Eulogy

Crimson-red brocade seethes,
whispering conspiracies through twisted limbs
Callously churning contortion of nature
 
In gaseous boughs, rising thick
Heavy and violent arsine clouds,
most warm and rapacious miasma
 
Breath falters as it pierces through tissue,
Childish cries smothered by folds of linen
as it penetrates the body and paralyses it 
 
Rigor mortis, posthumous stillness
Vines form a funerary wreath
Vegetation thrives

(07-20-2026, 11:29 AM)etherealidyll Wrote:  Eulogy  see notes on title

Crimson-red brocade seethes,  a darker red, or repetitious for rhythm?
whispering conspiracies through twisted limbs  nice use of "s" alliteration
Callously churning contortion of nature  why the inconsistent capitalization?  So far, sounds like a bush...
 
In gaseous boughs, rising thick
Heavy and violent arsine clouds,  had to look up "arsine," almost a nerve gas and characteristic of chip manufacture
most warm and rapacious miasma  nice assonance on "a" and threatening, but is this plant or chemical?  Chemical plant?  Bhopal? (different gas)
 
Breath falters as it pierces through tissue,
Childish cries smothered by folds of linen
as it penetrates the body and paralyses it   definitely descriptive, and alliteration continues
 
Rigor mortis, posthumous stillness  s followed by s is a little clumsy to read aloud - alliteration overdone?
Vines form a funerary wreath
Vegetation thrives  lots of sibilance, sense a bit hard to find

In intensive critique, this contains good use of language (particularly sounds) and a few striking images.  It may be asking too much for the work to also form a coherent real-world incident - children, or one child, killed by an industrial gas, and this somehow associated with foliage?  I'm not getting it.

There might be a certain amount of AI-style randomness (doubled adjectives, adjective in place of adverb as in "rising thick") which is good in spots ("rapacious miasma")  but becomes unexciting.

The title is a bit perplexing.  Nothing and no one is eulogized (praised) unless it's the gas itself - there's not even a life recounted with or without judgment.

In view of the mystery inherent in the work, a (broader) hint in the title could help readers take a step beyond impersonal feelings of tragedy and memorialization.  Punctuation and capitalization are an unnecessary puzzle:  if there were *no* punctuation... but there's a comma, just no periods, and some lines led by capital letters are obviously continuations of the previous.  All I can do with the leading capital letters is take a little longer breath... maybe that's enough.

Interesting portrait of a small disaster; not bad, some room for improvement or reconsideration.

Reviewing:  perhaps leaning too heavily on "limbs" as boughs rather than arms and legs?  But there's evidence for that in the last line.

(07-20-2026, 11:29 AM)etherealidyll Wrote:  Eulogy

Crimson-red brocade seethes,     difficult opening for me; I instinctively pull away from what I recognize as poemy syntax and diction
whispering conspiracies through twisted limbs     flowery and nonspecific
Callously churning contortion of nature      more of the same, you've lost me by now - so much roaming, melodramatic abstraction
 
In gaseous boughs, rising thick
Heavy and violent arsine clouds,      better IMO, I can visualize something, though still p vague. "arsine clouds" feels good in the mouth
most warm and rapacious miasma     dislike "most" as poemy / affected, "rapacious" is close to facing the same accusation
 
Breath falters as it pierces through tissue,     I really don't vibe with this syntax, can't see any justification for its use
Childish cries smothered by folds of linen
as it penetrates the body and paralyses it      what is "it" - the breath? confusing
 
Rigor mortis, posthumous stillness
Vines form a funerary wreath
Vegetation thrives                  feels like a relatively flat, summative ending which I also resist

I'm afraid I don't know where I am, what is happening, what to imagine, or why I'm meant to feel anything about any of it

Poem kind of feels like an assortment of language that is supposed to sound poetic, there's a very loose sense of subject guided heavily by the title and more directly evocative word choices like "funerary" and "cries smothered" but mostly the reader is left to imagine more or less whatever. If we rewrite the poem in plain speech and take away the "this is a poem" register of language, what do we have? Too little specificity, I fear, for even an abstract impressionist type sketch of the specific occasion or subject.