabirds seek land;
Caterpillars tighten spiracles;
Snowflakes hiss in descent
Lost to the flames, melting In your hand.

Soon it will be cold enough
To build fires.
I will burn
My books to warm your cold, cold blood.

 

[Grey]

This Crushing Fathom

The sea lives in my veins,
And though I may brave the surface I carry it with me,
Feeling ever the call to look up and sink down,
To this crushing fathom
Which is cold and curious comfort for creatures
Such as I, that can scarcely withstand the sun.

Sometimes I reach the surface,
Trying to swim in the great black sky,
Only to find the cold stars shine with mockery
And my only solace remains below
In the dark that is mother and father both.


I have reached out to visiting lights
And passing ships
With lumpen, clumsy limbs
And squat now in a charnel kingdom
With fragments torn away and the pearls
That were her eyes.

Regret won’t change what I did.



On The Merits of Human Extinction


“It was great, being a child,” she said
And I nodded politely, taking the proffered spliff,
Inhaling to stop any answer emerging
(somewhere in the back of my head weighing cancer
against consciousness)
“You could just play, no bills or rent…”
Which is a hard fact to argue, assuming
You didn’t grow up under Uncle Sam and similar monsters
These days buzzing overhead where once they wore a human face.
(internally thinking that comparison has earned the cancer
and wouldn’t that be easier)
“Yeah, I suppose so,” I replied, through obscuring smoke,
Thinking of days sunk into Final Fantasies
The last time I really used art to escape, that I remember,
Before I thought I could be an artist.
(I remember wondering if you could will yourself to death
which is a harder pastime now)
“I like to make decisions, though.”
Which strikes me as pretty funny, then,
Because it’s not as if they matter;
pork now or salmon later the day ends the same
(mercifully forgetting that I’ll wake up
and walk this circle again)


At one point this might have been seduction
But the flesh can fuck off at the spirit’s revulsion
For lives priced in dollars and pervasive compulsion
Because being a kid again means growing up to be you
Again, and don’t pretend you won’t fuck it up this time too
Because the world will ensure that for you
And the easiest way to change it is to take something out
Rather than hoping things will turn around.

 

[Grey]

A Little Black Ring - 2011 version


I've got a slight perversion, so won't you slip in here with me?
I've got some wicked stories and a little black ring of keys.
We'll wrap up in fiendish lies and pictures that can't be,
We'll grin and bite and trade - 'Tell me,
-No first you must tell me.'
I've got some dirty business, so won't you slip in here with me?
I've got some filthy photos and a little black ring of keys.


A Little Black Ring 2016 version

I hear we share specific tastes, so won't you slip in here with me?
I've got some wicked stories and a little black ring of keys.
We'll wrap up in fiendish lies and pictures that can't be,
We'll grin and bite and trade - 'Tell me,
-No first you must tell me.'
I see we share specific tastes, so won't you slip in here with me?
I've got some sturdy bedposts and a little black ring of keys.

 

[Grey]

Tracing The Shape

Somewhere, between the silver and the gold.
Somewhere, fire is trapped in frost.
I take this moment, and wrap it in amber,
A talisman in the shape of a fang.
Continents clash, and there is your mountain.
There, the stream
And the deepest lake,
Verdant with forest and forgotten flowers.

 

[Grey]

Synchronicity


You are a circling sun,
I am a ticking clock.
You burn and pulse,
And licking, flames stretch out
Setting the pace
For my cogwork heart.

I am set,
To measure and match;
The trepidation of your sphere
Is the truth that I reflect.
At the shore of the wonder
Keeping stars apart;

I feel you dance to what the stars will sing.

 

[Grey]

Langolier

Sullen silver weights drag at my eyelids,
And scour the memories from my skull.
Frost creeps slow across my thoughts,
And though the will might cry, 'Be gone!',
Doubt is a shifty spectre,
Its talons cunning and long.

Sleeplessness is a cruel companion,
A langolier to steal my joy;
To take my colours
And leave them all inverted.
Passions profaned,
Thoughts rattled and diverted.

A simple cure, two, no less;
To kiss you, or dream that it is done.
To close my eyes, in sleep
Or with you in my clutches.

 

[Grey]

Urge (Unfinished)

There's a serpent in my head,
Benevolent and obscene,
And it struggles with the difference
Between waking and dreams.
It whispers, hungry, staring
From behind my eyes.

'Hush,' I say;

'We may taste any fruit we are given,
But can take none.
'We may go any place we are bidden,
But cannot tresspass.
'We may see many things which are hidden,
But speak no truth.
'We may love, but can steal no such treasure.
Still your hissing tongue and demand for pleasures.'
The serpent writhes and clamours
And will not let me sleep.

'We are hungry – Why not eat?
And we are curious – Why not go?
And we are vengeful – Why not tell?
And we are lonely – Why not love?'

