Swinging Soliloquy

[tectak]

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares;
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you,
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face;
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true?
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

[Brownlie]

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; -- I sort of like this reference to the high-pitch. I don't think you need nightmare though.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you,
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face;
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true?
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm. - Typo?
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope... -- I don't know about hangman's rope, perhaps.
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud. -To god?
tectak
2015

I like the screaming bit, but found the nightmare somewhat distracting. However, that seems to hold up quite a bit of the actual events of the poem. Perhaps my greatest triumph here is spotting what appears to be a typo on lips.

[tectak]

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; -- I sort of like this reference to the high-pitch. I don't think you need nightmare though.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you,
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face;
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true?
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm. - Typo?
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope... -- I don't know about hangman's rope, perhaps.
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud. -To god?
tectak
2015

I like the screaming bit, but found the nightmare somewhat distracting. However, that seems to hold up quite a bit of the actual events of the poem. Perhaps my greatest triumph here is spotting what appears to be a typo on lips.

Thanks as always brownlie but what is the typo? I need to know. Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!
Best,
tectak

[Brownlie]

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; -- I sort of like this reference to the high-pitch. I don't think you need nightmare though.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you,
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face;
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true?
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm. - Typo?
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope... -- I don't know about hangman's rope, perhaps.
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud. -To god?No...too gay.
tectak
2015

I like the screaming bit, but found the nightmare somewhat distracting. However, that seems to hold up quite a bit of the actual events of the poem. Perhaps my greatest triumph here is spotting what appears to be a typo on lips.

Thanks as always brownlie but what is the typo? I need to know. Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!
Best,
tectak

Iips instead of lips.

[tectak]

I like the screaming bit, but found the nightmare somewhat distracting. However, that seems to hold up quite a bit of the actual events of the poem. Perhaps my greatest triumph here is spotting what appears to be a typo on lips.

Thanks as always brownlie but what is the typo? I need to know. Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!
Best,
tectak

Iips instead of lips.

Huh? Err...are you OK?
Concerned,
tectak

[tectak]

Thanks as always brownlie but what is the typo? I need to know. Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!
Best,
tectak

Iips instead of lips.

Huh? Err...are you OK?
Concerned,
tectak

Hi Brownlie....I can only offer my apologies. The font on my tablet did NOT indicate ANY difference between the capital I and l. I am now on my PC. This font is with serif and the difference is clear. I thought for a while you were still crazy.
Best,
tectak
Thank you....a triumph indeed. I need to watch that!

[ellajam]

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. Nice switchback on how who loves who.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; I don't get the semicolon, either grammatically or as a pause.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. An interesting immaturity in a mature poem.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you, I can't yet get why the pulling was not considered a good thing.
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face; Again an odd semicolon, what follows is not a sentence and the two lines provide the pause in content.
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? A beautiful line that transcends this distinct situation.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

[tectak]

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. Nice switchback on how who loves who.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; I don't get the semicolon, either grammatically or as a pause.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. An interesting immaturity in a mature poem.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you, I can't yet get why the pulling was not considered a good thing.
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face; Again an odd semicolon, what follows is not a sentence and the two lines provide the pause in content.
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? A beautiful line that transcends this distinct situation.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

[Leah S.]

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

---

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. Nice switchback on how who loves who.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; I don't get the semicolon, either grammatically or as a pause.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. An interesting immaturity in a mature poem.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you, I can't yet get why the pulling was not considered a good thing.
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face; Again an odd semicolon, what follows is not a sentence and the two lines provide the pause in content.
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? A beautiful line that transcends this distinct situation.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

Semi-colons!!! Hoist with your own petard. What was the remedy you recommended to me? I also noticed that, but forgot to mention it. You might consider using Emily Dickinson's "-----" to indicate a significant pausification.

[ellajam]

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. Nice switchback on how who loves who.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; I don't get the semicolon, either grammatically or as a pause.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. An interesting immaturity in a mature poem.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you, I can't yet get why the pulling was not considered a good thing.
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face; Again an odd semicolon, what follows is not a sentence and the two lines provide the pause in content.
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? A beautiful line that transcends this distinct situation.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

I understand just what you mean by "overfluidity kills the  veracity", it is a problem I deal with all the time since learning metered forms here, but I don't think you have to worry about it with this poem. For me the content was so rich it forced me into a slow read, and continues to keep me slowed down with its emotional swing.

