Where Dost Madness Dwell?

[addy]

I like your fondness for rich imagery and language . In this case, it lends just the right kind of passion to your subject. here are a few of my reactions... hope they help

I am in the mood for another poem bashing. Hit me.

Where Dost Madness Dwell?
If insanity dwells within
And heresy is accused
Rest on the laurels of the base
Or be defiled of thine own being Something wrong with the syntax of "defiled of" I think... that's like saying "I was stolen of my watch" instead of "I was robbed of my watch"
Madness is what controlled men fear
Their animal lurks beneath their wool clothes
Like a wolf in sheep's skinned stealth even though the alliteration of "skinned stealth" sounds good, it makes your meaning unnecessarily confusing
The true blade lies within this sheath o skin
Double edged yet bloodless
More runs through the veins in a leaf
Than bears metal in thine arteries Ok, this is my interpretation of the narrative thus far... at the beginning the narrator questions where madness lies, as the concept seems to be a product of both internal (the body/mind) and external forces (social norms versus taboo) so it seems neither of them are the perfect answer. Then you introduce the idea of a wolf in sheep's clothing to express madness as an in-between idea (double-edged), and it must be something just under the surface. It carries over with the leaf image, since in a way you are still talking about skin and again there is an allusion to an edge/boundary. So with the line "...bears metal in thine arteries", even if it calls back to your blade line from before, i don't feel the concept of arteries ties in as well to everything else you've subtly established so far. Sorry for the rambling, just my take on it
O petrified forest of men
Whose hearts have turned to stone
Whose legs have taken root to ground
Whose branches no longer expand So fond of these lines for some reason
Dare to think like a mad hatter or a March hare
And allow Sherwood to thrive ~ Arachne This struck me as a slightly weak last line... maybe because "allow" is such a passive word that it kind of dampens the revolutionary undertones of "Sherwood" (I'm only presuming that's what your meaning was)