Did It Hurt You? (revised)

[Heartafire]

Did it Hurt You? (revision)
Thank you Tektac, Serge, and Billy

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best,
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl.

I was a child, what were you thinking, dying like that?
Where would I place the blame for my failures and bad decisions?
Grown up, may I still use you to ease the guilt of misguided behavior,
the unhappiness in life?

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that the touch of
a boy would bring shame on the family and she have to care for it.
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress.
Fearing the need to kill myself, I found no shame would be delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn. There is no place to mourn.
That is your fault too. Could you not leave me your remains?
I need someone to blame.
Here is your elegy.


Original

I was a child, what were you thinking, dying like that?
Who would I have to blame for my failures, my bad decisions?

I’m grown up now, may I still use you to
ease the guilt of my misguided behavior.
I have a kid of my own, can I still blame you for
the unhappiness in my life?

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best,
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl.

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that
the touch of a boy would bring haji.
Shame, on the family, and she would have to care for it.

Though I fought mightily,
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress.
I feared I would need to kill myself.
Finally, I found no shame would be
delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn.
I have no place to mourn.
That is your fault too.
Could you not leave me your remains?

Surely you are to blame for any pain
that I may suffer.
Here is your elegy.
I need someone to blame.

[tectak]

any comments and suggestions more than welcome.

hi heart,
strangely, I feel empathetic with this one. You rarely present a clear target to shoot at and you have not done so here. A third read only gave me that same old feeling that haunts me...why are we writing in such short lines? This is a mournful piece ( or bemournful as a sergism) and the tight reins gallop the beast in an undignified way. Are you wanting to rant this one or psalm it? For me, it is a slow lament. I could see the first three lines, a sentence, on one line. The next two lines, a sentence, on one line....and so on, throughout the piece. If rhythm is suspended for no real gain then let the reader make the breaks. To permit this you may have to accept that you are writing prose...nothing wrong with that but then you have to breathe the piece rather than just write it. A line by line under these circumstances is pointless...moreso because I can feel the emotion in the context as written. As I said, empathetic and so culpably as wrong as you may be
Best,
tectak

I was just a child,
what were you thinking,
dying , just like that?
Who would I have to blame for my failures,
my bad decisions?

I’m grown up now, may I still use you to
ease the guilt of my misguided behavior.
I have a kid of my own, can I still blame you for
the unhappiness in my life?

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best,
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl.

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that
the touch of a boy would bring haji.
Shame, on the family, and she would have to care for it.

Though I fought mightily,
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress.
I feared I would need to kill myself.
Finally, I found no shame would be
delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn.
I have no place to mourn.
That is your fault too.
Could you not leave me your remains?

Surely you are to blame for any pain
that I may suffer.
Here is your elegy.
I need someone to blame.

[serge gurkski]

Just a note on the structure of this poem for Tom, because I have commented on the poem to the poet somewhere else already.

in nuce:

Lament or mourning perhaps fits it better than psalm, I think, Tom. Psalms I find, lack these constrasting, even contradictory emotions. (Of course the Od Testament psalms can start with a lamentation over the facts and then call for a supernatural invisible but still not disprovable power like spaghetti monsters and teacups in space, but they would not be ambilvalent about the same person they address.
(A lament can contain ranting, or angry lines,( I will later show what I mean showing some lines of atras da porta*)
and then switching back to crying over the loss.
A lament** would describe or cover the phases of coping with the loss of ... anything dear, and then end. Not so here:

Now a tragic loss in early childhood will have an impact on the further life of the person (been there ,-) not la negative one. but the point that you must grown up to consciously start to cope with it. if anything works out fine (think david copperfield etc) bc the child has been able to (subconsciously deal with that trauma (congrats then) and/or lucky or helpful circumstances: al fine. If not: one will not be spared to deal with what did not go so well, at a later point in life. First step: reflect on what happened in order to find out where to start the healing. The poetic I in this poem can well represent millions of children, whose parents died in the 2 WWs, very common for the first 2 generations of the 20th in Europe.



-------------------------


*these lines quoted from:
http://letras.mus.br/chico-buarque/45113/
I quote from this song because first I love it but more importantly the lyrics show in just a handful of lines the different phases of grief over lost ones. (that's why: in nuce. ,-) )
Had there been a good English translation I would used that. (as if you believed it for a second. ,-) )

[...] atrás da porta
reclamei baixinho.
Dei pra maldizer o nosso lar,
pra sujar teu nome, te humilhar

bc you French (fixed it a bit) let me quote that:

"derrière la porte
je me suis plaint doucement
Compte tenu de maudire notre maison.
pour salir ton nom, te humilier ...

