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Naked in wet heat atop the comforter,
she lies with her head on my chest
and I will my heart to slow.
The sky could break with cold rain
any second, the salt on our skin drunk down
with a margarita, the musk in the sheets
overwhelmed by fresh mint, the red of our necks
lathered in cool cream.
She shuffles her body and her damp hair
settles by my nose. I close my eyes
content in the flame.
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(06-23-2024, 01:42 AM)Wjames Wrote: Naked in wet heat atop the comforter,
she lies with her head on my chest
and I will my heart to slow.
The sky could break with cold rain
any second, the salt on our skin drunk down
with a margarita, the musk in the sheets
overwhelmed by fresh mint, the red of our necks
lathered in cool cream.
Sounds like you're having the margarita in bed, and the salt on the skin being drunk down sounds weird, drunk for sure, and the cool cream on the necks I don't get, like sun screen from the heat of the day? But the sky could break any moment. And you are inside on a comforter
She shuffles her body and her damp hair
settles by my nose. I close my eyes
content in the flame.
I really love the way you word things, there's a lot of layers in here, but some of those layers seem to contradict on the surface, while humid makes sense as a title, it doesn't quite lend towards the flame, even though the flame is a passion in the heat.
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
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Hey Crndlsm, thanks for your thoughts.
The margarita, the mint, the cream - I tried to use them as extensions of rain cooling things (they are meant to be images of the rain, not really occuring themselves). Not sure if they work too great or not, but I like them. I don't think there's a contradiction with a sunburn and the fact it could rain - often on a hot humid day, it's sunny and then storm clouds form later on.
I think flame can definitely be improved because it is so dry, might change it to sweat - but I think something hot is good - maybe steam?
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Just replace cool cream with aloe vera. I think cool cream is wildly distracting.
But once you get rid of that, it’s excellent.
Can you condense this by weeding unnecessary pronouns? For instance,
“Naked wet heat atop the comforter,
she lies her head on my chest
and I will my heart slow.”
I don’t think ditching those pronouns changes the meaning much. It just condenses it.
Also, I’m having trouble with this:
“She shuffles her body and her damp hair
settles by my nose. I close my eyes
content in the flame.”
If this is about sleep, the verbs are wrong. If it’s about oral sex, the verbs and the prepositions are wrong.
Note: both are valid reads.
Lastly, “I close my eyes, content in the flame” lacks meaning unnecessarily. There’s no sin in clarifying.
Macro note: You’re telling an audience about time spent in bed with a woman. Poems like this improve rapidly once you take a machete to cliches and syntactical words.
You can make this awesome in ten minutes. Honest? That’s tougher.
*”lays her head”—sorry, I rushed that note
A yak is normal.