07-07-2019, 11:48 AM
I rather like this, especially the voice. S2 nicely shifts S1 into metaphor A few suggestions, if I may. Bold indicates what I’ve changed.
Two years ago they fled
grew legs and abandoned me
those oracles of insanity
my fatherless children
songs and sighs,
and pseudo sinister promises
of course, I'm going to die. deleted the !
I couldn't die, I didn't write
Made of my piss poor poetry,
deliberate orphans,
in drawers with misplaced keys
unwanted and useless
without her having a read
Yes, Mother's Ghost...
I am still not me, not her, not she
you delighted in, laughed at and with
never mean, never shrill, accepting
of every chronic painful thing
making sport of hardships
and leaking boats. O captain my captain!
I wish you were here now*
Mama, come back to me.
So, okay. It doesn't work that way
and I protest, am a protester now
find appealing certain handwritten signs
I've seen and resentful memes
origin and intent, never you mind
it's the angst that counts, the reverie.
I'll abandon those as well, those
not-mine things. My words tap tap
My works, crap crap
My muses, ironed flat, now beckon
but a painting first, the lake, the trees
I promised for the wall of your study.
*Not a very good line lol, but wanted to demonstrate a change. You’ll write a better one.
I think the punctuation could be evened out a bit, making it clearer where you want the reader to pause or come to a full stop, but that’s just me. I look forward to seeing where this goes.
Oh. I struck out two lines because I thought they were unnecessarily telling the reader too much and interfered with the flow of the poem.
Not for comparison purposes or commentary, but just because I think you’d appreciate ‘Samhain’ by Annie Finch
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53066/samhain
Two years ago they fled
grew legs and abandoned me
those oracles of insanity
my fatherless children
songs and sighs,
and pseudo sinister promises
of course, I'm going to die. deleted the !
I couldn't die, I didn't write
Made of my piss poor poetry,
deliberate orphans,
in drawers with misplaced keys
unwanted and useless
without her having a read
Yes, Mother's Ghost...
I am still not me, not her, not she
you delighted in, laughed at and with
never mean, never shrill, accepting
of every chronic painful thing
making sport of hardships
and leaking boats. O captain my captain!
I wish you were here now*
Mama, come back to me.
So, okay. It doesn't work that way
and I protest, am a protester now
find appealing certain handwritten signs
I've seen and resentful memes
origin and intent, never you mind
it's the angst that counts, the reverie.
I'll abandon those as well, those
not-mine things. My words tap tap
My works, crap crap
My muses, ironed flat, now beckon
but a painting first, the lake, the trees
I promised for the wall of your study.
*Not a very good line lol, but wanted to demonstrate a change. You’ll write a better one.
I think the punctuation could be evened out a bit, making it clearer where you want the reader to pause or come to a full stop, but that’s just me. I look forward to seeing where this goes.
Oh. I struck out two lines because I thought they were unnecessarily telling the reader too much and interfered with the flow of the poem.
Not for comparison purposes or commentary, but just because I think you’d appreciate ‘Samhain’ by Annie Finch
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53066/samhain
There is no escape from metre; there is only mastery. TS Eliot