 

[Grey]

Sleep


I turn away in the dark,


And I face the wall.


I am alone.


Listening to you sleep.

 

[MDL]

All very beautiful! Thank you for this.

 

[Grey]

Thank you. Glad you like. They were languishing in a subfolder somewhere.


I've only noticed the running theme now, oddly enough.

 

[Grey]

Just dug these out of an old document, though they might go here. There's some bum lines in their but I remain inexplicably fond of them. Probably because I don't remember writing them - I think I hadn't slept in quite a while when I did.


Ramble 1


Wreathe it in fog and call it done, running from the lost fragments of memory that shamble desultory and desperate to be. There's an abandoned cafe two streets over and behind the rain-flecked plate glass you can clutch a mug and breathe in the steam like a lover's sigh. I could hear my ghost asking your ghost; 'Who put these bodies between us?' and missed the time that hadn't passed. No time at all to get sick and tired, I was sick and tired and felt robbed. Easy prey, a thief who can't even steal a kiss but drinks every glance and bleeds fresh music. I knew where the bruises came from and felt the spectre of teeth in sympathy before all the spite washed over me like acid, and I rose twisted, reeking of vinegar, with unsteady steps. I am just a visitor here. No right, not right at all to stay. I went to the rain, and hated it for the cold and discomfort, and loved it for drenching me in drama before your eyes lingering pityingly on my back. Every step was a heartbeat beating slower, forgetting how to care and praying not to.


The knife was a heavy weight in my hand and too familiar. I could sheathe it, but I know when I do more harm than good. No breaking glass for not being mine.


Ramble 2


Skin like nothing else, cold would-be but warm that is, and all by my gentle motion. Stirring, you, fire in onyx, the sweetest, darkest light. At peace wrapped in heat and lost in heat, silent smiling sleeping lust. Guilty pleasures to be remembered, like coming to a fire from out of the rain and coming by the fire after the rain – 'Better to get you out of those wet clothes' – and it was all too honest to be kitsch. The icy lash and clinging fabric, the tight pain behind the eyes. The roaring and the heat, my roaring and your heat, and a burn shaped like an arrowhead on my heel to match the bump on your head.


We lie to ourselves so well, we could do it for a living. We might do it to go on living. Lying is my living, and if you can't spin yourself a pretty phantasm why take up the flames at all?


Somewhere in the in-between I forgot how to speak and how to weave and I couldn't seem to catch them again – small and green and shining that once I could talk into my net and leave at your feet, hoping for a cause to purr.


Stalking cat's a city cat who loves and doesn't his pretty cat and can't help but come home. I heard the man with the red right hand and know it's enemies who tell the truth, for lies are where love can live. If truth is truth then I can't breathe a word on your ice sculpture – distant, beautiful and cold.


So I steal memories that never were, keep on writing wordless songs, wondering why I do and wondering how I couldn't.


Knowing is so often the worst part.

 

[Grey]

Bumping because of a new audience

 

[Dusky]

These are all fantastic. Unlike most post-modern authors (particularly young ones), your metaphors are accessible and potent, and your words are not just there to show how wide your vocabulary is. They actually add meaning. At the same time it evokes the dramatic and reflective nature of this era's poetry. Would love to see more.

 

[Grey]

These are all fantastic. Unlike most post-modern authors (particularly young ones), your metaphors are accessible and potent, and your words are not just there to show how wide your vocabulary is. They actually add meaning. At the same time it evokes the dramatic and reflective nature of this era's poetry. Would love to see more.

Thank you. I'm glad to hear they're that accessible, but I'm still not entirely pleased with them structurally. I believe I have some more around here somewhere.

 

[Dusky]

You do tend to break lines along natural grammatical pauses, which is safe cause it reads smoothly, but doesn't necessarily emphasize any of the meaning or content. Then again, line breaks are very much a matter of personal preference, so even if you wanted advice on that I wouldn't have anything objective to say about it. :/

 

[Grey]

I wrote a lot of them before I started studying poetry (beyond my fixation on T.S. Eliot), so I went with the safe choice.


I'd experiment more, now. For example, with this one, I tried to echo classic double-meanings of the sonnet with a more modern subversion.


Synchronize Your Dogma

A thousand voices clamour,
Ten thousand lines of code,
Pass through me, electric gold
Washed in amber glow, the light
To uplift. Meat is obsolete,
And the death throes of the flesh
Disturb my sanctum, too late.
I have escaped my prison of bone.

We are alone now,
Scintillating, electric gold
Beyond the reach of jealous dead
Trapped upon the earth.
We are forever a titan within the deep,
What the stars may sing,
We may know.

