Hello,
I am sure you have posted the requisite critiques, and therefore I am not waisting my time
However, there is still a doubt so I will try to keep this short.
Ok, so, two quick observations.
firstly, a lot of the word choices feel false, as if you have abitrarily picked a synonym for a much more common word, or obscure descriptions that rely on such words. Now picking synonyms isn't on its own a bad thing, but when it is randomly pointing a finger in one's mental dictionary, then that comes across in the poem. for example, 'litter the WOODEN STRIPS' and 'a child's MINISCULE hand'. In short, a lot of it is overly poetic, and therefore the reader gets bogged down in trying to figure out how it all fits together, instead of enjoying it first and then secondly asking 'what was that all about?' I felt like I was stopping all the time trying to rearrange the words to force a sense on the poem. I have always found that no matter how strange the content of a poem is, if it is good even its nonsense won't get in the way. The trouble is, those kind of poems announce themselves early on, this one is obviously not intended to be 'difficult' in that sense, which makes the difficult bits jarring.
For example, in Ulysses James Joyce uses the more or less made up word, untonsured*, and this oddly placed prefix would seem pretentious if not for the humour it derives from the religious stuff which has gone before. In contrast to this you have used the phrase 'bodiless seats' which doesn't really add anything and because you have made such a show of it, one is automatically conscious of the fact that this phrase is only being used because you didn't want to use 'empty' twice. It is a bit like seeing the card up the magicians sleeve.
Also, you use capital letters at the beginning of lines, a practice you abandon a third of the way through.
on the upside, if one picks out all the pretension, there are some really good images in here. The tears making patters on the face. A hand mark on the skin, blood painting marble. All really good stuff. If only you could be confident enough to really cut back, take out all that 'look, this is a poem' stuff, this has the potential to be a fine peice of work.
Well, that's what I fink anyway.
*Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.
(02-23-2015, 06:00 AM)poe_enthusiast Wrote: Muddy footprints etched into the cherry hardwood,
Voices echo off the walls, filling the room.
An empty table with bodiless seats stands forgotten.
Parasitic love soaks into the walls.
Handprints magnify to a deep crimson.
Forever imprinted into the skin
Of a frail woman living for her child.
Voices become louder,
a terrifying crescendo of human hatred,
feeding off the absence of marital love.
Pieces of a broken bottle litter the wooden strips.
Blood paints smooth black and white marble
of an artificial bathroom sink,
Scattered shards of glass mirror the truth
like whispered apologies at night
shaded a repugnant yellow.
Tears carve patterns in the worn skin.
A hastily packed suitcase waits by the door.
A child’s miniscule hand grasps tightly to
the cracked fingers of his mothers’.
