C.R.U.E.L.'s OP/L thread: OPEN! ANNOUNCEMENT: FIRST POST

[Zeo]

Does anyone want me to take a hand at coconutboy's? It looks like a prose poem (although he states that it's prose) which I'd be happy to critique.

[Aphrodite f l y t r a p]

Zaroyn

I need you here.
so the fog will clear, You've already got a forced rhyme. (And it continues throughout the poem.) The connection between the two lines is weak, at best. I'd also like for you to describe this "you" person.
then I’ll take you there, Where?
to another where. Which is where?
and we'll come back again, Come back to where?
to another when. When is that?
and then all of this, All of what?
won't have gone amiss. What went amiss?
All you did here was bring up a helluva lot of questions.

without you my dear,
I cant live I fear, What are you fearing?
'cause the end is near, Why?
and the path will veer. Where?
so much left to fight, What are you fighting?
gotta make it right, Make what right?
can't give up now, Give up on what?
and I don't know how. Why not?

I need you here,
or I can’t live I fear,You said this already. Redundant.
now I don't know why, What happened?
I just have to try, Seriously, the whole poem is like the above. You have to answer questions in poetry, we don't want to be kept guessing at what you mean.
I'm lost in it,
such a perfect fit,
and in the end,
reality will bend.

without you my dear,
I cant live I fear,
'cause the end is near,
and the path will veer,
all this time has passed,
and this earth so vast,
how will I survive?
'cause in you I thrive.

can you promise then,
we'll be nothin' when.
I hold onto you,
and it all is true,
all of this we made,
will never fade,
I hope that this,
will not go amiss,
((this can't ever end,
'cause we set a trend.
I'm taking this part out. haha. I have no clue why i added it.))

I purposefully used slang, and I know some of the grammar is bad. hah.
Edit:: I know that the first parts of the stanzas sort of repeat... I did that on purpose too.

You've got more problems than using slang.

You don't need punctuation at the end of every line. It makes little grammatical sense, for example, if I took the line breaks from the second stanza:
"without you my dear, I cant live I fear, 'cause the end is near, and the path will veer. so much left to fight, gotta make it right, can't give up now, and I don't know how."
See how little sense that makes? The forced rhyme doesn't help, either.

Your whole poem is a bunch of half-formed thoughts that make no sense and provide no detail or information. I'm kept guessing the whole time, which isn't a good thing.
Also: you need some imagery. All you're doing is stating some half-formed thoughts and cliches that make no sense together. You have to connect these and start SHOWING instead of TELLING.
The rhymes are annoying & forced. You need to learn how to rhyme or not rhyme at all.

[al_batross]

le fornications

girl meets boy.
boy hurts girl. Smashing start. Bold, innovative new plotting. Wait a minute...
repeat. repeat repeat. Aren't we informal?
girl meets girl.
girl feels special. wonderful. perfect.
girl hurts girl.
never repeat again. ¿Que? Is this a command, resolution, inference, description, or what? Also... this is a breakup poem, isn't it?

what is a relationship. DAMMIT IT IS what does it mean? those teenage Shock here: It's okay to not be a teenager and have bad relationships. "teenage" harms your rhetoric here, if it does anything at all. boyfriends, girlfriends, one night stands especially in relation to this phrase, and faces you'll never remember because you took too many vodka shots. is it just practice for those few that decide they want to get married? No, it's teen insecurity. does it build character, self esteem? No, it's teen insecurity. do you honestly believe that it makes everything better? No, it's teen insecurity. do you love them for yourself, or them? do you love them because they say they love you, because they tell you you're beautiful, perfect, special? Rather leading question.

would you still say that when they hurt you, and would you think the same when the next person comes? ... No, it's teen insecurity.

dear heart, i'm sorry i let you get vulnerable. i promise i'll pick up the pieces. NO!... whatever. I'm really bored with this now.


self image. No, it's teen insecurity. why do we look the way we do? we dress ourselves to make ourselves happy. No, it's teen insecurity. wrong. we dress ourselves to please other people, and it could be an endless cycle with relationships. you will change because you're in love. you will change to make them happy. No, it's teen insecurity. you are not you. Then what, pray tell, would this "you" identify as?

dear self-image, i don't know what you are. It's teen insecurity.


