Gallery

[UnclePedro]

Hi, Unc, welcome to the workshops. Just on a first read, a few impressions. I like the clarity of this and and found the gallery idea interesting and the sonics were often well done. For me the capitalization on every line makes for a more confusing read, do you think it adds to the poem? I couldn't detect a form forcing you into some of the weak breaks: by, that, the, so and others. I hope to be back with more meaningful crit after some more reads. Thanks for posting it.

Original

Hey, you there by the sidelines
Kicking in the dirt, playing with pebbles
With your head down, your thoughts
So far away that you see nothing
But a blur, And the blur blends
Into one large painting, An empty
Gallery collecting dust,
Hey, you with the popped collar,
You with your cotton cave
Swallowing your head,
Yeah, you hear, but you won't look,
The colors hurt your eyes, they seep
Into your mind to look inside
And they are always disappointed,
Hush, yes, keep quiet, hush,
Your words are eclipsed by
A mask, The mask that conceals
More than your face, but that
Empty gallery, the plain insides
So forgotten and abandoned,
Hush, be still, yes, hush,
The curtain drawn will hide you,
And here you paint, but the paint
Is black, A deep, dark, oily black,
Your palette poisoned from the
Other painters painting it,
Hey you, you escape artist,
You with the eyes that bleed
From your insides because
Your heart is diseased and
Is choking, your own body
Rejecting the outside, And so
You collapse inward, swallow yourself,
Quarantined to protect, Run away
To live, To paint your own picture,
Hey, you stranger in the mirror,
Making noise in your mind, A storm
Surging and breaking on your skin,
But the skin will not break, and your mouth
Refuses to rupture, to crack and expose
Your dungeon of empty paintings,
The prisoners in your mind, who have
Never seen the light of day,
Yeah, I've seen that prison,
It's iron bars and blood streaked
Walls, with it's grime and filth
And stench, But unlike the rest
Of your gallery, The prison is
Streaked with colors, Random
Patterns and strokes mixed together,
Hey, you with this colorful dungeon,
Your gallery is in there, And the key
Is in your hand, It's ok
Because I understand

Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, I agree with you about the capitalization, I'll probably take out the mid-sentence capitalizations. The weak breaks are part of the style of the poem however. I'm not sure what to call it, it's my own monster-child that I sometimes you in my poems. It certainly is intentional, the majority of the lines use weak breaks. I think I use them with the intention to draw elements from a spoken word poem, sort of mixing a free-verse poem and a spoken word together, although this certainly isn't a spoken word poem. I also I agree that there isn't really a pattern to the weak breaks, but there is several places in the poem that could be separated into stanzas if I was looking to have that degree of separation between the ideas.

Edit: So I was looking at what the poem would look like without the capitalized words mid-sentence and I realized that they are intended to create a slight degree of separation between the lines. If the poem had hard breaks between lines and less weak breaks, the capitalized words would be the beginning of each sentence (for most of them)