So this the plot: (not a translation, but what I know it means (been there)

She bemourns the death of her lover.

1) when they last looked deep into each other eyes,
she (now, in hindsight, thought she had
already known , he would die soon.
2) She finds him dead. Despite the premonition
she cannot believe it , she tosses him around, (she must make sure he is really dead by touching him, she shakes him to wake him up etc, finally strokes his hair as to give him a last touch of love.

3) she sits behind the door of the room where she found him and cries lowly, bemourning ( you know referring to the sergism, lol, ty for that by the way. Ok but back to serious

and now the ranting starts: to talk badly about our home (love implied maybe).
to defame your name, to humiliate you ….

**I mean lament as in bemoaning beloved ones, like here:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/30

There are other kinds of laments of course like the Li Sao from the Chuci
(big fan of David Hawkes, but this rendering is pretty fine, too. A real serendipity for me.
The plot /narrative could have been written by Gurkski combining 2 totally different strains (shamanism and politics. Not bad. ,-)
No. It is a (collection of) fine and obscure texts and for people interested in ancient southern „China“ and Southeast Asia a very important source, if difficult to put into context.

http://www.chinapage.org/poem/quyuan/quyuan-e.html





serge

[Heartafire]

any comments and suggestions more than welcome.

hi heart,
strangely, I feel empathetic with this one. You rarely present a clear target to shoot at and you have not done so here. A third read only gave me that same old feeling that haunts me...why are we writing in such short lines? This is a mournful piece ( or bemournful as a sergism) and the tight reins gallop the beast in an undignified way. Are you wanting to rant this one or psalm it? For me, it is a slow lament. I could see the first three lines, a sentence, on one line. The next two lines, a sentence, on one line....and so on, throughout the piece. If rhythm is suspended for no real gain then let the reader make the breaks. To permit this you may have to accept that you are writing prose...nothing wrong with that but then you have to breathe the piece rather than just write it. A line by line under these circumstances is pointless...moreso because I can feel the emotion in the context as written. As I said, empathetic and so culpably as wrong as you may be
Best,
tectak

I was just a child,
what were you thinking,
dying , just like that?
Who would I have to blame for my failures,
my bad decisions?

I’m grown up now, may I still use you to
ease the guilt of my misguided behavior.
I have a kid of my own, can I still blame you for
the unhappiness in my life?

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best,
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl.

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that
the touch of a boy would bring haji.
Shame, on the family, and she would have to care for it.

Though I fought mightily,
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress.
I feared I would need to kill myself.
Finally, I found no shame would be
delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn.
I have no place to mourn.
That is your fault too.
Could you not leave me your remains?

Surely you are to blame for any pain
that I may suffer.
Here is your elegy.
I need someone to blame.

Hi Tectak, thanks so much for reading and commenting. If this made you feel empathetic I will consider it a success. Seriously, I very much appreciate your ideas regarding this lament/rant. Originally, it was prose and I rearranged it. Short lines are a personal style that I am unable to change to date. I will work on this, lengthen the thoughts/sentences rather than breaking them abruptly. Thank you again for your time and opinion.
my best,
Heart

---

Just a note on the structure of this poem for Tom, because I have commented on the poem to the poet somewhere else already.

in nuce:

Lament or mourning perhaps fits it better than psalm, I think, Tom. Psalms I find, lack these constrasting, even contradictory emotions. (Of course the Od Testament psalms can start with a lamentation over the facts and then call for a supernatural invisible but still not disprovable power like spaghetti monsters and teacups in space, but they would not be ambilvalent about the same person they address.
(A lament can contain ranting, or angry lines,( I will later show what I mean showing some lines of atras da porta*)
and then switching back to crying over the loss.
A lament** would describe or cover the phases of coping with the loss of ... anything dear, and then end. Not so here:

Now a tragic loss in early childhood will have an impact on the further life of the person (been there ,-) not la negative one. but the point that you must grown up to consciously start to cope with it. if anything works out fine (think david copperfield etc) bc the child has been able to (subconsciously deal with that trauma (congrats then) and/or lucky or helpful circumstances: al fine. If not: one will not be spared to deal with what did not go so well, at a later point in life. First step: reflect on what happened in order to find out where to start the healing. The poetic I in this poem can well represent millions of children, whose parents died in the 2 WWs, very common for the first 2 generations of the 20th in Europe.