[tectak]

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

Leah, you are a bugger . You press me for clarification in all the right places. Yes. A cross-dresser and gay. Botoxed, bewigged in a busty latex over-body. The simplistic point being that the CD thinks that all of the subterfuge, the lie, is necessary for his relationship to work...it is incomprehensible that his gay partener still can have sexual desires for him without all the gender-changing trappings. It gets pretty complicated if you really go there. As soon as the CD takes off everything he becomes a man and cannot reconcile himself to believe that his lover likes him better that way. Phew. The relationship is bound to fail on many levels...but amen means "so be it".
Not your world nor mine but based on a very sad event which two of my gay friends went through. Nice guys. Shame. Heteros have similar problems...it is allegorical.
Best,
tectak

[Leah S.]

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

Leah, you are a bugger . You press me for clarification in all the right places. Yes. A cross-dresser and gay. Botoxed, bewigged in a busty latex over-body. The simplistic point being that the CD thinks that all of the subterfuge, the lie, is necessary for his relationship to work...it is incomprehensible that his gay partener still can have sexual desires for him without all the gender-changing trappings. It gets pretty complicated if you really go there. As soon as the CD takes off everything he becomes a man and cannot reconcile himself to believe that his lover likes him better that way. Phew. The relationship is bound to fail on many levels...but amen means "so be it".
Not your world nor mine but based  on a very sad event which two of my gay friends went through. Nice guys. Shame. Heteros have similar problems...it is allegorical.
Best,
tectak

Okay....I'd still be worried that other readers will assume a literal rope, as I did...which makes the whole poem, especially the foreshadowing of death, a lot more creepy. I also included the nightmares in that scenario----passing out, waking up screaming----or climaxing in a nightmare context. Like I said, creepy.

[Erthona]

Tom,

" Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!"

I had already figured this out
before I saw your note telling me
what the poem was about.
____________________________________

"You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares;

until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me."

Non-sequitur metaphor
This was bothersome. Not only is it somewhat senseless, the second line does not follow at all. It has nothing to do with the metaphor of "swinging high" = "the high pitch of screams in nightmares." There is the additional problem of the reader associating the height of passion with "Nightmares," which seems something you would not want, unless you are trying to imply that being swung high is equal to a nightmare. The second line is as inexact as it is superfluous. I'll not even talk about the word usage of "dreaming" "waking" side by side.
Just to start, in the first line nightmares are generic, they are not the speakers nightmares, they are just nightmares: "as screams in nightmares". Yet somehow in the second line they have become the speakers nightmares as they now have the power to wake him: "until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me." However this is really moot as the speaker being awakened has not a thing to do with swinging high, unless you are trying to imply that the swinging high is a nightmare and the horror of it (swinging high/high passion) reaches such a point that it wakes the speaker from the passion he is feeling. If this is what you intended it did not succeed. The best you succeeded in doing is confusing the reader, at least this one.   

Although this is an interesting idea, I think the poem fails because the treatment of the main character is too superficial. I never really connect to the person, and thus this poem does not engage me at an emotional level, making the piece interesting but of no impact. This gives me the feeling of having watched "Cirque du Soleil" on acid. I have the vague idea of someone preforming on a trapeze but I am unable to follow where that leads as I am overwhelmed by the confusion of the riot of colors and sound, and at the end, we all fall down.

"Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams."  --Leadbelly  

Dale

PSST One other note, I think I agreee with all of what ellapatella said, at least I think I do. I was unaware that one could only use a semicolon to separate independent clauses. I wish that were true, it would make it a lot easier for me to know when to use a semicolon and a colon. 

