I am Death-Destroyer of worlds

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

I crushed titans
like glass in my hands
and flung their remains across the sky
like confetti, set aflame.
From their corpses,
I made the stars.

I painted the skies with the blood of
beasts leviathan,
carved worlds out of
their bones,
spun gravity out of
their tendons,
and
twisted wormholes out of
their entrails.

I killed the Apollos,
reached down their throats and
ripped out fistfuls of
their breaths,
used them to burn the screams of
dying colossi,
and cast the embers asunder,
hurtling comets into the void.

I bought the oceans with Cronus’s dignity,
flooded worlds with proof of his begging.
I made the clouds with my laughter.

I swallowed a god and spat out a galaxy.

[Achebe]

Hi Snarling - you have some nice images there. I particularly liked:
1. 'like confetti...the stars'
2. 'fistfulls of breath'
3. 'hurtling...void'

On the not so good side:
1. I don't see a connection between the Gita allusion of the title and the Greek myth content of the poem. Since Cronos and Zeus did not actually exist, the first allusion doesn't serve to illuminate the second. The proper title for this poem should have a Greek allusion. Otherwise, one can throw in a FIFA 1954 allusion about Ferenc Puskas with equal validity.
2. The narrator is Time, but in Greek myth Time isn't an active deity (sure, Cronos is represented as holding an hourglass or something, but he isn't exactly top dog anymore). So to say things like 'I made the clouds with my laughter' is pretty confusing. Are you talking about a Judaic god now?
3. 'Leviathan' is a noun and there was only one Apollo, who's still alive. The inclusion of Leviathan now makes it a random mishmash of unconnected myths.

Basically, if you're using allusion, you need to be consistent.
If I've made any factual errors in the above, please do let me know.

[dukealien]

I crushed titans
like glass in my hands
and flung their remains across the sky  could perhaps do without "and" - maybe even "across the sky."
like confetti, set aflame.  comma seems unnecessary
From their corpses,
I made the stars.  could perhaps lose "the."

I painted the skies with the blood of  could lose second "the" here?
beasts leviathan,
carved worlds out of  unless repetition is important, could replace "out of" with "from"
their bones,
spun gravity out of  but "out of" is perfect here
their tendons,  these two lines are a wonderful conceit about gravity.
and
twisted wormholes out of  perhaps "from" for "out of" again for variety and beat
their entrails.

I killed the Apollos,
reached down their throats and
ripped out fistfuls of  line break here seems unnecessary
their breaths,
used them to burn the screams of
dying colossi,
and cast the embers asunder,  could lose "and" and the comma here?
hurtling comets into the void.

I bought the oceans with Cronus’s dignity,  another great conceit
flooded worlds with proof of his begging.  this line mystifies me
I made the clouds with my laughter.

I swallowed a god and spat out a galaxy.  or Cronus did (see below).

Very dynamic and imaginative, mixing mythologies.  If anything, the closing line seems too limited:  the speaker has made the universe, why speak of one galaxy?  Enjoyable - suggestions are mild (forgive the sometimes imperative tone).

Hard to say about the title in mild.  The usage which comes to mind is Oppenheimer about the first nuclear detonation, quoting Hindu scripture.  Is the speaker fission, or the mind that came up with it?  According to one source, the translation Oppenheimer used is poetically inexact:  Vishnu actually became Time as well as Death (but still the Destroyer).  Either way, your title has Death getting creative; might make an interesting turnabout to use Time, which both destroys and (according to reports from the usual unreliable sources) with the Big Bang and pulsing universe, creates as the viewpoint voice claims.  And Time is also Cronus.

But title confusion aside, it's a good read which could be made an even better one with a little smoothing and refinement.

[Achebe]

The word used in the Gita is 'kaal', which means 'time', used mostly in the sense of 'fate' or 'futurity', as well as 'death' - not just human death, but the death of things in general (the universe, worlds, civilisations, etc.). The other word for time is 'Samay', which doesn't have the same connotations.
So 'death' or 'time' are both reasonably accurate translations. I think Oppenheimer's allusion was spot on at the time.

