Town and Country Blues

[tectak]

A few early thoughts:

You shipped me out, beneath this foreign sky;
with bleeding eyes I look through fret and try "through fret and try" feels like a weakening, especially with fret having a bunch of conflicting meanings. Or maybe the conflicting meanings is the point, with the frets of a guitar being integral to the blues -- I keep seeing the speaker here as you, the poet's, usual object of description, now endowed with a lovely (if a bit, I dunno, cheesy) tongue -- but that might be reading too much into't.
and try to see what you see here. The repetition of "try" kinda works, but the more I read it, the more I feel like it's just there to fill in the foot-gap.
The sodden ground that yields like gangrened flesh I love this line's imagery. 
-- it stinks of ungulates and all they drop-- Don't get why this part has to be separated by em-dashes. Also, ungulates is an ugly, ugly word.
sticks glutinously to my every stride "glutinously" gums up this line for me a bit too much -- ain't there a more confident modifier for this?
so that my very walk becomes a strain.
Down comes more rain. Why must this stanza have one line more than the rest? The line with the ungulates could easily be dropped.

There are no lights once diamond days have died;
the beast of black depression says you lied, The two big pictures here, "diamond days" and "beast of black depression", feel as if they compete for attention to me, since both border on schlock -- that is, to have them both here makes these two lines for me be ridiculous. 
then sits like stone upon my heart. I like this line's imagery -- a bit common, the inferring side of my cultural mind declares, but I'm a sucker for sitting beasts. 
You promised me the scents and sounds of bliss,
where we would roll and wrap ourselves in lust The constant sounds here make the bliss and the lust feel blissful and lusty, I think -- another work would benefit better from this, I think.
and suck the soft green grass on which we’d lain. "we'd lay" would be righter, since at the speaker's now, they lie on nothing so sweet, but the error here may be negligible.
Down comes more rain.

I want the noise, the blaze and blare of life,
to bump and bruise within the common strife; Again, the sound effects really make these lines. "the common strife" feels a bit, I dunno, common, though, to the point of ending these two lines on a too-blunt note. And I don't think a semicolon is the right punctuation mark here -- either a comma, or something, er, wronger, like a silly !
but what is silence if not death?
Speak loud and scream if that is what you feel.
Hit hard and low and blame me for it all; I was hoping "all" would instead be a word alliterative with "pain", as with the three earlier stanzas. 
the truth of what we have is loving pain. "loving pain" I think suffers from the same kenning-weakness as "common strife", I think. 
Down comes more rain.

It works, and it sounds good, but it doesn't speak to me, at least not yet. Something just seems so....common about all this, even if the strife is better-weighed. As usual, I might change my mind about this, so I'll probably return.

Great stuff, river....and thank you. I fretted over "fret" but apart from the tenuous and slanted connection to a guitar (accidental) I hoped the word "shipped" would make the reader think "sea"....so we are talking sea-fret here. The repeat of "try" is probably too vernacular...a desperate attempt to make the character human. Cliche maybe....we try and try...
Aha! the em dashes. Well, you plugged it in one. The line WAS inserted after I had written the second stanza on scents and sounds of bliss....I will lose it but WILL put it in another piece because I like it."
"...we'd lain"....just to rhyme with rain. As you say, probably negligible.
Fundamentally disagree on the semi-colon...or rather, the alternatives. It is used here because nothing else would give me the pause (a much under estimated use for punctuation) I want.
I need help with common strife. I know what I mean but that is not good enough. I want the reader to know what I mean. I am trying to suggest that common strife can strangely be more attractive than constant bliss. I know the concept is hackneyed but it is one I can relate to...like walking in cold air, feeling rain peening my skin, sleeping in a cold bedroom etc. Common strife takes many forms. City life where poverty is in your face, crowded pavements, traffic noise....some like it. It is a tough message which I have probably not conveyed to good effect. I will eat your crit.
Best,
tectak