Need Urgent Help <(*v*)> "tide me over"

[metafixation]

this has gone through one major overhaul. it's a prose-poem and so while i'm going to keep it with standard linebreaks here, it adds a different sort of twist in paragraph form.

the narrative is very intertwined with my own mythos related to my other powertry so if that part goes over your head it's fine, i'm just worried about the imagery and "cohesive theme".

thanks in advance.

----------------------

tide me over

thorns rip at gowned up girls
who n** on my sherry shoulders,
looking for a way to be borne
upon this boulder
that i’m holding gently while murmuring
an evening Mass to dissuade doubt.
“this is where
we give the years to her”.

i set us down within a circle of
burnt fountain grass and kneel,
peeling skin crosses from the point
of loss.

but the woman stray bare, their beauty
never lacking against the sun. pulled-off slips
lay scattered as rotten pathrays of wry thread
settling near sacred streams.
women of great age spoke to them
in asphodels.
the girls rasp ashy yells
from the well dug below
shot-out mouths, and feral suns gasp
novae without notice.

i did not foresee the withering
of olives left
uneaten, forgotten memorials
plied as plates once i returned home.
biting apart stone fruit hearts that used
to roll down bellies, i cement them with
my sloughed off skin.

we must rise; grab your dates
and dance
life spirals up wards
to protect against
rival fates.

i pour five mulled streams
from torn up fingers onto
the sharp tongues of the earth
and she swallows me down
in commune
we speak
of the tower that will rise
for the sun. we have become drunk
on ourselves, “my blood is
binding us together, letting us rain on
tin roofs.

my eyes may be
missing but
i can still work the seas.”

the earth smiles at me and
loses a tooth.
she places it in my palm, the color of
beaches and calm and asks:
“will you finish?”

i spit on her
lost wisdom, gum it down,
and press it against the faucet for
when the sun may
finally ask to sleep.

"i’ll take a leap,"
i say,
“once the day decides to end
its way, the waves aren’t
mine to keep.”

she smiles, the last of her
teeth bright blue,
but i wave off
her "sure!" and drown in
the ocean in hopes the sunlight
might see and go
dark with me.

[Power Armor Felix]

Just here to say: Don't fret and give birth to a Corvette, I have this one in the hopper.

(Unless you want to, of course.)

[metafixation]

Power Armor Felix

Just here to say: Don't fret and give birth to a Corvette, I have this one in the hopper.

(Unless you want to, of course.)

i'm not sure what that means, sir. sad

[metafixation]

Power Armor Felix

Just here to say: Don't fret and give birth to a Corvette, I have this one in the hopper.

(Unless you want to, of course.)

oh i smoked some subtle weed and now i get it.

do you have any new poems you've written recently? i'm going to message you

[passy came back]

i will get to this. this is just too long for me to tackle at 2am lmao

[metafixation]

passy indoors

i will get to this. this is just too long for me to tackle at 2am lmao

thank you so much heart i know it's hecka long but i will take all of your suggestions to heart. i wrote it in a spur of something and it's essentially a creation story of my own mythological Self but aside from that i shouldn't give any context away because unless you've read my other poetry you wouldn't have any.

[metafixation]

Power Armor Felix

Just here to say: Don't fret and give birth to a Corvette, I have this one in the hopper.

(Unless you want to, of course.)

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0ismgaokG3E

here moon (i.e. me) reading my words.

[passy came back]

metafixation

this has gone through one major overhaul. it's a prose-poem and so while i'm going to keep it with standard linebreaks here, it adds a different sort of twist in paragraph form.

the narrative is very intertwined with my own mythos related to my other powertry so if that part goes over your head it's fine, i'm just worried about the imagery and "cohesive theme".

thanks in advance.

----------------------

tide me over

thorns rip at gowned up girls i keep reading this as "growned up" and it's really jarring. i have to keep restarting from the beginning and i think that, even though the image is nice, it needs to be reworked.
who n** on my sherry shoulders,
looking for a way to be borne
upon this boulder ooooh i love this rhyme. although i think "looking...borne" and "upon this boulder" should be on the same line.
that i’m holding gently while murmuring
an evening Mass to dissuade doubt. why is "mass" capitalized but everything isn't? is there some importance to this?
“this is where
we give the years to her”. oooh i like

i set us down within a circle of
burnt fountain grass and kneel,
peeling skin crosses from the point
of loss. this stanza is perfect. absolutely perfect.

