Swinging Soliloquy

[just mercedes]

No comment on the content - just a note to say that I thought I was reading blank verse, but the syllable count kept changing. I'm not sure why this seemed important.

[tectak]

No comment on the content - just a note to say that I thought I was reading blank verse, but the syllable count kept changing. I'm not sure why this seemed important.

Hi merc,
Like you, I am unsure of my overall plan with the form of this one. I mentioned the fluidity/veracity ratio earlier on...and I hold to that BUT I take on board you comment on syllable count, as long as we both accepf that counting syllables is just a starting exercise towards mathmatical uniformity, not strict meter.
Best,
and thanks,
tectak

[heslopian]

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on. This, coupled with the title, made me think of a rope swing, and from there two children playing on one.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. This line is a bit confusing. If an action is love, and she's not the one performing that action, then how does "I loved you" logically follow? Unless you mean that she interprets the action as a statement of love, and so reciprocates.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; Is a semi-colon needed here? The next line begins with a conjunction ("until").
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me. Is "waking me" needed? We can guess that she woke by "pierced my dreaming".
I told my friends that everything was crazy, I'm not fond of words like "everything" in formed poetry (if this is that. I'm guessing its formality based on vague typographical symmetry and occasional rhyme), because the pronunciation of their syllables is slightly vague. ("Ev - err - ree - thing" or "ev - ree - thing"?) A solution to this is apostrophes which delete syllables, i.e. ev'rything, but I wouldn't dare suggest such archaic nonsense. Also, is the comma needed?
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. "Which" would be more melodic than "that"?
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you,
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face;
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls. Very good image. Strangely brutal in its evocation of crying, smudging and washing away.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired. The narrator comes across as really charming in these lines. She's girlish, even, like a teenage girl on the cusp of new love, or an older woman who loves passionately but has repressed feelings towards sex.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? I'm sorry, but these two lines are really corny, like lines in a girl's pink-leather diary. The problem, I think, is that they're explanatory, telling emotions which previous lines, like the "mascara rivulets" image, show. Being so explanatory, it feels self-pitying.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture, "Hang my locks"? I'm not sure what that means. Is she draping locks of hair over a picture frame?
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm. Good accompaniment to the previous washing-off-of-make-up imagery.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief; Excellent line, melodically and in its perfect use of "jaundiced", which lends it a haunting air.
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair. "Latex" what? Call me immature, but that word made me think of a condom. 
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope... Another really corny line, sorry. It sounds like something from a pop song.
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground. This line is a bit "and then the ruined maiden blushed and fainted with her wounded shame!"
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud. Wait, what? Is the narrator a man or a woman? Or does the acting of hanging her make the "you" of the poem a man again, in his eyes? All in all, these three lines should be whipped out like a cancerous tumour. They're corny, explanatory, and anti-climactic. "Lying dead across my chair" would be a much, much, much stronger close.
tectak
2015

The poem has some elegant phrasing and imagery, but its narrative and characters are very vaguely defined. Critique is, of course, JMHO, absolutely. Thank you for the read

[tectak]

I knew you once, you held the rope I swung on. This, coupled with the title, made me think of a rope swing, and from there two children playing on one.
If holding me that way was love, then I loved you. This line is a bit confusing. If an action is love, and she's not the one performing that action, then how does "I loved you" logically follow? Unless you mean that she interprets the action as a statement of love, and so reciprocates.
You made me swing as high as screams in nightmares; Is a semi-colon needed here? The next line begins with a conjunction ("until").
until they pierced  my dreaming, waking me. Is "waking me" needed? We can guess that she woke by "pierced my dreaming".
I told my friends that everything was crazy, I'm not fond of words like "everything" in formed poetry (if this is that. I'm guessing its formality based on vague typographical symmetry and occasional rhyme), because the pronunciation of their syllables is slightly vague. ("Ev - err - ree - thing" or "ev - ree - thing"?) A solution to this is apostrophes which delete syllables, i.e. ev'rything, but I wouldn't dare suggest such archaic nonsense. Also, is the comma needed?
in that gushing way that left them wanting more. "Which" would be more melodic than "that"?
Sometimes I cried, and found that crying pulled you,
so I laughed and tears of joy were what you saw.
I know you watched me washing off my day face;
mascara rivulets in pink soap swirls. Very good image. Strangely brutal in its evocation of crying, smudging and washing away.
I never understood what made it better to be naked,
or what you saw in me when I was tired. The narrator comes across as really charming in these lines. She's girlish, even, like a teenage girl on the cusp of new love, or an older woman who loves passionately but has repressed feelings towards sex.
What makes me, even now, believe you loved me...
me, who by my one great lie made both lives true? I'm sorry, but these two lines are really corny, like lines in a girl's pink-leather diary. The problem, I think, is that they're explanatory, telling emotions which previous lines, like the "mascara rivulets" image, show. Being so explanatory, it feels self-pitying.
I hang my locks each night beside your picture, "Hang my locks"? I'm not sure what that means. Is she draping locks of hair over a picture frame?
my swollen lips are paled by cleansing balm. Good accompaniment to the previous washing-off-of-make-up imagery.
In shades of jaundiced light I see my body in relief; Excellent line, melodically and in its perfect use of "jaundiced", which lends it a haunting air.
latex lit by street lamps, lying dead across my chair. "Latex" what? Call me immature, but that word made me think of a condom. 
A corpse to be, I swung for you, on your hangman's rope... Another really corny line, sorry. It sounds like something from a pop song.
but now the noose is let, I fall ingloriously to ground. This line is a bit "and then the ruined maiden blushed and fainted with her wounded shame!"
A man again, amen, you say...I hope you're proud. Wait, what? Is the narrator a man or a woman? Or does the acting of hanging her make the "you" of the poem a man again, in his eyes? All in all, these three lines should be whipped out like a cancerous tumour. They're corny, explanatory, and anti-climactic. "Lying dead across my chair" would be a much, much, much stronger close.
tectak
2015

The poem has some elegant phrasing and imagery, but its narrative and characters are very vaguely defined. Critique is, of course, JMHO, absolutely. Thank you for the read

Sorry hes. You fail!
Read the crits...he he ! (quite)
You should get out more
Best,
tectak

[heslopian]

I see now it's a gay relationship. Curse my heteronormative assumptions! Much of my critique still stands, though (I think).

[tectak]

I see now it's a gay relationship. Curse my heteronormative assumptions! Much of my critique still stands, though (I think).

Ah,you are a simple soul! Gay, cross-dressed,bewigged, botoxed,swinging, body suit....loving it!
Yes to most of your grammatical comments...they have been much mentioned and will be severely dealt with. "until" is a subordinating conjunction and always will be; until the end of time (If you get my drift).
The semicolons are going.
The "which/that" question is still up for grabs. Both are acceptable, one is correct and one is vernacular...what a call.
Best,
tectak

[heslopian]

The "which/that" question is still up for grabs. Both are acceptable, one is correct and one is vernacular...what a call.

Best,
tectak

Yeah, it's just my preference, really. "Which", to my ears, is more melodic and powerful. You should have known what a simple soul I am. I quote John Calvin in my poems, after all

[tectak]

The "which/that" question is still up for grabs. Both are acceptable, one is correct and one is vernacular...what a call.

Best,
tectak

Yeah, it's just my preference, really. "Which", to my ears, is more melodic and powerful. You should have known what a simple soul I am. I quote John Calvin in my poems, after all

Go to bed and dream of proper things....like, er, condoms. What the hell is a condom?
Gd'night.
tectak