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

Hi Snarling - you have some nice images there. I particularly liked:
1. 'like confetti...the stars'
2. 'fistfulls of breath'
3. 'hurtling...void'

On the not so good side:
1. I don't see a connection between the Gita allusion of the title and the Greek myth content of the poem. Since Cronos and Zeus did not actually exist, the first allusion doesn't serve to illuminate the second. The proper title for this poem should have a Greek allusion. Otherwise, one can throw in a FIFA 1954 allusion about Ferenc Puskas with equal validity.
2. The narrator is Time, but in Greek myth Time isn't an active deity (sure, Cronos is represented as holding an hourglass or something, but he isn't exactly top dog anymore). So to say things like 'I made the clouds with my laughter' is pretty confusing. Are you talking about a Judaic god now?
3. 'Leviathan' is a noun and there was only one Apollo, who's still alive. The inclusion of Leviathan now makes it a random mishmash of unconnected myths.

Basically, if you're using allusion, you need to be consistent.
If I've made any factual errors in the above, please do let me know.

Hi! Thanks so much for reviewing! The title was actually an allusion to Oppenheimer saying that the creation of the atom bomb reminded him of that quote from the Bhagavad Gita. So I wasn't really trying to quote the Gita so much as I was trying to capture the idea of a human grasping at more power than she ever should have been allowed to have, really. Also the idea of using a FIFA allusion to talk about a Hungarian footballer sounds awesome. I think it's almost always fun to mix metaphors and references and stuff. Brings new life to description.

Also the narrator isn't time. It's me. And the laughter is me laughing at Cronos begging for mercy. And I know it's impossible for me to have created the universe. It was just fun to write about a heady power trip.

And I meant leviathan as an adjective. It can be used as an adjective. And I mean, I didn't really create the universe, so who's to say I can't pretend to have killed Apollo? And I know there's only one, it was just also a fun concept to play with, a bunch of beautiful sun gods dying at my hand. Also Apollo being the stand-in term for all the sun gods.

[Achebe]

Hi Snarling - you have some nice images there. I particularly liked:
1. 'like confetti...the stars'
2. 'fistfulls of breath'
3. 'hurtling...void'

On the not so good side:
1. I don't see a connection between the Gita allusion of the title and the Greek myth content of the poem. Since Cronos and Zeus did not actually exist, the first allusion doesn't serve to illuminate the second. The proper title for this poem should have a Greek allusion. Otherwise, one can throw in a FIFA 1954 allusion about Ferenc Puskas with equal validity.
2. The narrator is Time, but in Greek myth Time isn't an active deity (sure, Cronos is represented as holding an hourglass or something, but he isn't exactly top dog anymore). So to say things like 'I made the clouds with my laughter' is pretty confusing. Are you talking about a Judaic god now?
3. 'Leviathan' is a noun and there was only one Apollo, who's still alive. The inclusion of Leviathan now makes it a random mishmash of unconnected myths.

Basically, if you're using allusion, you need to be consistent.
If I've made any factual errors in the above, please do let me know.

Hi!  Thanks so much for reviewing!  The title was actually an allusion to Oppenheimer saying that the creation of the atom bomb reminded him of that quote from the Bhagavad Gita.  So I wasn't really trying to quote the Gita so much as I was trying to capture the idea of a human grasping at more power than she ever should have been allowed to have, really.  ...what's that got to do with anything in the poem? You might as well have titled it 'Rainy day in Santiago' then

Also the idea of using a FIFA allusion to talk about a Hungarian footballer sounds awesome.  I think it's almost always fun to mix metaphors and references and stuff.  Brings new life to description. ...well, then let's be even more arbitrary. How about calling it 'Victoria Bitters after 7 o'clock on Saturdays'? Mixing metaphors makes sense if there's a point to it.