-------------------------


*these lines quoted from:
http://letras.mus.br/chico-buarque/45113/
I quote from this song because first I love it but more importantly the lyrics show in just a handful of lines the different phases of grief over lost ones. (that's why: in nuce. ,-) )
Had there been a good English translation I would used that. (as if you believed it for a second. ,-) )

[...] atrás da porta
reclamei baixinho.
Dei pra maldizer o nosso lar,
pra sujar teu nome, te humilhar

bc you French (fixed it a bit) let me quote that:

"derrière la porte
je me suis plaint doucement
Compte tenu de maudire notre maison.
pour salir ton nom, te humilier ...

So this the plot: (not a translation, but what I know it means (been there)

She bemourns the death of her lover.

1) when they last looked deep into each other eyes,
she (now, in hindsight, thought she had
already known , he would die soon.
2) She finds him dead. Despite the premonition
she cannot believe it , she tosses him around, (she must make sure he is really dead by touching him, she shakes him to wake him up etc, finally strokes his hair as to give him a last touch of love.

3) she sits behind the door of the room where she found him and cries lowly, bemourning ( you know referring to the sergism, lol, ty for that by the way. Ok but back to serious

and now the ranting starts: to talk badly about our home (love implied maybe).
to defame your name, to humiliate you ….

**I mean lament as in bemoaning beloved ones, like here:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/30

There are other kinds of laments of course like the Li Sao from the Chuci
(big fan of David Hawkes, but this rendering is pretty fine, too. A real serendipity for me.
The plot /narrative could have been written by Gurkski combining 2 totally different strains (shamanism and politics. Not bad. ,-)
No. It is a (collection of) fine and obscure texts and for people interested in ancient southern „China“ and Southeast Asia a very important source, if difficult to put into context.

http://www.chinapage.org/poem/quyuan/quyuan-e.html





serge

Hi Serge, thank you for reading and commenting and your amazing insight into my lament/rant. Thank you for the links, Li Sao and references to Atras da Porta which I adore.
till soon,
Holly

[serge gurkski]

was just a technical short note to Tom about the structure of this poem.
as i said, bebe, you already my thoughts. No need to repeat them here.

I just thought if i should not for comparison link to Dead Can Dance's Hymn to the fallen,bc there the mother griefs about her children. so that is the reverse situation . Also occurred so often. But I am not into a typology of laments. At least not unpaid. ;-)

cheers
roby

[billy]

i think the 3rd stanza would have been a good place to start, followed by the 1st and the rest of the poem.

any comments and suggestions more than welcome.

I was just a child, is just a child, different from 'a child" would i was a a child say the same thing.
what were you thinking,
dying , just like that? again, i'm not sure 'just' does anything for the poem
Who would I have to blame for my failures,
my bad decisions?

I’m grown up now, may I still use you to
ease the guilt of my misguided behavior.
I have a kid of my own, can I still blame you for
the unhappiness in my life? i'd like to see why you would want to, though i like the idea that mothers can have mothers.

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best,
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl.

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that
the touch of a boy would bring haji.
Shame, on the family, and she would have to care for it.

Though I fought mightily,
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress.
I feared I would need to kill myself.
Finally, I found no shame would be
delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn.
I have no place to mourn.
That is your fault too.
Could you not leave me your remains?

Surely you are to blame for any pain
that I may suffer.
Here is your elegy.
I need someone to blame.

have to go out, will get back to it sorry

[tectak]

Just a note on the structure of this poem for Tom, because I have commented on the poem to the poet somewhere else already.

in nuce:

Lament or mourning perhaps fits it better than psalm, I think, Tom. Psalms I find, lack these constrasting, even contradictory emotions. (Of course the Od Testament psalms can start with a lamentation over the facts and then call for a supernatural invisible but still not disprovable power like spaghetti monsters and teacups in space, but they would not be ambilvalent about the same person they address.
(A lament can contain ranting, or angry lines,( I will later show what I mean showing some lines of atras da porta*)
and then switching back to crying over the loss.
A lament** would describe or cover the phases of coping with the loss of ... anything dear, and then end. Not so here:

Now a tragic loss in early childhood will have an impact on the further life of the person (been there ,-) not la negative one. but the point that you must grown up to consciously start to cope with it. if anything works out fine (think david copperfield etc) bc the child has been able to (subconsciously deal with that trauma (congrats then) and/or lucky or helpful circumstances: al fine. If not: one will not be spared to deal with what did not go so well, at a later point in life. First step: reflect on what happened in order to find out where to start the healing. The poetic I in this poem can well represent millions of children, whose parents died in the 2 WWs, very common for the first 2 generations of the 20th in Europe.



