Hot Cement
Hot cement strikes young toes sharp
As we dance wildly in loose elastic
Swimming free, herds of hungry carp
My song is loud, your smile spastic
Corns of cob and melons balled
Fall deep in bellies, curled and compressed
A game of sandman, bodies sprawled
Against hot cement, your arms outstretched
Perched upon your youthful frame
I swallow hard and begin my chant
Beckoning the Sandman's name
Adults inside, witnesses scant
A wincing look across your face
Lips pursed tight, then shouting, pleading
Flailing arms and helpless cries
I shush your cries and adjust my seating
Still you squirm and beg relief
My palms press hard, esteemed content
Assuring you this will be brief
"Don't be a baby", it's merely hot cement.
With eyelids pinched and wrists restrained
I murmur through, reciting prayer
Deny relief as if ordained
Working undisturbed and free from error
Finally the act's complete
I topple off, a heap of bones
A smile concealed, I sense defeat
Yet you can't suppress your woeful moans
A thrashing carp, you flop to your chest
A casualty hangs in his final hour
A carpenter bee has been laid to rest
Sacrificed for those in power.
Any advice/critique would be very much appreciated!
(01-20-2016, 12:56 PM)CarrieChristo Wrote: [ -> ]Hot Cement
Hot cement strikes young toes sharp .... Assuming that you're dancing, wouldn't feet make more sense than toes?
As we dance wildly in loose elastic ..... Nice line, but I'd expect an sham meant here after elastic
Swimming free, herds of hungry carp....school or shoal, not herd
My song is loud, your smile spastic
Corns of cob and melons balled
Fall deep in bellies, curled and compressed .... I assume you're at a fair or something like that. From this point on, I have no idea what you're describing if not sex
A game of sandman, bodies sprawled .... You are having sex on the dance floor....in the sun?
Against hot cement, your arms outstretched
Perched upon your youthful frame
I swallow hard and begin my chant
Beckoning the Sandman's name
Adults inside, witnesses scant
A wincing look across your face
Lips pursed tight, then shouting, pleading
Flailing arms and helpless cries
I shush your cries and adjust my seating
Still you squirm and beg relief
My palms press hard, esteemed content
Assuring you this will be brief
"Don't be a baby", it's merely hot cement. ....the "merely" is unnecessary
With eyelids pinched and wrists restrained
I murmur through, reciting prayer
Deny relief as if ordained .... Do you need to be ordained to deny relief? Don't get this
Working undisturbed and free from error ..... The "working" needs to go
Finally the act's complete
I topple off, a heap of bones
A smile concealed, I sense defeat
Yet you can't suppress your woeful moans ...: the "yet" needs to go
A thrashing carp, you flop to your chest
A casualty hangs in his final hour
A carpenter bee has been laid to rest ..... Too many metaphors - carp, bee - too soon
Sacrificed for those in power. ..... There's only one queen bee
General comments;
1) punctuation missing except at the end. Why?
2) I have no idea what I just read
Hi, Carrie, welcome to the Pen.
It has taken me a while to get even a slippery hold of this. There are a few reasons I think people may be slow to take this on. First is S1, I still can't make sense of it. Maybe punctuation would help, or moving it to a different spot. It is so confusing that it made it difficult to push on. Another issue is I had never heard of the game and it took me quite a few reads to realize I needed to google it to understand the poem. The third problem I had was that it seemed to describe either sibling torture or a rape and I couldn't decide which. Sometimes these issues can make for an interesting piece but I think you need to find a way to let readers in a little more easily. I don't get the stress on hot cement, maybe a title involving sandman might help. Some notes below.
(01-20-2016, 12:56 PM)CarrieChristo Wrote: [ -> ]Hot Cement
Hot cement strikes young toes sharp I can see toes striking cement, not the other way around.
As we dance wildly in loose elastic I don't get an image I can hold here.
Swimming free, herds of hungry carp
My song is loud, your smile spastic Why?
Corns of cob and melons balled
Fall deep in bellies, curled and compressed These lines give a nice sense of nonsense, the alliteration is pleasing, a one syllable word might be nice instead of compressed.
A game of sandman, bodies sprawled Ah, this may be the key to the poem but it is buried, no division between it and the nonsense, I just passed over it, about 5 times.
