11-20-2012, 11:56 AM
(11-18-2012, 01:32 AM)Rose Love Wrote: This needs a serious overhaul. It's highly personal, yes, but...it's from my past and it's not a state I live in anymore (thank God for that).The first half of this poem is definitely the best. The grammatical choice is intriguing and the use of Hammer horror-style imagery really works. All my critique is, of course, JMHO (Just My Humble Opinion), and thanks very much for the read
If
if somebody loved me
i know i would not cling to You This stylistic choice is interesting, where all is in lower case but "You". It reminds me of how the narrator of Rebecca didn't have a name, but her husband's ex-wife has the story named after her.
so unrelentingly
as these, writhing limbs of the cursed, Is the first comma needed? Otherwise I like this line.
tighten their grip
constricting wrathfully 'round my ankles
dragging me off with them
to eternal hellfire and damnation. Your use of stock horror images in this verse is surprisingly effective.
if somebody loved me
i know i would not clutch so desperately
onto Your shoestrings
fraying threads
dangling me over this wailing bottomless pit Nice visceral effect.
sucking me forcefully into its vacuum of eternally lost souls. "Eternally" could be removed, as a variation thereof has already been used in verse one. Don't let your themes grow laboured.
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
momentarily pulling You with me
down beneath the line of sanity. This verse has a deja vu quality. The first two verses have said what's here already, and better.
if somebody loved me
i could release my bleeding fists
too severely rapt in anguish
freeing You
laying to rest at long last
my abused heart
in a healing
bed of love I like the last four lines.
if.
I loved it when I first wrote it. Now...I can't really feel it anymore.

"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe