If

[Rose Love]

Thanks Leanne. I'm not really in the poem anymore, which is part of the reason I can't feel it anymore. It was me up until a few years ago, but I can't really relate to it so much now...which I think is a good thing for me, but maybe not for the poem.

Hi Rose... a few thoughts, though it's difficult to critique something so personal... if you're happy to remove yourself from the poem and look at it as just another piece of writing, I think this could end up a great poem.

If

if somebody loved me
i know i would not cling to You
so unrelentingly
as the writhing limbs of the cursed, --How is it with "the"? Doesn't it seem like it needs some kind of qualifier?
tighten their grip
constricting wrathfully 'round my ankles
dragging me off with them
to eternal hellfire and damnation. -- I'd suggest either hellfire OR damnation -- both together is... wait for it... cliche Ha ha Well, I think I was looking for "rhythm filler" there, so maybe I can come up with something better than the redundancy there

if somebody loved me
i know i would not clutch so desperately
to Your shoestrings -- just "to" instead of "onto", I think Hmmm...I think this one was also a "rhythm filler" thing. I wonder where these rhythms I write to in my head come from. Maybe I'm the only one who can hear them--ah, because I march to the beat of a different drummer (still stuck on that cliché kick...)
fraying threads
dangling me over this wailing bottomless pit
sucking me forcefully into its vacuum of eternally lost souls. -- these two lines, though they contain good imagery, are very wordy and the impact is being lost. I know, that's why I needed to overhaul the poem

if somebody loved me
i know i would not grasp so frantically at Your heels
in futile attempts to save myself
from the fright of my living death
as i sink into my inescapable oblivion -- a bit emo here... I'm not sure this line is actually required and "emo" means...?
momentarily pulling You with me
down beneath the line of sanity.

if somebody loved me
i could release my bleeding fists
too severely rapt in anguish
freeing You
laying to rest at long last -- I don't think "at long last" adds anything Well, how would I indicate that I had been living in the state for over 3 decades? It's the kind of feeling you have, you live in it so long that you don't ever even realize you can or will get out of it--"long last" is really an understatement, in fact, because it is the only state you even know to exist.
my abused heart
in a healing
bed of love

if.


And thanks! Now let me see if my colors show up They do, what a mess! Maybe I'll have to find a better way next time But colors are so pretty...