When the wind stops

[Rookie]

The wind stops
for a split pause
The melody hops
A silent applause

A sophisticated notion
Softly catered emotion
fragile—yet sharp
An agile carp can scarp

The intrinsic fire flares aggresively into a searing state
Dying and trance-sick I transit to stress leading to fear and hate
Double doubting more than a cynical arsenist
Down and drowing mortem, a clinical wounded wrist
The fire mitigates, the smoke rises, the debris rains
Pyre hits the gates, and they remain locked—constricting chains

A shattered state remains
The scattered hate strains
Never again.
Said in vain.
Decisions wrongly made.

The breeze blows
to seize enclose
The melody continues
an encore is in the dues

[Todd]

Hi Rookie, welcome to the site! A few brief comments:

I like the cadence and the rhythm of the shorter lines you seem to have a natural feel for it. There are a few bumps that you should catch if you read it out loud. The first two strophes work the best.

Minor issues: L4 to would probably work better than a.

Major issue: I don't think the longer lines work well in the poem. There are too many adverbs and adjectives weighing the lines down. They feel overwritten and not nearly as cool and good as your shorter lines.

L11: minor typo arsonist.

Just my thoughts.

Best,

Todd

[Rookie]

Hi Rookie, welcome to the site! A few brief comments:

I like the cadence and the rhythm of the shorter lines you seem to have a natural feel for it. There are a few bumps that you should catch if you read it out loud. The first two strophes work the best.

Minor issues: L4 to would probably work better than a.

Major issue: I don't think the longer lines work well in the poem. There are too many adverbs and adjectives weighing the lines down. They feel overwritten and not nearly as cool and good as your shorter lines.

L11: minor typo arsonist.

Just my thoughts.

Best,

Todd

Wow thanks for the quick and effective feedback I thought the structure of the longer lines would add to the effect of chaos and instability relative to the calmness of the shorter lines. At the same time, portray the climax of a bipolar calm-chaos-calm breakdown.

[billy]

hi rookie
i'm with Todd about the 4th line, you could also use in scarp feels forced in that i don't see it in connection with carp. but a great effort with the two opening verse. i think you could cut some of the longer lines which would make them less heavy but still strong enough to counter the softer thoughts. i'd suggest an edit of the larger verse in order to see where the poem could take you.
thanks for the read.

[Todd]

Hi Rookie, welcome to the site! A few brief comments:

I like the cadence and the rhythm of the shorter lines you seem to have a natural feel for it. There are a few bumps that you should catch if you read it out loud. The first two strophes work the best.

Minor issues: L4 to would probably work better than a.

Major issue: I don't think the longer lines work well in the poem. There are too many adverbs and adjectives weighing the lines down. They feel overwritten and not nearly as cool and good as your shorter lines.

L11: minor typo arsonist.

Just my thoughts.

Best,

Todd

Wow thanks for the quick and effective feedback I thought the structure of the longer lines would add to the effect of chaos and instability relative to the calmness of the shorter lines. At the same time, portray the climax of a bipolar calm-chaos-calm breakdown.

Here's the weird thing. And it may be just me as a reader. Shorter lines are read faster and increase the pace of a poem. Longer lines go slower and tend to read more calm. You might be using the wrong line length to do what you want...like using a hammer to pound bolts instead of a wrench. The content of your shorter lines fits with a calming mood but the pace we read them at works against calm. The content your reaching for with the longer lines may express more destructiveness but the form of them doesn't aid the goal in my opinion...if that makes any sense.

[winterborn]

I agree with Todd here about how shorter lines portray chaos more than longer ones -- I think it of it as how quickly our eyes jumpt from one line to the next when they are short, so no matter how calming the images, shorter lines build to a climax.

Overall, I enjoyed the read - I think that you could tighten up the middle section of this to make it more effective - but I liked "trance-sick" and the internal rhyme of "clinical" and "cynical" and the alliteration with "double doubting" and "down and drowing" (did you mean "drowning"?) - so there is definitely a lot of potential here.

[serge gurkski]

Hi Rookie,

love the wordplay immensely.
Another minor typo: aggresively

I am absolutely with Todd re your feel for rhythm.
As to the long lines stanza I am as of yet undecided.

cheers serge