narcissus

[tectak]

Late I know...but often better than never...you judge!

it's 3am, and I need to hear sunlightIs this in actuality, ie using the punctuation, what you mean to say?
"it's 3am, and I need to hear sunlight hours wealthier, you step out into life."
If this is not your intent, then it is the punctuation at fault. Sometimes uncertainty doesn't matter as the sense of the words is enough. I don't believe that is the case here.

hours wealthier, you
step out into life.
something in here is dying;
curled, I listen for its breathing. Nice two lines to this stanza but again, what or who is curled? You or the something.

time drips somewhere in a cave.OK. That is a conceded metaphor. I can feel the line. The next I cannot. Is it:
"love? you were in love with the idea it tastes of quinine, dipped in too much sugar."
Are you using line breaks as commas, stops and semi colons/colons? I find this technique very hard to wrestle with because I want to read it with ease. As it is you are asking the reader to concentrate on something other than the poetry.
Nor can I get the image of quinine, the bitter element of Tonic Water being "dipped" in anything. "....tastes of quinine, laced with too much sugar" perhaps. Picky? Yes, maybe. Sorry


love? you were in love with the idea
it tastes of quinine, dipped in too much sugar.

I learned to embrace bleeding,
to love the sticky sweetness.

an emptying heart has enough blood
to flow across a kitchen table
before turning blackYes to the last lines. Pure indulgence and self-pity. Excellent....but ruined in its intent by the next line. What is it there for? I have nothing but contempt for it. It ruins my imagery and is in itself paradoxical. This is not a paradoxical poem. It is, or was, much easier to empathise with the subject until the shrink walked in with his note pad. Bah!
(you would never write this down).

sitting between our worlds are the
cold, smooth stones I collected.

in spring snow covered the daffodils.

metaphorically speaking
this murder will be misunderstood.And a commendable final effort.

I get the feeling that you write your poems in character and sometimes you cannot resist the temptation to examine your own thinking concurrent with the writing. By all means involve yourself with the piece but it is not useful to make VISIBLE notes as side-shoots on the main stem. Pinch off the side-shoots if you want healthy growth. I like your work but feel that I am listening in on a schizophrenic musing. You may or may not agree but one of you is wrong
Best,
tectak