11-17-2013, 09:54 AM
Grinning Cheshire faces whisper from above, -Is it perhaps more concise to omit the grinning? It already seems implied by the Cheshire. 'From' may also be unnecessary
their silhouettes pressed into the ceiling.
Je rêve de... Ne rêve pas.
Discordant singing falls from above,
plastering the bed around him with suppression. - Omit 'around him'
No more room to think, always room to fall. This line is nice, but try a semicolon. The phrase 'with suppression' seems off to me.
The night falls dark, and still yet you lie. The first clause is hackneyed. You don't need both 'still' and 'yet'. Choose one.
Surrounded by apathy and slavering faces.
Maws that open only to close,
and open,
and close. It doesn't quite work that one can be surrounded by apathy without making some sort of image out of it. What form does the apathy take? Otherwise, I would drop it and skip to the slavering faces. The entire stanza up to this point is in fact one sentence. Omit the periods and the capitalization. Then, though this is perhaps my own stylistic point, I find these last line breaks a bit cheap. Try to move the opening up one line and the closing down one line. I think this could be much stronger. The image is nice though.
These depressing faces and constant
scenery changes chain his mind
and suffocate the soul. Why 'his mind' but 'the soul'?
These cadences sung by a mouth,
grossly fed, to the hosts of hell. - The commas in these last two lines are not needed.
With eyes fixed stoically and sadly on the ceiling,
he takes another hit. The end is good from a narrative perspective, but it feels prosodically incomplete. Something has to happen here with the rhythm and the assonance so that we feel on a sensory level this return into the cycle.
I think the first stanza has some potential with the parallel phrasings. Otherwise, I think you are putting too much focus telling us how you feel about these images (apathy, depressing faces, sadly) and not enough trying to make this dream as horrible and fantastical and vivid as possible. See if you can take it further.
their silhouettes pressed into the ceiling.
Je rêve de... Ne rêve pas.
Discordant singing falls from above,
plastering the bed around him with suppression. - Omit 'around him'
No more room to think, always room to fall. This line is nice, but try a semicolon. The phrase 'with suppression' seems off to me.
The night falls dark, and still yet you lie. The first clause is hackneyed. You don't need both 'still' and 'yet'. Choose one.
Surrounded by apathy and slavering faces.
Maws that open only to close,
and open,
and close. It doesn't quite work that one can be surrounded by apathy without making some sort of image out of it. What form does the apathy take? Otherwise, I would drop it and skip to the slavering faces. The entire stanza up to this point is in fact one sentence. Omit the periods and the capitalization. Then, though this is perhaps my own stylistic point, I find these last line breaks a bit cheap. Try to move the opening up one line and the closing down one line. I think this could be much stronger. The image is nice though.
These depressing faces and constant
scenery changes chain his mind
and suffocate the soul. Why 'his mind' but 'the soul'?
These cadences sung by a mouth,
grossly fed, to the hosts of hell. - The commas in these last two lines are not needed.
With eyes fixed stoically and sadly on the ceiling,
he takes another hit. The end is good from a narrative perspective, but it feels prosodically incomplete. Something has to happen here with the rhythm and the assonance so that we feel on a sensory level this return into the cycle.
I think the first stanza has some potential with the parallel phrasings. Otherwise, I think you are putting too much focus telling us how you feel about these images (apathy, depressing faces, sadly) and not enough trying to make this dream as horrible and fantastical and vivid as possible. See if you can take it further.