....Je suis désolé, qu'avez-vous dit que votre nom était ? j'étais piétiner trop occupé sur votre ego. You have to attempt to diss someone in a different language? 迷住...

girl meets life.
boy meets life. No, it's teen insecurity.
life cycles.
life repeats.
life goes on.
******** life.

he's on the brink of a breakthrough. No, it's teen insecurity. he's on the brink of a breakdown. one causes the other. vice versa. repeat. it's a lot more than brushstrokes on canvas in abstract versus surreal. it's his mind. No, it's teen insecurity. This whole critiquing is getting easy.
it's my mind, and yours, and we have to make it stretch if we want to be sane in this world.

dear art. please. never stop. What does this have to do at all with whatever sad little romance you have floating around? It's nice and fun to talk about art when it's relevant.

the magazines lie. i don't want to see you in a size zero with long hair and all sharp angles. i don't want to memorize that, i don't want to memorize you. you are not what they want you to be. you are not them. you are you. however unoriginal, boring, plain. this repeats with self image. i'm sorry, you are not you. No, it's teen insecurity.
...silly me.

dear media. i have always hated you. No, it's teen insecurity.

your logic is futile. No, it's teen insecurity.
your sex is overrated. No, it's definitely teen insecurity. if you loved me you wouldn't tell me that.

dear body. you will never be betrayed. Hooray body! How empowering! This remains so 迷住!

i met her in the third grade. I'm done. I've found no reason left to care. we were standing against the brick wall of Robert B. Grove Elementary. She was showing me how long of a spit line she could make. after that i saved swings for her every day. we passed notes in seventh grade, shoes in tenth, joints in eleventh. she can still do the spit line.

dear raelynn. you are my best friend.

i met him in tenth grade. he was in my algebra class. we both sat in the first row on the opposite sides of the classroom. he'd look at me. i'd look at him. we laughed. we had lunch, and i threw a grape in his mouth. i thought i loved him, but that was just me being naive. he's much better as a friend anyways. i will always be there for you.

dear cary. you can make it through it. i believe in you.


so it comes to you. the root of it all. the connective thread in all of this. you are intelligent, intriguing, extraordinary. you give me this. you give me everything. you are everything.

Dear brain, I always loved you the most. I'm sorry I never used you to your fullest. We're getting there.


Je ne vous baisserai jamais.
C'est la vie, no?

We will never live for anyone, we will never change for anyone

性不是艺术

[al_batross]

Alice In Loverland

The world stops, and we look up-
to where the sky's been shaped by branches,
and see a blurred vision Is this some sort of guided meditation? Cause I'm not really getting anything out of it.
cut into so many squares by the screen. What screen? Are you in some freaky VR thing or something?

We'd like to pretend that we were five again
lying in bed, watching a jet leave its trail across the sky.
But when we blink-
we realize we've spent three and a half years
waiting for the sky to clear.
And watching through a pieced together metal patchwork "branch" does not equal "metal", by the by.
Of a hundred thousand little squares.

This is talking. I don't find much that qualifies as intentionally poetic, or even explicitly clear. You've simply vaguely described a scene I'm not sure I want to even try to understand. Was there an intended point to this piece?

[al_batross]

Zeo

Does anyone want me to take a hand at coconutboy's? It looks like a prose poem (although he states that it's prose) which I'd be happy to critique.

Check with Aphro, it's on her list (though I'm sure nobody will chagrin you for going for it)

[al_batross]

Page 149
Galacial! Do you have something fun to read?

Galacial Malice

I knew you were there,
watching me with
glassy eyes and
pinhead pupils that Yes. Yes you do have something fun to read.
rearranged our views
on life and the sounds
I hear when the walls
say ******** me
or leave. Are you in a relationship with walls now? Or are you just being too introverted?

I was breathing
through the cracks
between your teeth Scandalous.
and underneath follicles I'm not diggin' where this is going in this stanza...
that rose to the occasion
of my cold fingers and toes.
They would move with the curves
and warm places of your body
that tried to escape the tyranny
of winter flesh. Yeah, this part's boring for me.

God watched from the ceiling,
whispering through his chapped lips Here we go! Just cut that second stanza (or, y'know, just rewrite it, whichever) and jump into this part!
and overgrown beard,
that he too felt the heartbeat
of the inanimate objects
and other things that pulsed
as we moved. I don't see the need for the linebreak between these last two, and I barely find a need for these actual lines at all.