Against hot cement, your arms outstretched
Perched upon your youthful frame
I swallow hard and begin my chant
Beckoning the Sandman's name
Adults inside, witnesses scant
A wincing look across your face
Lips pursed tight, then shouting, pleading
Flailing arms and helpless cries
I shush your cries and adjust my seating
Still you squirm and beg relief
My palms press hard, esteemed content
Assuring you this will be brief
"Don't be a baby", it's merely hot cement.
With eyelids pinched and wrists restrained
I murmur through, reciting prayer
Deny relief as if ordained
Working undisturbed and free from error
Finally the act's complete
I topple off, a heap of bones
A smile concealed, I sense defeat
Yet you can't suppress your woeful moans
All the above very rape-like, I'm not implying you need to change that.
A thrashing carp, you flop to your chest
A casualty hangs in his final hour
A carpenter bee has been laid to rest I'm totally lost on these last two lines.
Sacrificed for those in power.
You have a lot to work with here, I hope this helps a bit.
Thank you everyone for your comments. The poem is actually quite literal. It's about a memory I have from when I was a little girl at a family barbaque/pool party. I was playing Sandman (sort of a seance type chant that requires one person laying down while the other places imaginary sand/bricks on top of them. It is supposed to make them feel like they are in a trance and their mind has become heavy). The girl I was performing this on was a younger family friend who was squirming and in a great deal of pain but I thought she was only complaining about the pavement. When she finally sat up after I had finished I realized that I had actually been crushing her onto a bee's stinger. Although cruel, this memory has always stood out to me. There may be some deeper meaning behind it and how I felt in regards to the cruelty/power. Hope this clears some things up.
CarrieChristo,
A nice reminisce, but has a number of problems that are disruptive to the poem.
Need to stick with one voice: Edit:
"Hot cement strikes my young toes sharply
As we dance wildly in loose elastic*
Swimming free, herds of hungry carp
My song is loud, your smile spastic"
*Punctuation is needed. Always write your lines out in sentences using correct grammar and punctuation to avoid lines such as:
"As we dance wildly in loose elastic" This begs the question, loose elastic what? Elastic is a property, it is not an object. Rubber bands are elastic; the top of one's underwear is elastic; ponytail holders are elastic. You could replace elastic with "ecstatic" or "ascetic" neither and both are off-rhyme, or slant rhyme if you will to "spastic," but better than "elastic". As one cannot use elastic the rhyme with "spastic", thus it is a forced rhyme.
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There are no such things are "Swimming free, herds of hungry carp". One cannot take leave of reality simply because they wish to be alliterative. Carp are fish, fish swim in schools. You could have "hungry careening carp."
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Grammar and Punctuation have been hammered out for many hundreds of years in order to help make writing as clear as it can be. To remove both only means that the writing becomes less intelligible. One generally assumes that the writer wishes to be understood, not to write in such a way as to be misunderstood, which is what happens when one does not use grammar and punctuation. Only when one has a very solid rationale for abandoning them, should one do so. No such rationale exists here. It is common with beginning poets to follow the affectation of the day, but lack of grammar or punctuation have no more justification than writing using center justify (with the exception of concrete poetry). In terms of capitalizing the first letter of every line.
As a service to your reader(s), please do not cap the start of every line. That was originally a necessity related to typesetting. Capping the lines in print went out in the 1950's, primarily because it was no longer a need in typesetting, and it was less confusing to the reader. Most people coming up through the school system tend to read poetry either in text books or in anthologies. The compilers of these texts prefer not to use copyrighted material, which leaves more of the older material that is typeset in the old way, giving the impression that is how it should be done which is an unfortunate misapprehension.
BTW Not using Grammar, punctuation, misspelling words, capping the start of every line, tortured syntax and so on, is not a style.
I'm not trying to be hard, only to point out that these problems persists throughout the poem (your spelling is fine which is better than many people).
A note on "narrative voice" i.e., first person, second person and so on. A poem like this one (not to state it as an absolute, but in this case it is true), is always more powerful when told from the first person. It brings a sense of immediacy to the narrative. It makes the reader emotionally connect and care about what is happening in the poem, whereas second and third are more distant and have to use other ways to connect emotionally to the reader. One of course generally avoids the second person narrative altogether. This is not meant to say one should always use the first person, but as this is personal experience it seems most apt.
Welcome to the site, have enjoyed your critiques,
Best,
dale