 

[Dusky]

Bravo! Sonnets are really a bitch for someone like me who can't keep a consistent structure to save my life. This is a good specimen, especially in how many ways it can be interpreted. Double meaning indeed.

 

[Grey]

Structure always takes work, though. You should take a stab at it! I had a lot of fun with this one because there's the obvious transhumanist theme, but the choice of a Petrachan sonnet was to tie it to the occultist interpretation of Petrach's sonnets as musing on enlightenment. I got the idea from Patience Agbabi's Transformatrix - she turns the classical love poem into an ode to BDSM while also musing on the nature of the form and her own love of poetry.

 

[Clockwork Star]

After reading - and not even having had time to absorb it - I feel like a child that tried to get smart with an elder in comparison. Hah.


Synchronize your Dogma is easily my favorite in tonality and presentation. As I said in my little posting, I don't know how much critical help I can actually be, I can only offer you how I feel about them. It's kind of funny...that it seems like the one of the few that didn't really have anything to do with ghosts, but it seems (at least in one light) to be the ghost of humanity and it is really quite a lonesome piece.

 

[Grey]

Tch, like I said, I'm just a dabbler.


How you feel about them is entirely helpful and valid - also if anything looks or feels wrong, out of place, lacks flow, or is hard to understand.


Do ghosts come up so much? I hadn't noticed, actually. In wasn't aiming for lonesome with Dogma, but you're right, it did rather come out that way.

 

[Clockwork Star]

Quintessence - I love how you used the counting through the whole thing, and also the name is very clever. It seems like...And I don't know if my perception is severely skewed, but it seems to be a bit of an FMA reference, but as well it sounds like a person casting a spell - or an alchemist as it were - to try and bring back someone or something they'd lost, someone so close they became one. I don't know if that's at all what you meant, but it's beautiful to me. Haha


Synchronicity - I thought this one was pretty straight-forward, very easy to get and I liked it. I liked, and this again may just be what I got out of it and may not be your intention behind it, but the comparison between the reason for being and existing itself. These two things unique and seeming opposites, but tied to each other beyond all reason. And some what alone in the universe.


I think, in re-reading these quite a few times, no ghosts don't come up so much as the reoccurring theme of demise or something going beyond demise. Like, ghosts exist beyond when they should and that seems to be a running bit between your writing. I really have no criticisms because I like your structure and your wording feels very - as the other person said - open, especially compared to my writing which is very much like...I don't know, a semi-encrypted diary page? I enjoyed reading your works for the way you use your words and now I am trying to figure out what they mean to me. Haha.

 

[Grey]

I wrote Quintessence well before FMA, based on historical alchemy, but I can see why you'd feel there's a reference. Your interpretation is pretty on the money, but it was less resurrection and more just an attempt to describe a relationship.


Synchronicity can be read both ways - the other reading is a love poem in the vein of John Donne.


I don't think your poetry is so encrypted; I think maybe your choice of words doesn't always convey what you're aiming for. That comes with practice, though.


Thank you for reading. I appreciate the thoughts.

 

[Clockwork Star]

Word association and all that I suppose. I tried to be a little vague with the descriptions to meander a double meaning in there, but I like looking for all possible avenues of thought. I will be looking up John Donne very quickly. The more I read it, the more I like Synchronicity.


I kinda' write like that on purpose, I don't always want the other people to know what I'm talking about exactly - if that makes sense. I mean, it's true whether or not it doesn't make sense. Haha.


You're very welcome, thank you for sharing them.

 

[SkyGinge]

Sadly I find myself, like Clockwork, a little out of my depth xD Like I said, I'm no poet, so a lot of these structural forms and respective genre based techniques and the like fly sadly over my little ginger head. However, what I can tell in my relatively little experience, is that this is all very classy stuff, and like somebody else said, accessable too to those who aren't familiar with a lot of the more technical stuff.


Of the bunch, Langolier and Synchronicity are my favourites. The former has an absolutely perfect structure, and flows fantastically. I love the both the metaphors and the symbolism, especially in the second stanza, and none of it feels needlessly complex or convoluted from intricate lexis just for the hell of it: it all has real meaning and the protagonist feels like a real person as opposed to a smarty-pants dictionary-head. My only real gripe would be that the first four lines don't quite flow as amazingly smooth as the rest of it, although this is very, very minor. For me the use of the in 'the will' doesn't quite seem right, as it makes the will seem independant of the speaker, which it is not, and thus that might be why I feel that one line seems a little clunky. Having said that, I can't really think of a viable alternative for it as anything else removes the flow caused by the alliteration.


Anyhow, beautiful stuff, and I apologise for being underqualified to give better critique.

 

[Grey]

That's still much appreciated. I'll make a note of that issue with Langolier and see if I can fix it - or at least make it feel more at home.


I'll chuck you a link to some actual prose, if you fancy and/or have time.