Our windows frosted over
with our dreams, trapped
in the passion of something
better than this, and NO DON'T USE THAT PHRASE PLEASE. Please?
the slow motion snowflakes
were a reminder that
this will never be more than
those brief moments of happiness
that we silently worshiped.

You're wallowing in melodrama. Have some tea, and scavenge this for what's redeemable.

[Aphrodite f l y t r a p]

Zeo

Does anyone want me to take a hand at coconutboy's? It looks like a prose poem (although he states that it's prose) which I'd be happy to critique.

You sure can, if you'd like. At least the thread's finally moving.

[al_batross]

Okay, I'm just going to jump back to slogging through every one of 'em for the rest, I think. (I dunno how much longer I can go, either. Maybe I'll take a caffeine break soon)

Blackleaf

Old poem? Okay! Let's salvage!
Like fruit arranged tenderly on tables and counters
left senselessly to waste Fun dynamic in these first two lines! The linebreak is right on target.
for oil painters and their tiny brushes eradicating
dried up, day old mistakes Cut "up". Adds to the alliterative effect.
I was waiting for eyes to lay judgment upon me, You need punctuated separation between this and the line above it.
not that I don't love fine art
but my heart can only bare so many expectations Do you really want "bare", and not "bear" here?
and if not for me, then
what the hell could I ever do to change, These two lines are going stagnant... try to keep descriptive. Talking about yourself is leading down unproductive roads.
besides I can still attest
that real life is always so much prettier than that, Why a comma? Is this incomplete?

[Aphrodite f l y t r a p]

p u r p l e b u t t e r

Weep-Weep, Weep-Weep Is the onomatopoeia the title?

They hide in the bushes What hides in the bushes?
all through the night.
Changing each sound
to make it just right. What makes it "just right"? How do they change sounds? Also, the rhyme is a bit forced here. It's better to not rhyme than to force rhyme.
The crickets are nature's
timers and clocks
Weep-weeping in tune, In tune to...?
instead of tick-tock. This was definitely a forced rhyme. Clocks=plural tick-tock=singular. They technically don't even rhyme.

Weep-Weep-Weep

A mystical sound erupts from their legs;Why so mystical?
older a pastime than bacon and eggs. You changed the rhyme scheme here. If you are going to rhyme, do it properly and don't change the rhyme scheme without specific purpose. Also, that line is pretty random. What does bacon and eggs have to do with crickets? THat's another sign of forced rhyme.
For ages this chime has sung us to sleep Redundant.
with a little soft chant,
Weep-Weep, Weep-Weep. That would be a sweet little ending there, but you continued...The rhyme here wasn't too bad, though meter would have helped.

The times are still changing,
but commend those who recall Why should they be commended? What's the significance?
the weep, weep-weep of crickets at nightfall. You changed the rhyme scheme again. That's a bad thing.

Rhyming: Do it correctly or not at all; don't change the scheme without specific and evident purpose.
Imagery: Show don't tell; we want to experience the poem, not just read it. You also don't want your reader to be questioning the piece.
Repitition: But the onomatopoeia arrangement was different every time. Stick to one thing if you want to enforce it.

[Aphrodite f l y t r a p]

al_batross

Okay, I'm just going to jump back to slogging through every one of 'em for the rest, I think. (I dunno how much longer I can go, either. Maybe I'll take a caffeine break soon)

Yeah, I'm slow. Sorry about that. sweatdrop
I got distracted by your siggy link...and then a movie website...and then there was iTunes...

Oops.

[al_batross]

I'll leave a-morose's for lotus, as per her request.

jennablues

I promise upon this object of confession, My Rhyme-Senses are tingling!
that from this day forth on, I shall value your time. It's okay to be colloquial.
I will throw ecstasy with the futile, though oblivion not my profession, Forced rhyme! Oh boy! Essentially put: If you wouldn't phrase it that way in real life under any circumstances, you can hardly justify it through the written word.
and label all judgment the worth of a dime. Are you using a meter as well? Because you're unnecessarily wordy in most of this.

I shall not critique by vigor-
though will utters “depart”- What?
but cling close to your figure,
to stay near to thy heart. Back to the aforementioned phrasing: I know you're making wedding references, but when you use "I", you're implying a developed voice for the character in question, one who, as per modern English usage, wouldn't use "thy".

