Look! Outside!

[ellajam]

Hi, nibbed. Okay, you've let your mind run on winter images, now the work begins. Much of this was too obscure for me to figure out until you explained it:

I thought I had sharpened the poem well enough, but I see it needs to be cleaned up. I was inspired by the beautiful snowfall we were hit with a few days ago. I thought about how quiet it has been through the last few snows and wondered if it would be quiet this time, too. Not like when I was a kid. When it snowed we'd fly outside and make snowmen, nibble on the carrots, scramble to make snow angels, and hope for hot cocoa. Now many children race home and head for their cellphones and video games, sadly, the snowy paradise is often replaced with a virtual world. But the snow is not wasted, it melts and soaks the ground for thankful Spring blossoms.

So let's see what you can do to keep the interesting language and images and still be understood.

Look! Outside!


Razzmatazz ice
shaved from gray heavens
disguise dark Michigan.
So here I have nighttime sleet, not the snow that you jump to below, if this is the night before the snow then "disguised". If it's the snow the first line needs work.

Today, marshmallow mustaches
and sweetened smells may hold
warmest rewards.
Marshmallow mustaches is a lovely phrase that made me think of snow drifts, the rest I had no idea. After reading your comment this is the cocoa, "smells" and "warmest rewards" are too vague.

Tiny vegan cannibals
will perhaps nibble
rhinoplasty performances
fuel enough,
(not too much!)
To search out proper twigs:
If tiny means young children it doesn't work, I had them so small they'd fit in my hand. Ditto the rhinoplasty performances, if you mean carrot noses why not say so? IMO you've got to have some solidity to balance the flights of fancy and make the poem understandable.

Arming tightly packed, chilly rotund idols
standing guard to friendlier counterparts,
several easier
hierarchies of sweeping arms and legs,
finished with tiptoe's care.
You might switch this strophe with the one above, it is more clearly snowmen though I don't get counterparts or heirarchies or sweeping. And why is the cocoa before the snow play?

Waltzing with the hollers,
discs of molded primaries
may soon reveal creation's purpose:
Youthful, excited, billows of breath,
joyful reddening cheeks, and frosty fingers
eagerly welcoming warmer palms;
Sleds? Waltzing in the hollers? Not a fan of primaries. I don't  get the warmer palms.
 
Suddenly, a distant alarm sounds:
Books slam shut, teachers dismiss,
lines of warm & noisy cheese wagons quickly fill.
How did we get into a classroom?

Arriving safely at stops,
book bagged backs
exit folding doors &
clunky boots race down rubber lined steps;

Soul after tiny soul
ignore brightened sirens of frolic,
gifted opportunities of jovial winter.
You just had them doing all these things. I understand only from your comment that these are your memories, not in the present as the poem presents. You need to fix this.

Instead, mittens, yarn-strung sleeve to sleeve,
enter a trading post of telstar moments,
as Eskimo huts remain legend's ghost town.

Davenports maraud youthful suitors.
Despoiled, the blindly pillaged
ambush, beat, and blow the heads off comrades,
hysterically laughing at their own assassins.

Gloriously fallen blankets,
unseen healing diamonds of iced mercy
wait & watch, lonely & ignored;

Gifts of lasting memory
have been replaced by a hypnotist's trick,
Earth's peaceful stoles of cold
remain purely unspoiled.

Soon Springtime will reveal
a resurrection of gratitude:

As thankful winks
of wildly brightened violet
& crowding crocus
sing hymns of gentlest purple.

I'll stop there, if you decide to edit I'm sure you'll get plenty of help. Fo me poetry is about a bit of a good idea and then a lot of work. You've got the ideas, now the work starts. Good luck with it.