[ellajam]

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

Leah, you are a bugger . You press me for clarification in all the right places. Yes. A cross-dresser and gay. Botoxed, bewigged in a busty latex over-body. The simplistic point being that the CD thinks that all of the subterfuge, the lie, is necessary for his relationship to work...it is incomprehensible that his gay partener still can have sexual desires for him without all the gender-changing trappings. It gets pretty complicated if you really go there. As soon as the CD takes off everything he becomes a man and cannot reconcile himself to believe that his lover likes him better that way. Phew. The relationship is bound to fail on many levels...but amen means "so be it".
Not your world nor mine but based  on a very sad event which two of my gay friends went through. Nice guys. Shame. Heteros have similar problems...it is allegorical.
Best,
tectak

For me this was all made clear in the poem. The last is one of the things that keeps this from being just a curiosity, the point in any relationship when you realize that so many questions lead only to the one answer: that at heart these two can never be compatible. This reaches further than just a love or sexual relationship, but can be applied to any two people struggling to make a go of it.

It all rings clear for me.

[tectak]

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.


Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

I understand just what you mean by "overfluidity kills the  veracity", it is a problem I deal with all the time since learning metered forms here, but I don't think you have to worry about it with this poem. For me the content was so rich it forced me into a slow read, and continues to keep me slowed down with its emotional swing.

Oh,ella...just one more thing. As it is written the tears "pull" the ex emotionally  -pulling on heart strings would be a cliche infra dig-  and this IS a GOOD thing. I was trying to indicate that the use of that  well known attractor, the tear, works just as well with joy as with sadness...like the tears of a bride...er.....groom. So you do not need to puzzle over it....you were right when you were wrong!
tectak

---

Tom,

" Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!"

I had already figured this out
before I saw your note telling me
what the poem was about. I wasn't talking to you  
____________________________________

"You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares;

until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me."

Non-sequitur metaphor Yes but no. If I failed here then so be it. Screams in nightmares are often silent...unheard, outside the range of hearing(?)...yet they can pierce through the membranous meninges and wake the dreamer from his sleep. I confess, no, I agree, that the "swinging rope" metaphor is over-ambitious in its scope BUT it is a metaphor of many modes. The puppet on a string, the dangling of a heart, the dependency of another, the fear of falling, the cutting of ties, the swinging of emotions...I could go on but you get my drift and if you don't you'll say so Non-sequitur....sheesh!
This was bothersome. Not only is it somewhat senseless, the second line does not follow at all. It has nothing to do with the metaphor of "swinging high" = "the high pitch of screams in nightmares." There is the additional problem of the reader associating the height of passion with "Nightmares," which seems something you would not want, unless you are trying to imply that being swung high is equal to a nightmare. The second line is as inexact as it is superfluous. I'll not even talk about the word usage of "dreaming" "waking" side by side.
Just to start, in the first line nightmares are generic, they are not the speakers nightmares, they are just nightmares: "as screams in nightmares". Yet somehow in the second line they have become the speakers nightmares as they now have the power to wake him: "until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me." However this is really moot as the speaker being awakened has not a thing to do with swinging high, unless you are trying to imply that the swinging high is a nightmare and the horror of it (swinging high/high passion) reaches such a point that it wakes the speaker from the passion he is feeling. If this is what you intended it did not succeed. The best you succeeded in doing is confusing the reader, at least this one.   

Although this is an interesting idea, I think the poem fails because the treatment of the main character is too superficial. I never really connect to the person, and thus this poem does not engage me at an emotional level, making the piece interesting but of no impact. This gives me the feeling of having watched "Cirque du Soleil" on acid. I have the vague idea of someone preforming on a trapeze but I am unable to follow where that leads as I am overwhelmed by the confusion of the riot of colors and sound, and at the end, we all fall down.

"Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams."  --Leadbelly   I have it. I like it. I Like your take on this one....I will edit. Thanks for all.
Best,
tectak

Dale

PSST One other note, I think I agreee with all of what ellapatella said, at least I think I do. I was unaware that one could only use a semicolon to separate independent clauses. I wish that were true, it would make it a lot easier for me to know when to use a semicolon and a colon. 

---

Tom,

" Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!"

I had already figured this out
before I saw your note telling me
what the poem was about. I wasn't talking to you  
____________________________________

"You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares;

until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me."

