The Darkness of Beauty

[milo]

The title is just too teenage goth-girl poetry to pass. I almost didn't read it at all just because of the title.

A boarded-up building,
its boards defaced,

this is just scene-setting and as such is just too inefficient. boards is mentioned twice. Defaced seem the wrong word.

in an empty street laced with silence
at dusk.

"laced with silence" is nice, probably the best line in the poem. As such, "empty" is just superfluous and detracts rather than adds.


What is so painfully beautiful about this,
as the sinking sun assures ancient times
that this time too will pass?

The grammatical construct of this sentence is odd., it feels awkward to say it. The abstraction in such a short poem is overwhelming. We have darkness, silence, beauty, times and now "painfully beautiful" which is not technically abstract but telly, but it points at abstraction.

The crudely drawn man on one of the boards,
beside some farce about reclaiming masculinity,

"farce" "masculinity" here is more abstraction and it is all too telly. We need images and specifics. Again we have boards. There must be some way to shore all of this up more elegantly. I literally cannot even imagine what the "farce" is that is written, not a single one comes to mind about reclaiming masculinity and I have see a lot of graffiti

might as well be a chicken scratch on a cave wall,

chicken scratch is cliche. Also, once again, it is subtractive. It is not contrasting any other presentation, so what in truth does it add?

by an artist who soon, in the open, will die.

"might as well" is very weak wording.

I want to cry, but won't.

this ending is just tacked on bathos. Why does your narrator want to cry? Does your narrator always cry at graffiti and boarded up buildings?

In its current state it feels very "draftish". I think you have an idea what you want to communicate but I don't think the vehicle is doing the job it should.

Thanks for posting.