-------------------------


*these lines quoted from:
http://letras.mus.br/chico-buarque/45113/
I quote from this song because first I love it but more importantly the lyrics show in just a handful of lines the different phases of grief over lost ones. (that's why: in nuce. ,-) )
Had there been a good English translation I would used that. (as if you believed it for a second. ,-) )

[...] atrás da porta
reclamei baixinho.
Dei pra maldizer o nosso lar,
pra sujar teu nome, te humilhar

bc you French (fixed it a bit) let me quote that:

"derrière la porte
je me suis plaint doucement
Compte tenu de maudire notre maison.
pour salir ton nom, te humilier ...

So this the plot: (not a translation, but what I know it means (been there)

She bemourns the death of her lover.

1) when they last looked deep into each other eyes,
she (now, in hindsight, thought she had
already known , he would die soon.
2) She finds him dead. Despite the premonition
she cannot believe it , she tosses him around, (she must make sure he is really dead by touching him, she shakes him to wake him up etc, finally strokes his hair as to give him a last touch of love.

3) she sits behind the door of the room where she found him and cries lowly, bemourning ( you know referring to the sergism, lol, ty for that by the way. Ok but back to serious

and now the ranting starts: to talk badly about our home (love implied maybe).
to defame your name, to humiliate you ….

**I mean lament as in bemoaning beloved ones, like here:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/30

There are other kinds of laments of course like the Li Sao from the Chuci
(big fan of David Hawkes, but this rendering is pretty fine, too. A real serendipity for me.
The plot /narrative could have been written by Gurkski combining 2 totally different strains (shamanism and politics. Not bad. ,-)
No. It is a (collection of) fine and obscure texts and for people interested in ancient southern „China“ and Southeast Asia a very important source, if difficult to put into context.

http://www.chinapage.org/poem/quyuan/quyuan-e.html





serge

Hi Serge,
From a piece entitled Blues, by PeteAk on this site.

Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar.

....and he should know because he says he does!
"bar", for your elucidation is, in this context, a musical terminology.
Best,
tectak

[Heartafire]

i think the 3rd stanza would have been a good place to start, followed by the 1st and the rest of the poem.

any comments and suggestions more than welcome.

I was just a child, is just a child, different from 'a child" would i was a a child say the same thing.
what were you thinking,
dying , just like that? again, i'm not sure 'just' does anything for the poem
Who would I have to blame for my failures,
my bad decisions?

I’m grown up now, may I still use you to
ease the guilt of my misguided behavior.
I have a kid of my own, can I still blame you for
the unhappiness in my life? i'd like to see why you would want to, though i like the idea that mothers can have mothers.

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best,
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl.

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that
the touch of a boy would bring haji.
Shame, on the family, and she would have to care for it.

Though I fought mightily,
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress.
I feared I would need to kill myself.
Finally, I found no shame would be
delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn.
I have no place to mourn.
That is your fault too.
Could you not leave me your remains?

Surely you are to blame for any pain
that I may suffer.
Here is your elegy.
I need someone to blame.

have to go out, will get back to it sorry

Sorry you had to leave Billy, your observations have been noted and I think some revisions are in order. No, I don't think "just" is called for here, but appeared during the conversational spontaneity of this piece. I plan to delete them from the original. Thanks for stopping by and the pointers, taking them under advisement, hope to work this out as gently as possible, though it is a lament/rant. I do hope you can stop back once more.
my best and many thanks,
Heart

[serge gurkski]

Just a note on the structure of this poem for Tom, because I have commented on the poem to the poet somewhere else already.

in nuce:

Lament or mourning perhaps fits it better than psalm, I think, Tom. Psalms I find, lack these constrasting, even contradictory emotions. (Of course the rather Odd Testament psalms can start with a lamentation over the facts and then call for a supernatural invisible but still not disprovable power like spaghetti monsters and teacups in space, but they would not be ambilvalent about the same person they address.
(A lament can contain ranting, or angry lines,( I will later show what I mean showing some lines of atras da porta*)
and then switching back to crying over the loss.
A lament** would describe or cover the phases of coping with the loss of ... anything dear, and then end. Not so here:

Now a tragic loss in early childhood will have an impact on the further life of the person (been there ,-) not la negative one. but the point that you must grown up to consciously start to cope with it. if anything works out fine (think david copperfield etc) bc the child has been able to (subconsciously deal with that trauma (congrats then) and/or lucky or helpful circumstances: al fine. If not: one will not be spared to deal with what did not go so well, at a later point in life. First step: reflect on what happened in order to find out where to start the healing. The poetic I in this poem can well represent millions of children, whose parents died in the 2 WWs, very common for the first 2 generations of the 20th in Europe.