Also the narrator isn't time.  It's me.  ...Then it's pretty hard to make sense of anything in the poem! You created the clouds with your breath??
And the laughter is me laughing at Cronos begging for mercy.  And I know it's impossible for me to have created the universe.  It was just fun to write about a heady power trip. ...If you're saying that you essentially wrote nonsense because you wanted to, then pls refer my observation later on.

And I meant leviathan as an adjective.  It can be used as an adjective. ...can you provide me with an example of where it has been used as an adjective? Note that you are using it with the plural word 'beasts', so the singular metaphor does not work.

And I mean, I didn't really create the universe, so who's to say I can't pretend to have killed Apollo?  ...can't you have written your poem in Dothraki? If you are saying that you have the licence to write pretty much any old nonsense you're right, because it's a free country, but then why exactly are you asking people to waste their time critiquing it?
And I know there's only one, it was just also a fun concept to play with, a bunch of beautiful sun gods dying at my hand.  Also Apollo being the stand-in term for all the sun gods. ...he can't be the stand-in just because you feel like it!!!

Hi - I'm confused by your reply. It seems to me that your response is 'I wanted to write a bit of nonsense, it's okay if nothing makes sense in the poem'. Which is fine, but in that case please state it as such, and don't invite people to waste their time critiquing it.

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

Hi Snarling - you have some nice images there. I particularly liked:
1. 'like confetti...the stars'
2. 'fistfulls of breath'
3. 'hurtling...void'

On the not so good side:
1. I don't see a connection between the Gita allusion of the title and the Greek myth content of the poem. Since Cronos and Zeus did not actually exist, the first allusion doesn't serve to illuminate the second. The proper title for this poem should have a Greek allusion. Otherwise, one can throw in a FIFA 1954 allusion about Ferenc Puskas with equal validity.
2. The narrator is Time, but in Greek myth Time isn't an active deity (sure, Cronos is represented as holding an hourglass or something, but he isn't exactly top dog anymore). So to say things like 'I made the clouds with my laughter' is pretty confusing. Are you talking about a Judaic god now?
3. 'Leviathan' is a noun and there was only one Apollo, who's still alive. The inclusion of Leviathan now makes it a random mishmash of unconnected myths.

Basically, if you're using allusion, you need to be consistent.
If I've made any factual errors in the above, please do let me know.

Hi!  Thanks so much for reviewing!  The title was actually an allusion to Oppenheimer saying that the creation of the atom bomb reminded him of that quote from the Bhagavad Gita.  So I wasn't really trying to quote the Gita so much as I was trying to capture the idea of a human grasping at more power than she ever should have been allowed to have, really.  ...what's that got to do with anything in the poem? You might as well have titled it 'Rainy day in Santiago' then  It's relevant because I'm the human trying to grasp at more power than I really should have ever been allowed to have.  And I'm the speaker.  So it's entirely relevant.

Also the idea of using a FIFA allusion to talk about a Hungarian footballer sounds awesome.  I think it's almost always fun to mix metaphors and references and stuff.  Brings new life to description. ...well, then let's be even more arbitrary. How about calling it 'Victoria Bitters after 7 o'clock on Saturdays'? Mixing metaphors makes sense if there's a point to it.  The thing is, FIFA kind of has something to do with a Hungarian footballer.  Victoria bitters, which I'm going to assume is a cocktail, has nothing to do with a poem about aspirational delusions of grandeur.

Also the narrator isn't time.  It's me.  ...Then it's pretty hard to make sense of anything in the poem! You created the clouds with your breath??  Well I mean Aphrodite was created from Uranus's cut-off testicles and in Chinese mythology, the Heavenly Empress created the Milky Way galaxy with her hairpin, so why can't I make the clouds with my breath?  At least I can make something approximating clouds with my breath in real life.
And the laughter is me laughing at Cronos begging for mercy.  And I know it's impossible for me to have created the universe.  It was just fun to write about a heady power trip. ...If you're saying that you essentially wrote nonsense because you wanted to, then pls refer my observation later on.  Lewis Carroll wrote nonsense because he wanted too.  The Jabberwocky isn't exactly the epitome of logical and sense-making poetry.

