OMG (work in progress edit 0.0001)

[tectak]

With ageing sinews strained by days, hard stretched and sprained beyond repair,
out from the scream of Munch's night, comes forth the unexpected prayer. A colon might be more appropriate here, otherwise the next sentence is a fragment that doesn't make any sense.
That god might slip into the gap between a life of constant pain
and moments only salved by sleep (and even that, a dreamer's bane),
is not enough to pour belief into the analgesic pot.
Each twinge that twists is small distress. What hurts us more than faith is not
the forlorn hope that by our prayers, the agonised will be relieved
but that at best, by grimaced grace, we by forgiveness are reprieved. The phrasing of this sentence is all whacked up. "by our prayers," "at best," "by grimaced grace," and "by forgiveness," are repetitive. I would urge you to remove "at best" and "by grimaced grace," because "at best" adds little to the sentence, and grimaced grace could be removed, instead you could change "by our prayers" to "by our grimaced prayers," as they lean towards the same meaning.
Forgiven for the withered claw, the shake that marks us in a crowd,
the crooked spine, the humped-up back,the coprolalic curse out loud. I would argue that "coprolalic" is not the best word choice, it is overly complex.
Some claim a deity above who will, once called, make sick souls well;
distrust though those, the  pious few, who love their god then kiss and  tell.
Create your lord and tailor him, into a myth that all can see;
for OMG is sinful  pride...you made him yours, make one for me. The inclusion of "OMG" is completely out of place. You spend your entire poem trying to impress people with fancy words, only to counter this with a text abbreviation.
tectak
2013

I understand what you're trying to get across, but it comes across like thin coffee, weak. It's fairly obvious you have included intentionally complex words like "coprolalic," and unnecessarily complicated and repetitive phrasings, which detract from your message and make you sound like a pretentious show-off. For these reasons your poem lacks clarity. I would urge you to use the same ideas, but restructure some of your sentences, and use more direct words to improve this poem.  

Hi from,
thank you for this....OMG is work in progress but has barely been shaped by first cut so you come to the party early. You will not be disavowed of your salient points...I eat all crit. There are standards I try hard to adhere to, and some may say over tenaciously, but one overarches all others...I give the reader credit without requiring cause. Of course, this inevitably means that some words used may not be recognised as "common language" by some, whereas for others with a greater (not necessarily large) vocabulary such words will not present any difficulty in understanding or, indeed, acceptance. It all depends on how much respect the writer feels for the reader...and that you cannot know; suffice to say that "coprolalic" is not just the least complicated word to describe the cursed tic...it is also EXACTLY the right word.(There should be a smiley emoticon here but we are only allowed three per posting)
Anyhoo, to business.
Your overall view is moot. I do not disagree...as dale says, I am pegged by your weak coffee comment...you can't win 'em all.
The colon use in the first few lines I don't accept from your argument. This is why:
"That god might slip into the gap between A and B, is not enough to pour belief into the analgesic pot."
IS, I contend, a complete sentence...regardless of what A and B may be. So I hold on to the line with some vigour. If you can still see an argument for the semicolon I would look again...but the non-sentence argument does not stack up.
Similarly, the "grimaced grace" pairing, apart from the tendency on my part to over-alliteration does not, in fact, mean what you seem to think it means i.e. the prayer of "thanks for the sandwiches to come"
It is from the Serenity Prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr, latterly modified in the fifties to include the word "grace" and now widely known as below:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

To be fair, the essence of OMG stems from this piece of prose. Maybe I should have said. The "grimaced grace" should now become much clearer

As for being a pretentious show-off, guilty as charged if you are in that group impressed by big words...but aren't ALL poets pretentious show offs? The very act of posting to a waiting world would seem to infer this.

Finally, I may well conceed on OMG as both the abbreviated vernacular and  "Oh MY God"  scan out the same...I was trying to appeal to the wider audience.(There should be a smiley emoticon here but we are only allowed three per posting)
Thanks again for a very interesting and thought provoking crit...we need more like this.
Very Best,
tectak

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"Thin coffee"  You have been pegged!(There should be a hysterical emoticon here but we are only allowed three per posting)Yes yes...very funny...I am only surprised I was not described as being decaffed
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Two lines of iambic tetrameter melded together to form rhyming couplets in Iambic octameter. As I have suggested numerous times, this would read better and be easier on the reader if broken into iambic tetrameter with xaxa rhyme scheme. Example, one quatrain:

With ageing sinews strained by days,
hard stretched and sprained beyond repair,
out from the scream of Munch's night,
comes forth the unexpected prayer. Yes, this I like, your will be done. You KNOW I like long lines for the slow and pensive stuff and short lines for the perky, pretty stuff...you probably also know why...apart from the obvious desirably laboured pace of long lines, I admit that I do it more than I should so that I have "time" and "space" in which to manoeuver. What doesn't always happen, though fortuitously it has here, is that the meter seems unaffected. Oh, and with grimaced grace, I admit I like it better your way. Now send me Roses.

Or as variable stanzas:

That god might slip into the gap
between a life of constant pain
and moments only salved by sleep
and even that, a dreamer's bane),
is not enough to pour belief
into the analgesic pot.

Each twinge that twists is small distress.
What hurts us more than faith is not
the forlorn hope that by our prayers,
the agonised will be relieved
but that at best, by grimaced grace,
we by forgiveness are reprieved.

