Frantic; she examines her enclosure
Erasable clouds with dormant wrinkles
Litter the sparkling see-thru sky,
The doll in the glass case;
Ever afraid of the loitering reality,
That peers in with mocking eyes.
I'm ever afraid of the page,
Blank with prospective blue lines,
Sheltering the opinionated void
Glaring back with the expectation
Of soul splashed with runny ink
Black boiled blood; crooked
Mishapen blots into angled scripture,
Onto the naked, hopeful canvas.
Careless with each scratched letter
That peels back and reveals the soul,
So each word and profound line
Can hide and mend the miscolored hues,
Hopelessly built and structured bones,
Deep sunken, scarlet laced eyes,
And crooked smile that feigns lipstick
On each lip hinged upon misaligned jaw
Bearing dented flesh on an unpronounced chin.
If what I've written can alter reality
And change undocumented ugliness
So I can breed eager cracks in the glass;
Have the walls collapse into a cascade
Of jagged dew-drops upon the floor,
Releasing the doll from the case
To place fingerprints upon my face
And not discover each obsessed mistake.
Author notes
Gotta give credit to George Bowling for making me obsessed with his poem "The doll in the glass case".
A contest entry
- prewrites & critiques by aeolia.
400 points, ended September 12, 87 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 9 of 9
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There's a lot of imagery here, a lot of things to think about as one reads--which I like. Bookmarked for later enjoyment
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better block Abu, he will kill you with those "i dont understand it or have no time to comment" lines. just kidding. so tell me if given, is taking just as easy...
i dont understand the value of capping every line. if that is just the style you write with then i should hope you would understand my lack of capps.
just my humble observation. -
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If you don't want constructive criticism on your writes then don't put it under the criticism feature section, but it under the fun section. Why I capitalize every line? I do it because it's grammatically correct to do so. I may not have perfect grammar in every sense but I do make an effort to be grammatically correct instead of ignoring it completely.
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if you see that a piece is obviously void of punctuation throughout and it is clear the authors intent was to do so, the arguement of punctuation is not relevant. then i think the critical view should turn to other observations of the piece.
as for this piece as a whole, it seem you try too hard to describe everything like unpronounced chin,runny ink, obsessed mistake. i do understand the why. its because you want to produce strong images. but its so over done here that it clouds the piece and makes it difficult for the reader to connect all the images. i think a few strong metaphors would serve better than a list of adjecties.
keep it real, peace. -
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I'm just advising to you that next time you should put your poems under a different category than "critical review". It's obvious that you can't take any criticism at all and I'm sorry that you can't. Some people aren't meant to take it, so instead of putting all of your effort into trying to be condescending to people who you feel have "wronged" you. You could be putting it into other more fruitful things.
I said that the lack of punctuation bugged me. I also asked if there was a specific reason for it. To this day you still have not even DEFENDED or given a REASON WHY you do so. You just say it was your intent. Well then, why was it your intent to do so? What affect do you believe it has? If you could tell me why then there's a chance I could come to a common ground and see what you mean and maybe even try the affect for myself.
Yeah, I do try hard to describe things in my poetry. If I don't describe things in a unique way only known to myself then how can I stand out? How does the poem become anything other than commonly used words that don't stand out from modern speech and day to day conversations? If I wanted to just write poetry for the sake of telling a story without imagery then I might as well just write prose and not have the constraints of rhyme or meter or flow. It could just be mechanical left to right on the page. -
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i dont think you understand. i am not offended in any way. and i can and do take criticism when offered in a constructive way. your comments only created questions. as far as being condescending, upon further review of my comments i honestly cannot see where i am guilty of such a strong accusation.furthermore dont think you know that i feel i have been wronged because you dont know anything about how i feel.
that out of the way, lets get to other more productive points.
about the question why not cap. i have no desire to defend my lack of capitalization but i will explain by saying that i think that how small i feel when i think of her is better represented without caps. please understand that the poem in question is a true life situation with my late wife and i. as is blue jean, the preceding piece.
Now, i understand your desire to stand out but so is everyone else.
that is what makes this such a common thing.
my take is this, sometimes things can describe themselves. like the poem before this one, blue jean and the infinite awareness,the jeans and the pocket or the urn, the words though simple are powerful images without being over written which can clog up what would otherwise be a clean and dignified work. common words can become uncommon when used creatively.
i would like to close by saying that though i think you took my comment the wrong way, i am not offended in any way and i appreciate you taking the time to offer questions and further insight.
Peace, out.
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I want to apologize for the way I came off. Perhaps it was the recent little fit abu-nuwas had and I grouped you in with him. I didn't give his poem a glowing remark and he came in and got a little pissy. Perhaps that mood rubbed off in my comment to you and had me coming off in a way that wasn't intended. Abu-nuwas preceeding you also set a kind of standard and that wasn't fair justice to you.
I was truly just trying to find out why you weren't using capitals and what your desired affect was. Poetry is about finding your own personal voice and I'm always looking to try and better myself. If you had a reason that I could understand than I would think about writing a piece that didn't use capitalization either.
Hope everything is cleared between us. No hard feelings, I hope.
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I had a hard time connecting the first stanza to the second. Maybe reorder the first as the third. I'm not real crazy about the current third stanza, though I do like the phrase "dented flesh" (I first misread it as "dented fish".) "Angled scripture" almost wants to become "angeled sculpture".
Your phrases are almost too dense. The reader has to swath through it with a machete. The doll is the image of beauty you're trying to release through the power of your writing? There must be a more direct way of conveying that to the reader so he doesn't miss it, and then you can embellish a few phrases along the way, to make the journey memorable.
There is some good in here. I like "structured bones" for lines, but they need a little space to stand out. Your directive focus is myopically too close; it needs to pan back and out a little. -
Too late...
I should be sleeping. It seems like an interesting thing, fine phrasing.. but am too tired to do it justice
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