And I meant leviathan as an adjective.  It can be used as an adjective. ...can you provide me with an example of where it has been used as an adjective? Note that you are using it with the plural word 'beasts', so the singular metaphor does not work. Merriam Webster says it can be used as an adjective for something really big. And why doesn't the metaphor work. What singular metaphor?

And I mean, I didn't really create the universe, so who's to say I can't pretend to have killed Apollo?  ...can't you have written your poem in Dothraki? If you are saying that you have the licence to write pretty much any old nonsense you're right, because it's a free country, but then why exactly are you asking people to waste their time critiquing it?
And I know there's only one, it was just also a fun concept to play with, a bunch of beautiful sun gods dying at my hand.  Also Apollo being the stand-in term for all the sun gods. ...he can't be the stand-in just because you feel like it!!! Why not?

Hi - I'm confused by your reply. It seems to me that your response is 'I wanted to write a bit of nonsense, it's okay if nothing makes sense in the poem'. Which is fine, but in that case please state it as such, and don't invite people to waste their time critiquing it.

[Achebe]

Hi!  Thanks so much for reviewing!  The title was actually an allusion to Oppenheimer saying that the creation of the atom bomb reminded him of that quote from the Bhagavad Gita.  So I wasn't really trying to quote the Gita so much as I was trying to capture the idea of a human grasping at more power than she ever should have been allowed to have, really.  ...what's that got to do with anything in the poem? You might as well have titled it 'Rainy day in Santiago' then  It's relevant because I'm the human trying to grasp at more power than I really should have ever been allowed to have.  And I'm the speaker.  So it's entirely relevant.  Nothing in the poem hints at delusions of grandeur or an unreliable narrator. I mean, you can write a poem that goes "I am....." followed by blank spaces and claim that it's a day in the life of an Alzheimer's patient, but it would be a pretty lousy poem.

Also the idea of using a FIFA allusion to talk about a Hungarian footballer sounds awesome.  I think it's almost always fun to mix metaphors and references and stuff.  Brings new life to description. ...well, then let's be even more arbitrary. How about calling it 'Victoria Bitters after 7 o'clock on Saturdays'? Mixing metaphors makes sense if there's a point to it.  The thing is, FIFA kind of has something to do with a Hungarian footballer.  Victoria bitters, which I'm going to assume is a cocktail, has nothing to do with a poem about aspirational delusions of grandeur. ...ref point above

Also the narrator isn't time.  It's me.  ...Then it's pretty hard to make sense of anything in the poem! You created the clouds with your breath??  Well I mean Aphrodite was created from Uranus's cut-off testicles and in Chinese mythology, the Heavenly Empress created the Milky Way galaxy with her hairpin, so why can't I make the clouds with my breath?  At least I can make something approximating clouds with my breath in real life. [b]When reading mythology, we engage in a willing suspension of disbelief. Also, myths are background knowledge and when you refer to them in a poem, the reader has a context. In your poem, the reader does not. Please refer my first point[/b]

And the laughter is me laughing at Cronos begging for mercy.  And I know it's impossible for me to have created the universe.  It was just fun to write about a heady power trip. ...If you're saying that you essentially wrote nonsense because you wanted to, then pls refer my observation later on.  Lewis Carroll wrote nonsense because he wanted too.  The Jabberwocky isn't exactly the epitome of logical and sense-making poetry. You can distinguish between something that's written so as to be deliberately nonsensical, and something that's just written badly and so appears to be nonsensical, right? Jabberwocky is a clever poem in which LC uses non-existent words to create a plausible story. That's the whole point of nonsense verse - there's an internal logic that's different from our own, but internally it's consistent. Nonsense verse isn't just verse that makes no sense.

