Love Letter

[tectak]

Be my earth
let me be your earthworm

Be my valley
let me be your ocher shrub

let me

blossom
burst
manifold

Be my body
let me be your soul

guiding
yielding
fulfilling

I long to be born in you
beyond and forever
and nourish you
as you nurture me

Yes

Love needs

a body
a voice
a phallus

Love needs a sky-
nude and endless

Love transcends
beyond transparency

Love permeates
beyond permanence

Our love binds us
in blessed synchrony

Momentary and ageless-
concomitant

Pluck me from
h y p e r s i l e n c e

as I suckle on life force

Gently place me
in your womb

where nude sky and
lovelorn earth mingle

your womb of rain

Wait for me to wake up

then we reign
we gain

All space
all time is
us
.

First of all, welcome. You are a brave man to post in "serious crit". I will try to keep this crit on track but must begin by saying that my thoughts on your effort are not spontaneous.....I have read this stuff before and feel quite confident, after many years, that not only will I read it again but that I will feel the same way about it. I say this in order to emphasise three points.
1) My critique is not malicious, it is informed.
2) Your own thoughts on your work will only be modified by reasoned arguement if you are a reasonable man.
3) The opinion of others is only valid if you care about your own work.

OK. Overview. This piece is sparse. If I say it is the apparent result of only a few seconds work it is because I can, and did, churn out such pseudo-metaphysical froth, on demand, for years. Unless your effort DISPLAYS effort it is undeserving and needless of criticism. It is written by you and for you and there is an end to it.
____________________________________________________________
Let us assume I am wrong, then:
Be my earth
let me be your earthworm
---------------------------------------
Here are two unmatched lines which on first read seem clear. "be my earth" is a "possessive" statement of commanding force. The second line does not follow, either in sentiment, it is begging, or in meaning. Metaphorically it is senseless. You are to become earthworm in your own earth, simultaneously. It is a harder point than you WOULD have realised if you had spent some time on it. A bad suggestion would be " If you were the earth around me, I would be an earthworm. "
Aish attempted, valiantly, to tilt tantrically into this piece. Believe me, I have been tantric, in all its aspects, for fourty years or more (though I did not realise it!) and tantric this ain't.
____________________________________________________________
Be my valley
let me be your ocher shrub
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Again, almost by accident, or so it seems, you repeat the error of duplicated anthropomorphic personna. You are asking to be a valley and a shrub, this time. The solution is the same. "If you were a valley, I would be an ocher shrub". To me, this is lazy work...or no work at all. Imagery of this simplicity may be cute but it is immature in that listing of "If/then" constructs ( blatently and obviousy avoided by clipping of already short lines) is a well know device. If your were honey, I would be a bee/If you were a river, I would be a swan/bridge/damn/ If you were a cloud, I would be the wind/sun/blah blah blah. It is painfully childish and for saying so I apologise but this whole piece may be an aberration and great things will follow.
____________________________________________________________
let me

blossom
burst
manifold

Be my body
let me be your soul
------------------------------------------------------------------
You went for tiffin at the beginning of this. Lost for words you just gave up. "Let me blossom burst manifold" is just not worthy(Don't blame me for corrupting the line...it's you who left out the punctuation!) The WORDS indicate a wish to consummate a healthy relationship with the piece, but to leave off the condom of understanding inevitably leads to the whole thing squirting wastefully across the page. Realising this you tried to get to the tissue box in which you found, oh no, not again, "be my body, let me be your soul". Atishoo, acliche!
_________________________________________________________
guiding
yielding
fulfilling

Love needs

a body
a voice
a phallus
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Listing of "ings" is irritat(ing). It is so simplistically staged that were you to write the whole thing in the same style Dr.Seuss would be on the phone claiming plagiarism( did someone else mention Dr. Seuss? Well there you are, then)
Here we go. Count to ten. One....Two..
Bleeding, breathing, loving, needing,
thrilling, chilling, killing, breeding,
Hurting, flirting, blurting, clinging,
Singing, peeling, chanting, dinging......nine...ten.
Hey....I'm a poet....and I don't know it....hope I don't blow it (Yes, yes, I know its BD)
Now, regarding your forensic definition of what love needs. I am not even going to comment. Please try to redefine using some consideration for what you are saying. That you even considered trying to define what love needs is certainly imprudent, but to try to accomplish this weighty task in THREE WORDS smacks of at best, arrogance and at worst ignorance.......neither of which, I am sure, apply to you.
_____________________________________________________________
I long to be born in you
beyond and forever
and nourish you
as you nurture me

Yes
--------------------------------------------------------------------
No.
_____________________________________________________________
Love needs a sky-
nude and endless

Love transcends
beyond transparency

Love permeates
beyond permanence

Our love binds us
in blessed synchrony

Momentary and ageless-
concomitant
---------------------------------------------------------------
And as if in vindication you come out with the above. Beautifully lineated thoughts, somehow serially ordered, almost written by someone else. Congratulations. This last is quite intoxicating though I am unsure of "permeates beyond permanence" .Latin permere-to pentrate, but permanēre, present participle of "to remain" Hmmm. Still nice.
_________________________________________________________
Pluck me from
h y p e r s i l e n c e
---------------------------------------------------------------
And today's apt platitude is:don't make up words that others have already made up without being sure that their meaning is the same as your meaning (a n d m a k i n g t h e w o r d longer by double spacing is quite pointless. Hypersilence is not a real word any more than is h y p e r s i l e n c e. Google it.

_______________________________________________________
as I suckle on life force

Gently place me
in your womb

where nude sky and
lovelorn earth mingle
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Physically impossible even to imagine! And here comes that nude sky again. Find some other words or risk being caught in a cliche of your own making! Again, fine sounding words but utterly without meaning except to the eulogist......and that's the last thing we want on this site
_____________________________________________________________
your womb of rain
Wait for me to wake up

then we reign
we gain

All space
all time is
us
---------------------------------------------------------------------
You have now run out of steam. Just time to slip in another womb or so and a nice cliche to finish with. Drop this last group of lines. In fact, just cutting any lines from this last group would not make any significant difference either locally or to the whole global shebang. That is the real problem with this bitty, disconnected, clipped , unpunctuated style. It doesn't really matter what you put in to it because it doesn't really matter what you take out of it. On the other hand, if you were to use the gossamer guts of the piece, you could construct a whole body around your own words.....that would be an interesting exercise.
Best,
tectak