An epic poem--not everyones fave--Feedback Please!

[arielsgoddess]

Vampire

You were always in the shadows
Just happening to be there
At all the dark times of my life
I thought it was because you were my friend

Then I did not notice how the fog came with you
Shrouding me in isolation and confusion
Blindness in its mist

Those cold drafts I always felt
Must have been your corpsely aura
But I was preoccupied
As you wrapped your coat around me
To gather in my warmth and quicken my blood
As I shivered up against you
Many a wintry night

As I spoke intimately with you
I thought my breath around you made a halo
Instead of mirroring the image
Of the ghost you really are

We would raise our voices just above
The wind which wove around the windows
I should have listened closer
To hear the wailed warnings
Of your other victims
And the wingbeats
Of your conspirators

Instead I stared, hypnotized
And arched at the shock of your touch
As you held me, saying: Cold hands—warm heart
I did not realize that you had no soul
And that was why I was pulled in
To the drowning-pools of your eyes
Or that your words meant your hands ached
To claw out my yet-beating heart
For your own devouring

No I was so afraid I was senseless
As I slowly showed to you more of myself
In my despicable foolishness
It was your ultimate rejection I feared
As I revealed all of my weaknesses
And bared the marks of my wounds
I was ignorantly incensing you to feed

Stupidly I mistook your encouragement for caring
And growing enthusiasm for something more
So soon it was surprising me
How much I truly loved you
And basked in your acceptance

Boldly I went on
To uncover even more of myself
Until I was showing to you
My most painful and private scars

I did not know how you relished them
Monster that you are
You could still smell the blood
Caught inside the tissues
No matter how deep or long past
Those scars had formed

I was like a bouquet to you
Each scar a tender flower
For you to pull apart, one-by-one
As I heard demons somewhere howling:
He-loves-you-he-loves-you-NOT!
Until I was undone and bleeding

But my soul was still strong enough to fight
To confront my mind with terrible knowledge
To make my broken body run and
Instinctively I ran for higher ground
Faster than you could yet flap
Though I feared you swooping down
Evilly sudden and silent from behind

I ran so far I reached the daylight
Rising above my lost city

As the first rays of salvation hit me
They burned all the places you had hurt me
Dissipating your poison like the morning dew
Until atlast the sun itself broke above the ridge
Cauterizing every wound on my tattered body
Nakedly I breathed in the growing heat
And began to feel alive again
As the light took over the world
It replenished my soul as well

On that long walk home
As the whole of my skin was burned
I knew that I would never again be cold
Or Afraid

After that I noticed that the cemeteries of this town
Are placed on the highest of its hills
No coincidence, I believe, that their keepers
Are always closest to the sun

Tonight I walk the largest cemetery
Recalling your special attraction to this one
Indeed it is for you that I will wait
Just past the unmarked graves
Inside the circle of stone angels
Watchful

On the edge of the trees here I notice
Strong branches snapped into amazingly sharp points
That scatter themselves so thoughtfully all around me

I stand in a cloak soaked in virgin oil
And lingerie lovingly sewn with shining threads
With other bits of silver hidden in surprising places
Knowing I have made myself worthy of you

I smile
As the moon is rising
I am looking forward
To seeing you once more

My email is [personal info prohibited per our forum guidelines]

 

[bflagsst]

The novelty of my injury
underwhelms your vampire bite
to the dead,
your mouth on my skin
is less spectacular
than it once was,
your teeth aren't so white
as they were when we met,
somewhere near the murderer.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Ariel I know someone that applies to exactly ....... a bloodsucker amongst the world of men

 

[EroticOrogeny]

I think it is quite nicely done and I enjoyed reading it. I also like the message of recovery you have.
Formally speaking, its long, but not sure that a 'true epic' - see my brief research:

...

Epic
noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry
http://www.ehow.com/how_3334_write-epic-poem.html
...

But keep writing and I'll keep reading

 

[vinuva]

I too like to read poets. I have also written poets.
________________________
photography websites

 

[DeepUnderground]

This is a well written piece, a very enjoyable read.

Hope the length doesn't put anyone off reading it.

 

[miss_mystery]

Hey Ari-

For the most part, this is a deeply unsuccessful attempt at a poem. It's riddled with cliche (I've highlighted some of them in blue), and built on trite, hollow words that have little concrete meaning to your reader (red), and done a little inline. Realistically, this doesn't read as poetry at all - more as badly written prose with linebreaks - no imagery, little metaphor, no literary devices. Additionally, syntactically, this thing is a mess: no punctuation, and a serious lack of regard for grammar.

Go off and read some more poetry. Try to think of subjects less trite than the vampire. Scrap this. It's not worth the paper that it's written on.