And I meant leviathan as an adjective.  It can be used as an adjective. ...can you provide me with an example of where it has been used as an adjective? Note that you are using it with the plural word 'beasts', so the singular metaphor does not work. Merriam Webster says it can be used as an adjective for something really big. And why doesn't the metaphor work. What singular metaphor? You are right. 'The leviathan state' uses 'leviathan' as an adjective, so there should be no problem, singular or plural. Disregard my comment on this one.

And I mean, I didn't really create the universe, so who's to say I can't pretend to have killed Apollo?  ...can't you have written your poem in Dothraki? If you are saying that you have the licence to write pretty much any old nonsense you're right, because it's a free country, but then why exactly are you asking people to waste their time critiquing it?
And I know there's only one, it was just also a fun concept to play with, a bunch of beautiful sun gods dying at my hand.  Also Apollo being the stand-in term for all the sun gods. ...he can't be the stand-in just because you feel like it!!! Why not? Ref point about mythology

Hi - I'm confused by your reply. It seems to me that your response is 'I wanted to write a bit of nonsense, it's okay if nothing makes sense in the poem'. Which is fine, but in that case please state it as such, and don't invite people to waste their time critiquing it.

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

Hi - I'm confused by your reply. It seems to me that your response is 'I wanted to write a bit of nonsense, it's okay if nothing makes sense in the poem'. Which is fine, but in that case please state it as such, and don't invite people to waste their time critiquing it.

So I feel like there may be a misunderstanding here. I know you said that there's nothing suggesting delusions of grandeur or an unreliable narrator, but I think what isn't being understood is that I am the narrator. Like. Me personally. The writer is the speaker in this case. I made up a creation myth in which I the writer am the creator. I can write that I made the clouds with my breath and killed multiple sun gods because I am the ultimate creator of everything here. It was explained to me by a friend who is an English major that in poetry, people are taught to not conflate writer with speaker, and to assume that the writer has created a character through whom they speak, even if the poem is written in first person. I wasn't aware of that. So when I write in first person, I'm writing literally in first person. Does that clear anything up?

[rowens]

This poem sounds like a professional wrestler in the early 1990s with generic mike skills. There's nothing wrong with mixing myths, the world is a mixed myth, there's no mix, just the same. You're abolishing it all anyway. It seems all a setup for the last line, which is very good but seems familiar. So either it's a great line or an unoriginal one. I guess it depends on what you've read.

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

This poem sounds like a professional wrestler in the early 1990s with generic mike skills. There's nothing wrong with mixing myths, the world is a mixed myth, there's no mix, just the same. You're abolishing it all anyway. It seems all a setup for the last line, which is very good but seems familiar. So either it's a great line or an unoriginal one. I guess it depends on what you've read.

Um. I'm not entirely sure what a professional wrestler in the early 90s with generic mic skills sounds like but imma assume that's not a compliment?

Also does it make the line greater or more cliched if I said I've generally not read much in the way of classical epics and pretty much only read the summaries of them?

[rowens]

The last line sounds familiar, as if it had been written before, or something very similar. If it hasn't, that's a good thing. It should have been. But it would have a lot more impact if the rest of the poem didn't sound so silly. It should sound sort of silly, but if it had a harder edge, that balance would achieve something bigger than what you have.

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

The last line sounds familiar, as if it had been written before, or something very similar. If it hasn't, that's a good thing. It should have been. But it would have a lot more impact if the rest of the poem didn't sound so silly. It should sound sort of silly, but if it had a harder edge, that balance would achieve something bigger than what you have.

Oh cool!

Um. How's it sound silly? Asking out of genuine want to know.

[rowens]

It sounds like an Ali interview or an extended Chuck Norris joke.

[SnarlingThroughOurSmiles]

It sounds like an Ali interview or an extended Chuck Norris joke.

I mean, to be fair, it was inspired by me dramatically declaring that sleep was for the weak and that I was clearly all-powerful when he told me to go to sleep, so. You're not too far off.