Non-sequitur metaphor Yes but no. If I failed here then so be it. Screams in nightmares are often silent...unheard, outside the range of hearing(?)...yet they can pierce through the membranous meninges and wake the dreamer from his sleep. I confess, no, I agree, that the "swinging rope" metaphor is over-ambitious in its scope BUT it is a metaphor of many modes. The puppet on a string, the dangling of a heart, the dependency of another, the fear of falling, the cutting of ties, the swinging of emotions...I could go on but you get my drift and if you don't you'll say so Non-sequitur....sheesh!
This was bothersome. Not only is it somewhat senseless, the second line does not follow at all. It has nothing to do with the metaphor of "swinging high" = "the high pitch of screams in nightmares." There is the additional problem of the reader associating the height of passion with "Nightmares," which seems something you would not want, unless you are trying to imply that being swung high is equal to a nightmare. The second line is as inexact as it is superfluous. I'll not even talk about the word usage of "dreaming" "waking" side by side.
Just to start, in the first line nightmares are generic, they are not the speakers nightmares, they are just nightmares: "as screams in nightmares". Yet somehow in the second line they have become the speakers nightmares as they now have the power to wake him: "until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me." However this is really moot as the speaker being awakened has not a thing to do with swinging high, unless you are trying to imply that the swinging high is a nightmare and the horror of it (swinging high/high passion) reaches such a point that it wakes the speaker from the passion he is feeling. If this is what you intended it did not succeed. The best you succeeded in doing is confusing the reader, at least this one.   

Although this is an interesting idea, I think the poem fails because the treatment of the main character is too superficial. I never really connect to the person, and thus this poem does not engage me at an emotional level, making the piece interesting but of no impact. This gives me the feeling of having watched "Cirque du Soleil" on acid. I have the vague idea of someone preforming on a trapeze but I am unable to follow where that leads as I am overwhelmed by the confusion of the riot of colors and sound, and at the end, we all fall down.

"Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams."  --Leadbelly   I have it. I like it. I Like your take on this one....I will edit. Thanks for all.
Best,
tectak

Dale

PSST One other note, I think I agreee with all of what ellapatella said, at least I think I do. I was unaware that one could only use a semicolon to separate independent clauses. I wish that were true, it would make it a lot easier for me to know when to use a semicolon and a colon. 

---

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

---

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.


Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

Semi-colons!!! Hoist with your own petard. What was the remedy you recommended to me? I also noticed that, but forgot to mention it. You might consider using Emily Dickinson's "-----" to indicate a significant pausification.

Oh, shadenfreude, here is the sting. There is a lesson here. Mr. John Whale, the eminent author (Put it in Writing) and eloquent pontificator on all things colonic says;
Not verbatim, " A comma is a pause count 1, a semicolon a pause count 2 , a colon a pause count 3...a period to suit the dramatic effect." Note that the count rate is to suit the the reading "speed". Long has it been so. Who am I to argue?
Who's petard is this?
Best,
tectak

[tectak]

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

Leah, you are a bugger . You press me for clarification in all the right places. Yes. A cross-dresser and gay. Botoxed, bewigged in a busty latex over-body. The simplistic point being that the CD thinks that all of the subterfuge, the lie, is necessary for his relationship to work...it is incomprehensible that his gay partener still can have sexual desires for him without all the gender-changing trappings. It gets pretty complicated if you really go there. As soon as the CD takes off everything he becomes a man and cannot reconcile himself to believe that his lover likes him better that way. Phew. The relationship is bound to fail on many levels...but amen means "so be it".
Not your world nor mine but based  on a very sad event which two of my gay friends went through. Nice guys. Shame. Heteros have similar problems...it is allegorical.
Best,
tectak

For me this was all made clear in the poem. The last is one of the things that keeps this from being just a curiosity, the point in any relationship when you realize that so many questions lead only to the one answer: that at heart these two can never be compatible. This reaches further than just a love or sexual relationship, but can be applied to any two people struggling to make a go of it.

It all rings clear for me.