but the woman stray bare, their beauty their? isn't there only one woman?
never lacking against the sun. pulled-off slips
lay scattered as rotten pathrays pathways? of wry thread
settling near sacred streams. i like the alliteration but i feel like you overdo it a little here.
women of great age spoke to them
in asphodels.
the girls rasp ashy yells
from the well dug below
shot-out mouths, and feral suns gasp
novae without notice. this sentence is beautiful. i have no ******** idea what it means but i love it.

i did not foresee the withering
of olives left
uneaten, forgotten memorials
plied plied or piled? as plates once i returned home.
biting apart stone fruit hearts that used
to roll down bellies, i cement them with
my sloughed off skin. the part of this sentence that begins with "i cement" takes away from this stanza. i like "sloughed off skin" but i don't think it works in this particular context.

we must rise; grab your dates i'm not sure this tonal shift works here. "grab your dates" seems very out of place. if you want it to work, you need to keep it on a line that has some of the same tonal language from before.
and dance
life spirals up wards
to protect against
rival fates.

i'm going to get back to this, but i hope this helps.

[0-DCB]

@passy; I assume that "Mass" capitalized because it's talking about the church service. In short, it's a proper noun referring to the title of an event.

[Power Armor Felix]

metafixation

as much as i don't trust 4chan i've been picking their brains and evidently it's a mess of bad imagery that doesn't go anywhere and nice-sounding nonsensical ramblings.

I've received these before and have found them to be the trademark "Did not actually read the poem" criticism. "Style over substance" is another personal fav. Anyhow, I can't just stand by and let you seek criticism from 4chan like a heroin-ferret caught in a storm sewer; this is gonna be a hand-up coupled with a shot of pity sex all in one.

tide me over

thorns rip at gowned up girls
who n** on my sherry shoulders,
looking for a way to be borne
upon this boulder

This area comes across as a bit clipped stylistically (kind of immediate with no buffer before the thorns and the broadness of the plurals also contributes to this effect), but ultimately I cannot fault your image creation here. It's not exact, but it's great how I get a sense of these gowned up girls being conveyed to the shore while the narrator is enjoying a glass of sherry. The thorns and foam of the wave have a nice merging shape association; in addition the sonic play of your shoulder as a boulder is rather apt for multiple or transitional images.

that i’m holding gently while murmuring
an evening Mass to dissuade doubt.
“this is where
we give the years to her”.

I get the soul music of "Run to the Rock, Rock won't you hide me?" yet I'm not so sure about the continued focus on the rock and lead-up from wine to Mass as an avenue for this poem's development. It strikes me that these associations are too easy-- though I will say your strategy to change-up the style here makes some sense, you definitely need a couple nail-down, concrete near-literal lines to keep the reader from being blown away from the initial deployment. One more thing, does murmuring seem to you the obvious water / liquid association verb? Almost a cliche, I'd reckon. Why not give it the boot, since you already have a better dance partner in the form of "dissuade"?

i set us down within a circle of
burnt fountain grass and kneel,
peeling skin crosses from the point
of loss.

This is a pretty hard setting shift in such a short period of time; earlier I got the vibe of a seduction-thing becoming a child-responsibility thing, but now you got me full-on roped to the Wicker Man / Harvest Home fortune wheel (Quickly, Felix, unleash the question grenades!)

1. I'm wondering if an encyclopedia run is necessary to see if fountain grass is a term for a real thing, or if it's some strange new slang for vaginas these days-- which I suppose is okay. Drop me a footnote maybe?
2. Is the emphasis on kneel and point anything like dog commands? o_O
3. Where is the point of loss, it is a part of the body? For some reason I have trouble visualizing full-crosses being torn from pin-p***k wounds, but hey, maybe it's a birthing thing.

but the woman stray bare, their beauty
never lacking against the sun. pulled-off slips
lay scattered as rotten pathways of wry thread
settling near sacred streams.
women of great age spoke to them
in asphodels.
the girls rasp ashy yells
from the well dug below
shot-out mouths, and feral suns gasp
novae without notice.

Ah, are you sure you don't mean "sacred seams?" And why is it that "rotten pathways" seems like the perfect term for every place Eve has lead me?

Hmm, would there be anything wrong in giving "their beauty never lacking against the sun." it's own concentrated line to occupy? I feel that the surrounding enjambment weakens it; another thing is your "stray bare" concept is tough to digest even without being crammed into a refrigerator. I didn't really get your angle there until feral suns arrived on the scene, some sort of tribal "I am woman, hear me roar" thing? Oh yeah, I see you have a Flower of Hades there... is that supposed to be my secret dictionary decoder ring... xd YOU LOST ME FINALLY *high-fives*

Damn, you reminded me of this cavepeople movie from long ago; I'll have to look it up. They were passing along fire, hunting for meat, and had ashen skeleton-painted naked women.

