09-06-2017, 04:39 AM
(09-02-2017, 06:21 PM)billy Wrote: On Death.I haven't read other critiques so apologies for repeating if I have. I only have one beautiful old pen, a Parker that my grandmother gave me for my 16th birthday, and fortunately she doesn't take cartridges -- just sucks the ink straight up and spits it out, half over my fingers, half on the page. So anyway, upshot is, I like this a whole lot. I've bolded a couple of spelling/grammatical fixes but as you can see, that's more or less all I've got on this one.
Like everyone I have a hidden citadel,
an ex wood-wormed drawer where treasures trove. -- using trove as a verb makes me break out in a nasty rash. It's just mean.
Twin Watermen lay in state -- owning just one would make me very happy for all time
embraced in shrouds of fine filigree.
Upon their autopsies the worst was confirmed:
exsanguinated, bled out like Halal
chicken on Eid Al-Adha. -- love this simile-upon-metaphor construction
I'd sacrificed them like a Muslim holy-man;
a final stroke for each.
I never fed them but the once,
and replaced each one in turn.
Flawless in the right hands -- perhaps other/better hands or something? Right seems odd, except as a contrast to left I suppose
they never marched to my tempo.
Zig and zag they went, darting
in tongues they spoke, undecipherable. -- I think you could get rid of "they spoke" -- the repetition against "they went" doesn't work for me
How they vexed me, left me blue-fingered,
blue-thumbed and humbled. -- great sonics
Their sweetly etched 14 carrot toes kicking page -- carat
after crumpled pages to the trashcan; -- just page here too, not pages
pissing Prussian over white heavyweight vellum. -- there's the billy twist![]()
They died and in their death throes turned me...
have you met my Biro?
It could be worse
