tokens of war revised

[tectak]

In the chill of winter
I shed my fragile skin.Statemental but not without enigmatic overtones. All will become clear as....as....as...
As dry as late autumn leavesAsbo. Too many asses by one...drop the first. You are not troubled by scansion.
it slides like a reptile against The "it" is a distant relative to "skin"...er....or is it to "leaves". "it" is always a bastard.
a stone.I really do not know why you feel it necessary to split the piece up in to short stuttering lines. It is as if you think that you can make it look longer by stretching out the thing in to something you could write on a piece of fettucini. Your poem

Devoted soldier,
I soothe my limbs in the
briny sea;I have never heard "briny sea" before. Anyway, back to it. Where are we now? I think I blinked and missed something. See end. I am not good at this interpretive stuff...but what has being a "devoted" soldier got to do with a salt-soak?
Weeping for receding bruises, Why? A few bruises....sounds like a good war...lucky to have a leg to be bruised. Help
tokens of battle.

on the shore a man
searches for colors of
the world and motions
me to see shades of peonyOK. I admit that I have failed to identify the central metaphor and even that it is my fault...but you speed to closure here. There is nothing I can grasp on the way down. If there IS some great truth or purpose in this, and there may well be, I do not have enough information to fill in the cerebral gaps. This is me liking it but not knowing why. Perhaps it is what it is. I know I am.
and russet dipping down.

I cast my eyes toward
the sunset,
submissive as the sea.The submissive sea? The cruel sea, the raging sea, the angry sea, the unforgiving sea, the pitiless sea, the dark sea, the murderous sea, the vengeful sea...but the submissive sea? Help

Hi Heart,
Glad to see you posting...I note that the whistful melancholy is undiminished...in a good way.
The line by line is probably superfluous as you are ulikely to make changes in your "style" to satisfy and old pedant, but to improve a piece like this it is necessary to look at even the smallest options... and I use the word advisedly.
I cannot look for meaning in this genre. What is patently obvious to you is open to conjecture beyond my wish or ability to argue. It sound nice, it reads hauntingly, and it is without doubt the issue of your loins...that should be enough.
Very Best,
tectak