I'll be honest, shotguns and novas are cool and all but my brain cannot reconcile them with this poem. Plus that whole thing with women taking shotgun blasts to the mouth while being over other women with well-dug wells; yeah, I'm pretty much no good after that.

i did not foresee the withering
of olives left
uneaten, forgotten memorials
plied as plates once i returned home.
biting apart stone fruit hearts that used
to roll down bellies, i cement them with
my sloughed off skin.

AT THIS POINT YOU'RE GETTING MY PHONE NUMBER, IS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO GO AFTER MY OLIVES??

we must rise; grab your dates
and dance!
life spirals up wards
to protect against
rival fates.

Okay, I can almost get down with this, except that "up wards" conjures the elderly doing crossword puzzles.

You know, with the fruit metaphor grab-bag (olives, stone fruit, and dates) it's almost like you've lead my reeling attention span into the standard erotic poem to die. These lines might not be too bad if front-loaded into a new poem, but within this format it's like why am I here? What do classy Christian ocean themes really have to do with FERAL LESBIAN EARTH SEX. Is it some sort of Mother, Maiden, Crone deal going on? Women are confusing sweatdrop

Speaking of the format, I think the majority of your poem works better in the prose-poem mode instead of stanzas, with the exception of the "sherry shoulders" and "up wards" sections snipped out like useful coupons. As a man of Western Science, the best way to describe it is that I experienced a blanket rage due to the location of most your linebreaks; I even got Erich von Daniken on the phone and he could not justify them with Ancient Astronaut theory. There are times where you employ the weak break on words like "of" or "with" or on a gerund for example, now this has precedence if you look at Bukowski's style-- however, he would often use the technique as a type of sacrifice in order to shuttle his strength into the immediate follow-up line. Anyhow, one question you should put to your breaks is whether they are doing any effective work; they should not be gloopy without the proper cause.

As a final thought your work comes across as a tough poem, not so much because I don't understand it, but because it is asking me whether I like scented candles. The sensory input is so alien and girlie that I can only relate its function to social lubricants and urban legends of orgasms caused by sunbeams. I'm a robot cartoon dammit, and what you have here is so mooky to my... genetic aesthetic.

[Power Armor Felix]

passy indoors

i did not foresee the withering
of olives left
uneaten, forgotten memorials
plied plied or piled? as plates once i returned home.
biting apart stone fruit hearts that used
to roll down bellies, i cement them with
my sloughed off skin. the part of this sentence that begins with "i cement" takes away from this stanza. i like "sloughed off skin" but i don't think it works in this particular context.

I'd like to support passy's criticism here while mentioning that "stone fruit" strikes me as your strongest association in this stanza-- for it connects the granite structures of religion with the organic. Cement seems out of place here, though perhaps it could vacation with the olives on a different beach-- since the olives could be chewed into a cement-like paste.

[passy came back]

0-DCB

@passy; I assume that "Mass" capitalized because it's talking about the church service. In short, it's a proper noun referring to the title of an event.

no i understand that but f there is nothing else capitalized, why is mass capitalized? if you keep everything in lowercase, but then capitalize one particular word, it stands out much more than it normally would if you were properly capitalizing all sentences.

[0-DCB]

passy indoors

0-DCB

@passy; I assume that "Mass" capitalized because it's talking about the church service. In short, it's a proper noun referring to the title of an event.

no i understand that but f there is nothing else capitalized, why is mass capitalized? if you keep everything in lowercase, but then capitalize one particular word, it stands out much more than it normally would if you were properly capitalizing all sentences.

Perhaps it's a force of habit or to make it not confused with mass as in "a body of coherent matter" {from dictionary.com}? To my eyes at least, Mass is completely different than mass.
However, only metafixation can state the true purpose of the capitalization. x}

[passy came back]

do you still want more critique on this?

[metafixation]

passy indoors

do you still want more critique on this?

hi passy, this is the first time i've been on in ages. thanks so much for the critique. i noticed a few errors that needed correcting and i really recognized that i works better as poem-prose because it's so long and involved. i needed some space from this so i could be like "ok this is not as good as i thought it was" finally.

when i get a new draft running (if i do) i'll be sure to call upon you because the things you pointed out at times had me spinning because i just would not have gotten there without you 4laugh