I Wished I Was The Water -edited

[Erthona]

The Shower

How I watched you in the shower
All my lovesick thoughts untold
And I wished I was the water <"how" instead of "and">
That so wetly, warmly flowed

And beaded on your shining skin
As if by pure attraction;
As if to thus caress you gave
The water satisfaction.

I thought of Zeus as golden rain >
O’er lonely Danae streaming
As rivulets of water left
Your body wet and gleaming

And pondered on which lucky drop
I should most like to be
And whereabouts on you to cling
If it were up to me.

Then your sweet tongue swept your lip
And drew a dew inside
Oh blessed fate! To be that drip < drop melodramatic "Oh", force "Blessed" to be read as two syllables, instead of a one syllable diphthong>
And on those lips to die!

Your first stanza is composed of 4 lines of tetrameter, the rest of your stanzas are composed of alternating lines of tetrameter and trimeter. Generally what would be ballad meter with the xaxa rhyme scheme, except it is not in iambs, but in accentual verse (accents per line). Usually the first stanza metrically, or accentually sets the pattern for the poem.

The affectation of starting every line with a cap died a much needed death by the 1950's, please do not try and resurrect it, it makes reading the poem much more difficult. If it is not the beginning of a sentence do not capitalize. Thank you!

What's with all the "ands"/ Is this your favorite word? You're killing me! Arg!

I suppose I could say mean things about the overuse of "water on skin" as an erotic device, but I'll refrain, but personally, bringing Greek mythology into this scene is like bringing a tank to a knife fight. Plus if you think about the rest of the story the whole thing becomes much less erotic; little drops of Perseus. Plus it creates a little bit of cognitive dissonance as the woman (one must assume) the speaker is lusting over is having sex with a god, and if we take the myth literally, being impregnated by the same god while the speaker is watching (Oh well, some people like this sort of thing, but personally, if I am going to watch some other guy do my girl, I'd just as soon it not be a god, that's a hard act to follow[pun intended]). Regardless, I cannot get beyond that the golden rain is happening in the shower, thus a golden shower. Oh well, piss on it, god!

If you reworked your first stanza to match the rest, it is on the whole enjoyable to read...for a love poem.Anyway, it takes little to make it like the rest of the stanzas.

"As I watched you in the shower,
my lovesick thoughts untold,
how I wished I was the water,
that wetly, warmly flowed."

I don't usually go line by line, but this seemed to need it for explanatory purposes, not because the poem was terrible.


Best,


Dale