Self-destructive (The ocean like the brain)

[LiteraryAntiquity]

Self-destructive. (The ocean like the brain)
LiteraryFailurePiece.

Fallen to an infinite, distancing sea
inching my way back to the beach.
I am worthless in waves of white and grey
bobbing, beside bottled letters, in the evening spray.

Standing in your terracotta living room
my mind is as clear as the clean wallpaper.
I am swallowing my way back to the sub-ocean,
You've forced down my throat your wicked potion

Wakened to the noise of bottles uncorked,
I clamber onto a raft that can carry my weight.
I am bobbing above the infinite, distancing sea
and praying to God for a reason to be.

The seasons are shifting and the tide is coming in.
I could not sleep in the forgotten realm,
this place I swam so you can't infiltrate
this love for you, this internal rape.

When the beach meets my skin,
soft pebbles graze my cheek.
I'm a ticking bomb that cannot be timed
and will not seek closure it cannot find.

Still lost to the infinite, distancing sea
inching further, further from the beach.
I am speechless in silence of white and grey
bobbing, with bottled love letters, in the evening spray.

[Todd]

Hi LF,

This is really nice. I've read a bit of your work but haven't had the time to comment fully yet (I think this one is my favorite so far). Here are some comments for you:

Self-destructive. (The ocean like the brain)
LiteraryFailurePiece.

Fallen to an infinite, distancing sea
inching my way back to the beach.
I am worthless in waves of white and grey
bobbing, with unredeemed bottled letters, in the evening spray.

This first stanza is dynamite. I love line three. I think line four feels a little off though with unredeemed might be implied and could probably be cut. It's a stelar opening though

Standing in your terracotta living room
my mind is as clear as the clean wallpaper.
I am swallowing my way back to the sub-ocean,
feeding loss of thoughts and loss of notions.

Again love the first three lines. The fourth line feels a bit awkward and unclear to me

Wakened to the noise of bottles uncorked,
I clamber onto a raft that can carry my weight.
I am bobbing above the infinite, distancing sea
and praying to God for a reason to be.

sea and be is a judgment call. It doesn't ruin the poem but it's a bit predictable. I love line three here though I think you could cut "I am".

The seasons are shifting and the tide is coming in.
I could not sleep in the forgotten realm,
this place I swam so you can't infiltrate
this love for you, this internal rape.

Maybe shift to present tense in line one: the seasons shift and the tide comes in. Lines three and four seem to be the main point of the poem the crux. I love "this love for you, this internal rape

When the beach meets my skin,
soft pebbles graze my cheek.
I'm a ticking bomb that cannot be timed
and will not seek closure it cannot to find.

I'll have to appeal to those who rhyme more in their poetry but timed and find seem to be slant rhymes to me. I think you have a typo in line four you need to cut the "to". This is all good.

Still lost to the infinite, distancing sea
inching further, further from the beach.
I am speechless in silence of white and grey
bobbing, with bottled love letters, in the evening spray.

The repetition works for me.

So, I thought this was a very well put together poem. Thanks for posting it. I hope the comments were helpful to you.

Best,

Todd

[LiteraryAntiquity]

Hi LF,

This is really nice. I've read a bit of your work but haven't had the time to comment fully yet (I think this one is my favorite so far). Here are some comments for you:

Self-destructive. (The ocean like the brain)
LiteraryFailurePiece.

Fallen to an infinite, distancing sea
inching my way back to the beach.
I am worthless in waves of white and grey
bobbing, with unredeemed bottled letters, in the evening spray.

This first stanza is dynamite. I love line three. I think line four feels a little off though with unredeemed might be implied and could probably be cut. It's a stelar opening though

Standing in your terracotta living room
my mind is as clear as the clean wallpaper.
I am swallowing my way back to the sub-ocean,
feeding loss of thoughts and loss of notions.

Again love the first three lines. The fourth line feels a bit awkward and unclear to me

Wakened to the noise of bottles uncorked,
I clamber onto a raft that can carry my weight.
I am bobbing above the infinite, distancing sea
and praying to God for a reason to be.

sea and be is a judgment call. It doesn't ruin the poem but it's a bit predictable. I love line three here though I think you could cut "I am".

The seasons are shifting and the tide is coming in.
I could not sleep in the forgotten realm,
this place I swam so you can't infiltrate
this love for you, this internal rape.

Maybe shift to present tense in line one: the seasons shift and the tide comes in. Lines three and four seem to be the main point of the poem the crux. I love "this love for you, this internal rape

When the beach meets my skin,
soft pebbles graze my cheek.
I'm a ticking bomb that cannot be timed
and will not seek closure it cannot to find.

I'll have to appeal to those who rhyme more in their poetry but timed and find seem to be slant rhymes to me. I think you have a typo in line four you need to cut the "to". This is all good.

Still lost to the infinite, distancing sea
inching further, further from the beach.
I am speechless in silence of white and grey
bobbing, with bottled love letters, in the evening spray.

The repetition works for me.

So, I thought this was a very well put together poem. Thanks for posting it. I hope the comments were helpful to you.

Best,

Todd

Thank you Todd, I'm so grateful you commented, I hope the reworking has aided the poem. Thanks again. LF :-)

[addy]

Great poem LF. The set-up, with the mind as the sea, really drew me in, and it carried well throughout the poem.