-------------------------


*these lines quoted from:
http://letras.mus.br/chico-buarque/45113/
I quote from this song because first I love it but more importantly the lyrics show in just a handful of lines the different phases of grief over lost ones. (that's why: in nuce. ,-) )
Had there been a good English translation I would used that. (as if you believed it for a second. ,-) )

[...] atrás da porta
reclamei baixinho.
Dei pra maldizer o nosso lar,
pra sujar teu nome, te humilhar

bc you French (fixed it a bit) let me quote that:

"derrière la porte
je me suis plaint doucement
Compte tenu de maudire notre maison.
pour salir ton nom, te humilier ...

So this the plot: (not a translation, but what I know it means (been there)

She bemourns the death of her lover.

1) when they last looked deep into each other eyes,
she (now, in hindsight, thought she had
already known , he would die soon.
2) She finds him dead. Despite the premonition
she cannot believe it , she tosses him around, (she must make sure he is really dead by touching him, she shakes him to wake him up etc, finally strokes his hair as to give him a last touch of love.

3) she sits behind the door of the room where she found him and cries lowly, bemourning ( you know referring to the sergism, lol, ty for that by the way. Ok but back to serious

and now the ranting starts: to talk badly about our home (love implied maybe).
to defame your name, to humiliate you ….

**I mean lament as in bemoaning beloved ones, like here:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/30

There are other kinds of laments of course like the Li Sao from the Chuci
(big fan of David Hawkes, but this rendering is pretty fine, too. A real serendipity for me.
The plot /narrative could have been written by Gurkski combining 2 totally different strains (shamanism and politics. Not bad. ,-)
No. It is a (collection of) fine and obscure texts and for people interested in ancient southern „China“ and Southeast Asia a very important source, if difficult to put into context.

http://www.chinapage.org/poem/quyuan/quyuan-e.html





serge

Hi Serge,
From a piece entitled Blues, by PeteAk on this site.

Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar.

....and he should know because he says he does! <<<<--- ,-) sure
"bar", for your elucidation is, in this context, a musical terminology. <<< ty for explaining this to someone who plays blues piano. Haha, too cute.
Best,
tectak

---

Just a note on the structure of this poem for Tom, because I have commented on the poem to the poet somewhere else already.

in nuce:

Lament or mourning perhaps fits it better than psalm, I think, Tom. Psalms I find, lack these constrasting, even contradictory emotions. (Of course the rather Odd Testament psalms can start with a lamentation over the facts and then call for a supernatural invisible but still not disprovable power like spaghetti monsters and teacups in space, but they would not be ambilvalent about the same person they address.
(A lament can contain ranting, or angry lines,( I will later show what I mean showing some lines of atras da porta*)
and then switching back to crying over the loss.
A lament** would describe or cover the phases of coping with the loss of ... anything dear, and then end. Not so here:

Now a tragic loss in early childhood will have an impact on the further life of the person (been there ,-) not la negative one. but the point that you must grown up to consciously start to cope with it. if anything works out fine (think david copperfield etc) bc the child has been able to (subconsciously deal with that trauma (congrats then) and/or lucky or helpful circumstances: al fine. If not: one will not be spared to deal with what did not go so well, at a later point in life. First step: reflect on what happened in order to find out where to start the healing. The poetic I in this poem can well represent millions of children, whose parents died in the 2 WWs, very common for the first 2 generations of the 20th in Europe.



-------------------------


*these lines quoted from:
http://letras.mus.br/chico-buarque/45113/
I quote from this song because first I love it but more importantly the lyrics show in just a handful of lines the different phases of grief over lost ones. (that's why: in nuce. ,-) )
Had there been a good English translation I would used that. (as if you believed it for a second. ,-) )

[...] atrás da porta
reclamei baixinho.
Dei pra maldizer o nosso lar,
pra sujar teu nome, te humilhar

bc you French (fixed it a bit) let me quote that:

"derrière la porte
je me suis plaint doucement
Compte tenu de maudire notre maison.
pour salir ton nom, te humilier ...

