Swinging Soliloquy

[Leah S.]

Well.....by the end I figured out the narrator was a cross-dresser...so then I assumed the rope thing referred to erotic asphyxia, hence the swollen lips. Botox never occurred to me.
Unfortunately I was never moved, only slightly puzzled. I don't understand enough about the relationship, or why being naked shouldn't be important, or why the protagonist being "a man again" was something for his ex-lover to be thankful ("amen") for.
I'm also not sure what "my one great lie" was....I read it as the cross-dressing, which seems a little too prevalent these days to be considered a "great" lie. I do like the implication that this shared lie somehow gave meaning to both lives, and that IS a lovely line.
I missed the tense change at "I hang my locks..." and had to go back to get the shift to the present. Maybe a stanza break here?
Best line, image-wise:
"In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair."
But then I had to wonder if the narrator saw himself as a blow-up doll, which led to another whole layer of interesting confusion.
Needs some tweaking. I had to read it three or four times before I thought I had the sense of it.
Best, Leah

---

Hi, Tom, plenty to chew on, this hits so many relationship points it will take me a while to absorb them all. I liked the way I had to stop at "mascara" and restart in a different gender, then the hanging of locks led me down a cancer road which continued to the end, when I had to change back and restart again. Here are a few notes.

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. Nice switchback on how who loves who.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; I don't get the semicolon, either grammatically or as a pause.
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me.
I told my friends that everything was crazy,
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. An interesting immaturity in a mature poem.
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you, I can't yet get why the pulling was not considered a good thing.
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face; Again an odd semicolon, what follows is not a sentence and the two lines provide the pause in content.
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? A beautiful line that transcends this distinct situation.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture,
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief;
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair.
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope...
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground.
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud.
tectak
2015

Thanks for the read, for me this has lasting power.

Hi ella,
perceptive nits...many thanks. You know, I think you have a point on the semicolons. They are absolutely there in  a pausitive ( and if that ain't a word, it should be) role...but if it doesn't work for you it must be a fail. I really wanted the soliloquy to be pensively portrayed...as though the words were slow coming thoughts. Too often, at least for me, overfluidity kills the  veracity. Real-time thinking doesn't come with a dictionary, thesaurus and search engine attached!
Anyhoo, the semicolons will go...but may come back if you say so.
Best,
tectak
Shit, I just noticed half the title was missing! Do not type on tablet touch-screen whilst plugged in to charger. Funny things happen.

Semi-colons!!! Hoist with your own petard. What was the remedy you recommended to me? I also noticed that, but forgot to mention it. You might consider using Emily Dickinson's "-----" to indicate a significant pausification.