An Ode to People

[milo]

It's 3 AM, which means another day, another poem.

I'd like to post another one of my submissions, something I'm turning in for a class today. Whatever feedback you have is appreciated.

Anyway, an Ode to People:

I know there are possibilities
beneath the trees
and under the brimming seas
that satellites haven’t seen,

ok, this first strophe is focused on some "possibilities", it doesn't discuss what they are, just where they may be in the most general terms possible.


thoughts never processed and assimilated,
ideas never registered,

I am guessing that these "possibilities are now thoughts and ideas. so far, the verbiage is staid, there is no imagery or interesting language.

not because my brain dreams them –
mine is weary and growing lackluster,

just more generalizations and now we have added dreams to ur list of pointless abstractions: possibilities, thoughts, ideas, dreams, what next, hopes, faith god, beauty?


because I must believe humanity
is not near stagnating,
decomposing

nope, humanity. I find it difficult to connect with your vague generalizations. Poets are not smart, stop trying to be a philosopher, be a wordsmith.


with the onset of nuclear war
or the coming of some dreary tide,

because at every time,
we sat where we do now, with a thought
on our tongues,
lacking language to effect itself,
because a notion of beauty and progress as transitory,
disposable in a larger scheme,
is well and good in a hypothetical setting,
but not in my world, not for the wonderful people

who make this land shine everywhere,
in our extolling and in our hubris,
in the ravages and banishments
which tear our cores asunder.

I’ll choose to believe against the statistics –
single, married, male, female, black, white –
poor, wealthy, son, daughter, damned –
which daily limit us,

because I won’t be a cynic on my porch,
elderly with frail and rotting bones,
rocking, condemning the passing youth
with green faces like buried saplings,

because we’ve transcended the skies
and lifted the lid of Heaven,
where God itself sat as a general pacing,
gone to war with the certainties

we daily propagate,
the forces which move particles
and ruin nations,

accomplishments, some terrifying,
grisly, macabre, but some flourishing,
synthetically picturesque,
like sculptures of long-dead guardians,

who thought and educated the masses,
who fought and remained steadfast against battalions,
who sought and motivated withering husks.

I deny that we will decline and expire,
that we are predictable,
our fates inescapable,
because I am human,

and I don’t believe
we should die forgotten,
consumed by the oblivions
which elicited our existences
among the constellations.

I am skipping to the end because it is all more of the same. You are trying too hard to be a philosopher. Use strong words - concrete imagery.

This is a very long list of abstractions and generalization. Pick any one of these thoughts or any line of this poem and try to flesh it out with real experiences that your reader can share.

good luck.

milo