So this the plot: (not a translation, but what I know it means (been there)

She bemourns the death of her lover.

1) when they last looked deep into each other eyes,
she (now, in hindsight, thought she had
already known , he would die soon.
2) She finds him dead. Despite the premonition
she cannot believe it , she tosses him around, (she must make sure he is really dead by touching him, she shakes him to wake him up etc, finally strokes his hair as to give him a last touch of love.

3) she sits behind the door of the room where she found him and cries lowly, bemourning ( you know referring to the sergism, lol, ty for that by the way. Ok but back to serious

and now the ranting starts: to talk badly about our home (love implied maybe).
to defame your name, to humiliate you ….

**I mean lament as in bemoaning beloved ones, like here:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/30

There are other kinds of laments of course like the Li Sao from the Chuci
(big fan of David Hawkes, but this rendering is pretty fine, too. A real serendipity for me.
The plot /narrative could have been written by Gurkski combining 2 totally different strains (shamanism and politics. Not bad. ,-)
No. It is a (collection of) fine and obscure texts and for people interested in ancient southern „China“ and Southeast Asia a very important source, if difficult to put into context.

http://www.chinapage.org/poem/quyuan/quyuan-e.html





serge

Hi Serge,
From a piece entitled Blues, by PeteAk on this site.

Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar. <<<- this does not only not disprove anything I said about psalms but I actually agree competely with it.

....and he should know because he says he does! <<<<--- ,-) sure
"bar", for your elucidation is, in this context, a musical terminology. <<< ty for explaining this to someone who plays blues piano. Haha, too cute.
Best,
tectak

see, of course you can hijack and abuse any word e.g. psalm and tweak and twist it to your poetical needs. I think I have just recently demonstrated the truthiness (Stephen Colbert) of it by applying this to whole cities. But to cite e.g. my text in order to expand the original meaning (complete with connotations) of the terms metaphorised by me, in order to defend a rather indefensible position is of course funny but not very promising to qualify as a successful strategy in a serious discussion. ;-) (Btw I like Pete's application of "psalm". It is a fine title.)
But how your quoting his words would help you disprove my technical reasoning evades my confessedly and happily inebriated mind.
In any meaningful discussion it is expected, and for good reason, that all contributing participants' utterances meet some basic principles when replying to statements brought forth. ,-).
It is common usage to refer directly to what you then will attempt to disprove.

Happy to welcome you back here, once you are inclined to adhere to these basical and common sense rules of rhetorical standards.

This all of course - goes without saying - just in order to elucidate you.

Have fun and cheers

your's most devotedly

Serge the Gurk

[billy]

i think the 3rd stanza would have been a good place to start, followed by the 1st and the rest of the poem. the narrative isn't bad though it does feel a little wordy in places. while it's an I poem, you could cut back on them. example

Who would be to blame for my failures, (allowing it to hang a bit more and make the reader ask (what does she mean?))

thanks for the read.

any comments and suggestions more than welcome.

I was just a child, is just a child, different from 'a child" would i was a a child say the same thing.
what were you thinking,
dying , just like that? again, i'm not sure 'just' does anything for the poem
Who would I have to blame for my failures,
my bad decisions?

I’m grown up now, may I still use you to
ease the guilt of my misguided behavior.
I have a kid of my own, can I still blame you for
the unhappiness in my life? i'd like to see why you would want to, though i like the idea that mothers can have mothers.

---

You were not the perfect Mom.
Did you give much thought to me when you were sick?
You did not have the courtesy to get well.
You left me in the care of that man who did his best, that man, feels like someone you hated. or blamed
sadly lacking the skills to teach life to a young girl., i think some of the non essential words could be cut in order to give it a better bone structure.

There was Grandmamma, who taught me well that
the touch of a boy would bring haji.
Shame, on the family, and she would have to care for it.

Though I fought mightily,
I bled when he ran his hand up my dress. i think this is a strong line and a string stanza, it feels like there are a lot of I's the 2nd I could be an 'and'
I feared I would need to kill myself.
Finally, I found no shame would be
delivered to us this time.

He took you to your homeland in an urn.
I have no place to mourn.
That is your fault too.
Could you not leave me your remains?

Surely you are to blame for any pain
that I may suffer.
Here is your elegy.
I need someone to blame. not sure this last line adds anything possibly start the stanza with it and remove blame/pain line.

have to go out, will get back to it sorry