Precisely...but I would say that, wouldn't I? Oh, I already did
Best,
tectak

---

I like the screaming bit, but found the nightmare somewhat distracting. However, that seems to hold up quite a bit of the actual events of the poem. Perhaps my greatest triumph here is spotting what appears to be a typo on lips.

Thanks as always brownlie but what is the typo? I need to know. Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!
Best,
tectak

Iips instead of lips.

[Leah S.]

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

I understand just what you mean by "overfluidity kills the  veracity", it is a problem I deal with all the time since learning metered forms here, but I don't think you have to worry about it with this poem. For me the content was so rich it forced me into a slow read, and continues to keep me slowed down with its emotional swing.

Oh,ella...just one more thing. As it is written the tears "pull" the ex emotionally  -pulling on heart strings would be a cliche infra dig-  and this IS a GOOD thing. I was trying to indicate that the use of that  well known attractor, the tear, works just as well with joy as with sadness...like the tears of a bride...er.....groom. So you do not need to puzzle over it....you were right when you were wrong!
tectak

---

Tom,

" Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!"

I had already figured this out
before I saw your note telling me
what the poem was about. I wasn't talking to you  
____________________________________

"You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares;

until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me."

Non-sequitur metaphor Yes but no. If I failed here then so be it. Screams in nightmares are often silent...unheard, outside the range of hearing(?)...yet they can pierce through the membranous meninges and wake the dreamer from his sleep. I confess, no, I agree, that the "swinging rope" metaphor is over-ambitious in its scope BUT it is a metaphor of many modes. The puppet on a string, the dangling of a heart, the dependency of another, the fear of falling, the cutting of ties, the swinging of emotions...I could go on but you get my drift and if you don't you'll say so Non-sequitur....sheesh!
This was bothersome. Not only is it somewhat senseless, the second line does not follow at all. It has nothing to do with the metaphor of "swinging high" = "the high pitch of screams in nightmares." There is the additional problem of the reader associating the height of passion with "Nightmares," which seems something you would not want, unless you are trying to imply that being swung high is equal to a nightmare. The second line is as inexact as it is superfluous. I'll not even talk about the word usage of "dreaming" "waking" side by side.
Just to start, in the first line nightmares are generic, they are not the speakers nightmares, they are just nightmares: "as screams in nightmares". Yet somehow in the second line they have become the speakers nightmares as they now have the power to wake him: "until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me." However this is really moot as the speaker being awakened has not a thing to do with swinging high, unless you are trying to imply that the swinging high is a nightmare and the horror of it (swinging high/high passion) reaches such a point that it wakes the speaker from the passion he is feeling. If this is what you intended it did not succeed. The best you succeeded in doing is confusing the reader, at least this one.   

Although this is an interesting idea, I think the poem fails because the treatment of the main character is too superficial. I never really connect to the person, and thus this poem does not engage me at an emotional level, making the piece interesting but of no impact. This gives me the feeling of having watched "Cirque du Soleil" on acid. I have the vague idea of someone preforming on a trapeze but I am unable to follow where that leads as I am overwhelmed by the confusion of the riot of colors and sound, and at the end, we all fall down.

"Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams."  --Leadbelly   I have it. I like it. I Like your take on this one....I will edit. Thanks for all.
Best,
tectak

Dale

PSST One other note, I think I agreee with all of what ellapatella said, at least I think I do. I was unaware that one could only use a semicolon to separate independent clauses. I wish that were true, it would make it a lot easier for me to know when to use a semicolon and a colon. 

---

Tom,

" Botox, cross-dresser with gender challenge in gay (ended) relationship. Bugger, now you know!"

I had already figured this out
before I saw your note telling me
what the poem was about. I wasn't talking to you  
____________________________________

"You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares;

until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me."