[al_batross]

Aphrodite f l y t r a p

I got distracted by your siggy link...

No problem. I understand that my siggy's a black hole of feel-good vocab and nerdishness. I know you're not the first to fall to its powerful minigame sway.

[al_batross]

LizzeyAnn

I don’t want more than you’ve given me, Why open here with this?
I just want you here, by my side,
Your smile every morning, your fingers laced in mine,
The promise that you’ll be here, until the end of time This is lacking in poetics so far. Sure, it's got plenty of cheeseball movie quotes and sentimentality, but an engaging poem does not that make.
You’ve always been so perfect for me,
I don’t want that to change,
My life is finally happy,
I’m looking forward to future days,
You’re eyes are always beautiful,
Blue floating among shades of gray, First image in the whole poem!
They seem to see inside my soul, And it's gone...
They’re searching for a way,
A way to tell me everything,
To let me inside your heart,
To tell me what you’re thinking,
And that you’ve loved me from the start.
Your hands are soft and gentle,
Perfectly on my waist,
Run through my hair, along my cheek,
Silently framing my face
You have a way to take my breath,
Without a single word,
You hold me close, and pull me closer,
You are my whole world.
I love you.

I just saw some awkward slant rhyme at the start, so I'm with you on the nonexistence of a rhyme scheme. I recommend eradicating it completely in another revision.
While you're at it, most of this is useless. Everything but "Blue floating among shades of gray" was your feelings for someone else: Describe those less explicitly, and you'll probably be on your way to a respectable poem.

[Zeo]

coconutboy

I would be in a great state of euphoria if some one would critique my prose.

Just for the record, we don't critique prose here. However, since what you've posted looks like a prose poem, I'll be happy to take a look at it, as those are something of my specialty.

His eyes

I'll start by mentioning that I was taught a professional format for prose poetry, which is justified font about a centimeter or so from the default margins on each side. (Don't worry, I know Gaia wouldn't format it right for you even if you tried. Just something to keep in mind.) That said, I'm curious about what you're attempting to do with the first line, which appears to be its own paragraph if it weren't for the lack of indenting. Clearly you're wanting to separate it from the rest of the poem, but the way you choose to do it feels a bit sloppy, as if you haven't really decided what this piece of writing is. There are several ways you can consider doing this: one, you can separate the "stanzas" ("his eyes" and the rest) with a full space instead of starting the next line below. For instance,

His eyes.

Glazed over with........

Or, you might just eliminate the random line break and say: "His eyes. Glazed over with..." On second thought, that would come off as an awkward sentence fragment. As a general rule with prose poetry, I use sentence fragments to my advantage. (This is one of those "know the rules in order to break them" cases, which means that one shouldn't break the rules if they don't thoroughly understand them.) Your task, then, is to find a way to make "His eyes" stand out from the rest without random, awkward-looking line breaks.

His eyes.
Glazed over with copious enmity they were, and not but [eliminate extra space]the slightest glimmer of an archaic euphoria could be construed, and but (Gettin' old fast) a single glance into his eyes, into the fathomless abyssal (Abyssal means "fathomless;" this is redundant) of another's mind, and one could scrutinize the man's morose and taciturn past (This doesn't make sense. A person can be taciturn, but someone's past can't. Watch your use of words...more on this later.), and in that past, one could only imagine the amount of anguish the man felt, the amount of wretchedness that had been strewn (Okay, so his life sucked. And? Show, don't tell. What about it sucked? Similar to a break-up poem, we don't want to hear that his life sucked. We want to know how. You need imagery in here. Without the "poetry," "prose poetry" is just "prose." You need to engage the reader here.) , embedded inside him, and so that one would turn abroad, and that one (Watch your language) would try to flee and abolish the evils of which they had stumbled ignorantly upon, and one did not see, one could not possibly see, for one (One, one, one, one...the language is getting very repetitive and boring) was over-preoccupied with only the pessimistic (Huh? Is there any way you can communicate this a little less obscurely? You're looking for succinctness in poetry, and this does not feel succinct at all. Feels like I'm taking a southbound exit on a freeway when I'm intending to end up north.), but there, there it subsisted, a single survivor, the coruscation of felicity, the day of Christmas, the giving of gifts; within the despair, the relentless agony, and forlornness, there lay a memory, a single substantial flame within a land of only ice and unyielding cold.