Very minor quibbles, in the first stanza maybe you could use a different word from "redeemed" (sounds more like bottlecaps or coupons, but maybe that's just me LOL). Also, there seems to be a pivotal moment between the fifth and the last stanza, when the protagonist ultimately decides to leave the stability of the shore he had somehow sought and go back to the sea's tempest... I wanted to get more of a sense of that important shift at that point. But as I said, just minor suggestions. Thanks for posting this

[LiteraryAntiquity]

Self-destructive. (The ocean like the brain)
LiteraryFailurePiece.

Fallen to an infinite, distancing sea
inching my way back to the beach.
I am worthless in waves of white and grey
bobbing, beside bottled letters, in the evening spray.

At this point I am attempting to show how weak I am in not wanting to face what is going through my mind. I'm inching away from my mental - trying to just be numb. The beach, in a way, is just my physical being with no real thought process.

Standing in your terracotta living room
my mind is as clear as the clean wallpaper.
I am swallowing my way back to the sub-ocean,
You've forced down my throat your wicked potion

The second stanza is supposed to be one of the letters in the corked bottle. A memory of standing in his terracotta living room, trying to ignore the things that are being said. Here I am trying to focus back on my mind with a lack of memory there but I am stuck swallowing a memory he has forced to the forefront of my mind.

Wakened to the noise of bottles uncorked,
I clamber onto a raft that can carry my weight.
I am bobbing above the infinite, distancing sea
and praying to God for a reason to be.

In this stanza I am being reawoken to more uncorked bottles, as if all the bottled memories are uncorking around me and the raft is explaining my source of escape, something above my mind where I do not have to face the current. The God referrence refers to my prayers of loss of memory where I no longer remember who he is.

The seasons are shifting and the tide is coming in.
I could not sleep in the forgotten realm,
this place I swam so you can't infiltrate
this love for you, this internal rape.

Here I am divulging my closeness to the beach, it's the decision between continuing with the painful rememberance or losing all thought of him and as I am swimming to the beach, somewhere he can't infiltrate I am doubting whether I really want to forget him and the things I feel

When the beach meets my skin,
soft pebbles graze my cheek.
I'm a ticking bomb that cannot be timed
and will not seek closure it cannot find.

In this stanza I have reached the beach only to realise I am still totally, irevocably in love with the man, and closure will not be found there I will have to face it to get over it

Still lost to the infinite, distancing sea
inching further, further from the beach.
I am speechless in silence of white and grey
bobbing, with bottled love letters, in the evening spray.

The final stanza is my accepting of his memory and my accepting the pain. I can almost see myself just lying defeated inside my ming with no real hope of escaping and I am left with all the good memories, those which only make it worse.

Hey, Addy, I've got an idea, I'm going to try and explain the thought process as it went along because usually my poems make little sense to others whilst making lots of sense to me. Todd really understood it by catching the 'internal rape' line.

[heslopian]

I was a tad confused by the narrative at first, as I thought you were saying, in the second stanza, that you'd been saved from the sea by the mystery man, and now were standing safe in his home. Very good piece though, covering an old theme with a certain freshness, though it sputtered a bit here and there.

Self-destructive. (The ocean like the brain)
LiteraryFailurePiece.

Fallen to an infinite, distancing sea
inching my way back to the beach.
I am worthless in waves of white and grey I love that line so much I want to hug it
bobbing, beside bottled letters, in the evening spray. Are those "bottled letters" needed? It sounds too contrived, in my opinion, and hurts the atmosphere. I think this verse would work better if there was no reference to any human artefacts, if all that was present is you and the world. Then the isolation theme could really envelop the reader.

Standing in your terracotta living room Do you need that adjective? I liked it at first, but looking back I think it stalls the rhythm of the piece. Seeing as you never identify the man, this information isn’t really required.
my mind is as clear as the clean wallpaper. Same problem. What you could do is write another stanza describing the living room, if you really want to set the scene, but these tidbits of info just clutter up the verse.
I am swallowing my way back to the sub-ocean, Not sure what you mean by “sub-ocean,” but that could just be me being dense
You've forced down my throat your wicked potion

Wakened to the noise of bottles uncorked, Ditto my comment on the last line of the first stanza.
I clamber onto a raft that can carry my weight.
I am bobbing above the infinite, distancing sea Like the establishment of a refrain, though it isn’t very consistent.
and praying to God for a reason to be.

The seasons are shifting and the tide is coming in.
I could not sleep in the forgotten realm, Another line I want to hug
this place I swam so you can't infiltrate
this love for you, this internal rape.

When the beach meets my skin,
soft pebbles graze my cheek. Beautifully evocative.
I'm a ticking bomb that cannot be timed If it cannot be timed then why is it ticking?
and will not seek closure it cannot find. I like this line. There’s a sassy kind of wisdom to it.

Still lost to the infinite, distancing sea
inching further, further from the beach.
I am speechless in silence of white and grey
bobbing, with bottled love letters, in the evening spray. I think I get what you’re trying to do with those bottled love letters, but they just don’t work for me. The whole idea is too Mills & Boon (IMHO).

All in all, a dark and moving love poem, mature yet charmingly naive. One to be read by young romantics

[addy]

Oh no, no need to explain it to me LOL! A poem should be enjoyed even without the cliff notes, and I did enjoy this very much. I'd of course be very interested to hear your writing process if you feel like sharing it, but I'm not commenting because you have to justify your work to me. My comments are just there to be considered if they happen to help you or ignored if you don't find them useful. In this case, since I obviously missed something in the reading of the poem which most of your other readers "got", then that part of the poem is most surely fine