Non-sequitur metaphor Yes but no. If I failed here then so be it. Screams in nightmares are often silent...unheard, outside the range of hearing(?)...yet they can pierce through the membranous meninges and wake the dreamer from his sleep. I confess, no, I agree, that the "swinging rope" metaphor is over-ambitious in its scope BUT it is a metaphor of many modes. The puppet on a string, the dangling of a heart, the dependency of another, the fear of falling, the cutting of ties, the swinging of emotions...I could go on but you get my drift and if you don't you'll say so Non-sequitur....sheesh!
This was bothersome. Not only is it somewhat senseless, the second line does not follow at all. It has nothing to do with the metaphor of "swinging high" = "the high pitch of screams in nightmares." There is the additional problem of the reader associating the height of passion with "Nightmares," which seems something you would not want, unless you are trying to imply that being swung high is equal to a nightmare. The second line is as inexact as it is superfluous. I'll not even talk about the word usage of "dreaming" "waking" side by side.
Just to start, in the first line nightmares are generic, they are not the speakers nightmares, they are just nightmares: "as screams in nightmares". Yet somehow in the second line they have become the speakers nightmares as they now have the power to wake him: "until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me." However this is really moot as the speaker being awakened has not a thing to do with swinging high, unless you are trying to imply that the swinging high is a nightmare and the horror of it (swinging high/high passion) reaches such a point that it wakes the speaker from the passion he is feeling. If this is what you intended it did not succeed. The best you succeeded in doing is confusing the reader, at least this one.   

Although this is an interesting idea, I think the poem fails because the treatment of the main character is too superficial. I never really connect to the person, and thus this poem does not engage me at an emotional level, making the piece interesting but of no impact. This gives me the feeling of having watched "Cirque du Soleil" on acid. I have the vague idea of someone preforming on a trapeze but I am unable to follow where that leads as I am overwhelmed by the confusion of the riot of colors and sound, and at the end, we all fall down.

"Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams."  --Leadbelly   I have it. I like it. I Like your take on this one....I will edit. Thanks for all.
Best,
tectak

Dale

PSST One other note, I think I agreee with all of what ellapatella said, at least I think I do. I was unaware that one could only use a semicolon to separate independent clauses. I wish that were true, it would make it a lot easier for me to know when to use a semicolon and a colon. 

---

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

---

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

Semi-colons!!! Hoist with your own petard. What was the remedy you recommended to me? I also noticed that, but forgot to mention it. You might consider using Emily Dickinson's "-----" to indicate a significant pausification.

Oh, shadenfreude, here is the sting. There is a lesson here. Mr. John Whale, the eminent author (Put it in Writing) and eloquent pontificator on all things colonic says;
Not verbatim, " A comma is a pause count 1, a semicolon a pause count 2 , a colon a pause count 3...a period to suit the dramatic effect." Note that the count rate is to suit the the reading "speed".  Long has it been so. Who am I to argue?
Who's petard is this?
Best,
tectak

Re Petards:
This was you to me, I quote: "Hi leah,
Good and bad. Easily improved. You barely need advice...you can see what needs doing. Try and have a day or two without semicolons and see how you feel. Drink plenty of water.
Best,
tectak "

I got a huge laugh out of it.

[Erthona]

Leah, you might want to try either "Quick Reply" which gives you a blank box but gives you nothing in the way of changing the typography and inserting things, or New Reply which also gives you a blank box but does give you the usual tools. It kind of messes up the thread if you use the "reply button" that is at the bottom of the last message and will copy that whole message into your reply. If there is something specific you wish to have to reply to I suggest copy and past enclosed by quotation marks. Tom also needs to quit doing it but he is already habitually caught in his ways and refuses to change. I am hoping to catch you before it becomes a habit. If you wish to do more with your "quote" from quick reply, when you hit the "preview post" it gives you access to all the usual tools. One of them is a "quote box." By highlighting whatever text you wish (within your reply) to be surrounded by a quote box, and then choosing the quote icon, it will change it into the familiar looking box that you see when you hit the reply with in someone else reply. Such as:

Leah said: "I don't have flat feet or a bald head!" 

The quote icon is third from the right in the tools line.

This helps to keep the thread readable. If you look back through the thread you might notice it is becoming difficult deciding  who said what, unless they "bold" it to make it stand out, but this even fails after a while as the entire message keeps getting pasted in each message.

Dale

[tectak]

Harrumph!

[Erthona]

Indeed!