Of course you will disregard me as you usually do. I feel for your poor readers that have to deal with a stubborn writer who unjustifiably clings to an absurd line length. I guess stiff upper lip and all that rot. What, what? Or should it be "like, like"?  
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"Some claim a deity above who will, once called, make sick souls well"

Although technically correct (I suppose) I stumbled across this when I read it the first time. Probably a point of different emphasis, of course in such toss-ups I win! You are quite a tosser. 
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"Munch's night." Edvard Munch's "Starry Night" and of course the ubiquitous "scream". It is a nice allusion, but I am uncertain it does much for the poem as it seems to confuse rather than assist, for even though I am familiar with both paintings I fail to see their inclusion as anything more than gratuitous, if not ad hoc. I think if one took out this allusion it would not degrade the poem in the slightest. The scream portrayed silently in the painting may not even be a scream...it could just as easily be terminal anguish. I thought long and hard about the "stifled scream" but in the end gave it only the allusory credit which you point out may not be enough to justify its inclusion. I am torn on this one. To me, it is worth more in terms of visualisation and imagery than any single other description of silent, lonely pain. For this reason alone I will hold the blade for now. It is not over.  

"With ageing sinews strained by days, hard stretched and sprained beyond repair,
(from such a soul who feels betrayed) comes forth the unexpected prayer."yes but no for above reasons.

Of course it is such a nice allusion I am sure you will leave it in, I'm fairly certain I would. Still, there is a valid reason not to. You just CAN't let it go...you are like bloody Temerity the Terrier
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"and even that, a dreamer's bane"

The meaning of this is somewhat vague and the meaning of which comes only from contemplation. I understand it is a bit of a double entendre, but the idea of an actual dreamer, in the sense of one who is aware in their dreams, or keeps a dream journal for enlightenment would be foiled by a narcotic analgesic, which would suppress dreaming as it would disrupt REM sleep similar to alcohol. During the daytime hours it would blunt creativity and thus dull a day dreamers day dreaming ability, which of course day dreaming could be seen as a method of escaping the pains of life. Still it seems a somewhat convoluted way of expressing this idea and relies on much conjecture by the reader. I certainly find it disruptive to the reading of the poem. Yet, as with the last item, you and I both would probably be guilty of falling in love with it and have difficult even contemplating its demise. Still, it should be noted. Depending on how one views this, it could also be taken as a bit of a forced rhyme. Thank you. Lucid dreams, I have been reliably "first-person" informed, are extremely common in people with cronic pain or disturbingly obvious physical aberrations. The departure in to the serenity of sleep is often interrupted by the bane of the dreamer...the sleeping belief that all is not well when it is...or all is well when it is not.That is all.
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"Each twinge that twists is small distress." How exactly does a "twinge" "twist," outside of Dr, Seuss that is? Seems a bit peculiar. Oh come come! A twinge in a muscle will very often cause the sufferer to adopt a stance or position which alleviates the pain...if the pain is cronic the permanent twisting of skeletal structure results....you of all people should know this....or am I thinking of the wrong Dwarf?[b]  
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Can you say convoluted?[b] Yes. C...O...N....V....O....L....OO...TID.

"What hurts us more than faith is not the forlorn hope that by our prayers,(no comma) the agonised will be relieved (comma)but that at best, (no comma) by grimaced grace, (most likely no comma) we by forgiveness are reprieved." Yes. Unarguably you are correct. I have no excuses...but it is still a bloody convoluted sentence. I will work on it.

This is an interesting sentence, reminds me of Kant. That is by the time you get to the end of it, you've forgotten what the first of it was about. You mean THIS sentence? What were you saying?

"grimaced grace" nice alliteration, now only if I knew what the hell it meant! See reply to from (why do they have such long names?)

"by grimaced grace, we by forgiveness are reprieved."  by - by - bye Good catch   Seems like faith to me.
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Wow, "coprolalic" a triple word score. That's just the shits, ain't it? I'm so impressed that I am not even going to mention the "withered claw", but just one? Is it maybe the dew claw? You know the little side claw on dogs that just sort of hangs there, waiting to get caught in something and ripped off. Nor will I mention the scoliosis, or the hump...what hump? I suppose it is enough to know that we are forgiven for these deformities for whatever reason you are mentioning them. Oh do look it up...do....do....do! Fuck. 
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"Some claim a deity above who"  A bit awkward that. Along with "distrust though those" "Though-those" is that a new dance craze?

Hey chicky, have you done the though-those?
No, but I will, as soon as I, get some new hose.

distrust though those, the pious few --> distrust all those the pious few (maybe, must be a better solution)

"into a myth that all can see" --> so all can see Yes
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I think it is a fairly well run road this idea that people create the daddy in the sky to plead with when they don't have something they want and to yell at when things do not go as they please and that there are myriad variation on this theme. Such variation can start wars and become acts of genocide. I wonder has there ever been a time in the history of mankind when there was not a religious war of some type going on. It was probably not until the 19th century that we began to see secular wars without the justification of religion in some way.  

However the question at the end of the day is does your thesis, presented in your own inimitable way, add anything to the conversation? Or is this just a long and burdensome preamble to a punch line? If I could understand most of what you are saying and the reason why you are saying it, I might be able to answer that question, but as I do not, I can not.

Hopefully you can derive at least one beneficial comment out of this sputum, although I have my doubts.

dale


 PS  Sorry, I just now realized that this was in serious, if I had realized that I would have gone more in-depth. Sorry don't have the time to add more. Make time....I need you
Thanks as Always...make of that what you will
tectak

 

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