Original prose by Coconutboy.

We hope so. Otherwise it'd be plagiarism.

-Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe

First off...I'm a little lost. What's happening here? First there's a dark, angry man, and then...then I'm not sure. Pessimism? And then optimism? I'll be honest, I like the idea behind this. But what this piece needs is clarity, and bad. Your ideas are very jumbled together. It all mishmashes confusingly, so much so that I think you yourself are getting lost in your language. (The redundancies as well as the purple prose, which I'll get to in a minute.) This whole piece needs to be carefully dissected and then put back together with a cohesive idea in mind. That said...

There is little functional punctuation in here. The whole thing was just, one, big, run-on sentence, with dependent, and independent, clauses, all, separated, by commas, alike. I would strongly suggest reading some guides to punctuation, because a HUGE part of the piece's obscurity was the misuse of punctuation. I didn't correct hardly any punctuation issues because in order to do that, I'd need to rewrite the piece. Instead, I'll leave that up to you, but I trust that in revising you'll pay careful attention to the way punctuation is being used throughout. Run on sentences should be avoided, ESPECIALLY if they run the length of an entire "stanza."

Next: your use of "purple prose." There were an awful lot of thesaurus terms in here, not all of which were used correctly. There's nothing wrong with using "big words" in a poem, but when it reads as though you were going out of your way to sound obscure, there's a problem (I had to look up a couple words...reading a poem should not involve multiple trips to the dictionary for words with average meanings). For instance, the phrase "the coruscation of felicity" seemed needlessly verbose and complicated for what you were trying to say. In poetry, as I said, you are looking to attain a succinctness to your message. If it requires a large term to do so, fine. If not, there's no reason to go word-hunting. When one tries too hard to sound smart or find big words, it's really obvious. Bottom-line: it looks tacked on and makes the poem both hard to follow and wordy. Consider this as you edit.

I think I covered most of it in the line-by-line. I'd suggest reading up on prose poetry if that's what you're interested in (it's a nice format for those of us who write both poetry and prose). It can be a very powerful and effective poetic form, but only with a clear understanding of the rules of language, as well as poetic devices, imagery, and the like. Prose poetry is still poetry, so don't neglect poetic devices. If you're looking to take this in a strictly prose direction, I'd suggest the OS/P for further critiques, as well as some serious development of the piece. Anyway, good luck with revisions. Check the stickies as well!

[al_batross]

Page 150

sinister_candie

Tear me up,
Break me down,
Into shreds, I'm not diggin' it. "Shreds" is about as descriptive, or even connotatively forceful, as you're getting.
Until there’s nothing left of me
Except for the broken pieces of yesterday…
I can see you,
I reach for you.
But your hand,
Nothing more than an illusion
No more real than the innocence that lies behind my eyes…
Somewhere in this shadowy abyss they call reality Do you have somewhere nicer than the rest of us or something?
I sit and wonder where the real world stops
And my madness begins
But for now
They are one
Flowing into one another
Like a dying flower in the winter…
Hiding in my own domain
Is more than healing from the pain of your world
But you won’t stop
Until my kingdom of insanity
Is nothing more
than a false, seductive world of evil
You won’t stop
Until you break me down,
And everything I know
Is nothing.

















I never told you how your eyes make me cry
You’re a combination of all the things I love
And all the things I hate
But this twisted affection,
Far from the bars that keep this monster locked away

“I never promised you a rose garden”

I never told you how your smile makes me bleed
Worshiping the struggle
Yet, security in compassion
But this delirious mix,
Far from the chains that hold my humility

“I never promised you a rose garden” Are these lyrics? Because, short of The Raven, I'm not big on repetition throughout a full-on poem.

I never told you how your mind makes me sick
How your insanity is more than fear
And your madness, more than beauty
But this veil fronting the victim
Far from my own punishment

“I never promised you a rose garden”

This is therapy poetry. Rarely are the images, connotative language, compelling metaphors, developed voice or mature diction here. Work on that, or keep it to yourself.

Here's some of the lines I enjoyed:
"Like a dying flower in the winter"
"Yet, security in compassion"
"But this veil fronting the victim"

You're utilizing metaphor and descriptive language in these lines, separating your writing from your immediate personal problems, which you, while avidly discussing, never clarify enough to make interesting for a reader. So: More images and metaphors=More fun for the reader, for right now.