Best of luck.



MM.

Vampire

You were always in the shadows
Just happening to be there
At all the dark times of my life
I thought it was because you were my friend

Then I did not notice how the fog came with you
Shrouding me in isolation and confusion
Blindness in its mist

Those cold drafts I always felt
Must have been your corpsely aura - 'corpsely' is not a word. Corpse-like, maybe. Corpsely? No.
But I was preoccupied
As you wrapped your coat around me
To gather in my warmth and quicken my blood
As I shivered up against you
Many a wintry night

As I spoke intimately with you
I thought my breath around you made a halo
Instead of mirroring the image
Of the ghost you really are - you could cut a lot of the meaningless words. 'As' has been repeated so often now, I'm convinced that something must be about to happen.

We would raise our voices just above
The wind which wove around the windows
I should have listened closer
To hear the wailed warnings
Of your other victims
And the wingbeats
Of your conspirators - one or two too many 'w's here. Alliteration is a great poetic device, but... more to the point, sonically speaking, 'w' is a bit tricky. Caught halfway between being a dipthong vowel or consonant, it's a very smooth and slow sound. Given the nature of the repetition, and the context of the sentence, it slows the read down and lends a sense of the ridiculous. Not, I'm sure, what you were going for. Additionally, I'm not sure why you bothered with the alliteration here - it's too repetitive to be accident, yet the only clear sonic device in the poem.

Instead I stared, hypnotized
And arched at the shock of your touch
As you held me, saying: Cold hands—warm heart
I did not realize that you had no soul
And that was why I was pulled in
To the drowning-pools of your eyes
Or that your words meant your hands ached
To claw out my yet-beating heart
For your own devouring

No I was so afraid I was senseless
As I slowly showed to you more of myself
In my despicable foolishness
It was your ultimate rejection I feared
As I revealed all of my weaknesses
And bared the marks of my wounds
I was ignorantly incensing you to feed

Stupidly I mistook your encouragement for caring
And growing enthusiasm for something more
So soon it was surprising me
How much I truly loved you
And basked in your acceptance - I can't go on, quite honestly. I'm sorry, but I can't be bothered to take the time to go through the rest of this, line by line. I think by this point you've got the idea.

Boldly I went on
To uncover even more of myself
Until I was showing to you
My most painful and private scars

I did not know how you relished them
Monster that you are
You could still smell the blood
Caught inside the tissues
No matter how deep or long past
Those scars had formed

I was like a bouquet to you
Each scar a tender flower
For you to pull apart, one-by-one
As I heard demons somewhere howling:
He-loves-you-he-loves-you-NOT!
Until I was undone and bleeding

But my soul was still strong enough to fight
To confront my mind with terrible knowledge
To make my broken body run and
Instinctively I ran for higher ground
Faster than you could yet flap
Though I feared you swooping down
Evilly sudden and silent from behind

I ran so far I reached the daylight
Rising above my lost city

As the first rays of salvation hit me
They burned all the places you had hurt me
Dissipating your poison like the morning dew
Until atlast the sun itself broke above the ridge
Cauterizing every wound on my tattered body
Nakedly I breathed in the growing heat
And began to feel alive again
As the light took over the world
It replenished my soul as well

On that long walk home
As the whole of my skin was burned
I knew that I would never again be cold
Or Afraid

After that I noticed that the cemeteries of this town
Are placed on the highest of its hills
No coincidence, I believe, that their keepers
Are always closest to the sun

Tonight I walk the largest cemetery
Recalling your special attraction to this one
Indeed it is for you that I will wait
Just past the unmarked graves
Inside the circle of stone angels
Watchful

On the edge of the trees here I notice
Strong branches snapped into amazingly sharp points
That scatter themselves so thoughtfully all around me

I stand in a cloak soaked in virgin oil
And lingerie lovingly sewn with shining threads
With other bits of silver hidden in surprising places
Knowing I have made myself worthy of you

I smile
As the moon is rising
I am looking forward
To seeing you once more

My email is [personal info prohibited per our forum guidelines]

 

[poetedge5455]

ok. I am in love

with your words.

Jesus Christ, Ariel, that was touching.

I will give youu what I consider to be the best comment I ever received from an editor.
It was three wods long:

Twisted. Beautiful. Fuck.

Again, it was all splendid, but these lines express something I lived, and make me want to have expressed it thusly:

As I spoke intimately with you
I thought my breath around you made a halo
Instead of mirroring the image
Of the ghost you really are

I won't nitpick this. Nothing I would change worth mentioning.





We would raise our voices just above
The wind which wove around the windows
I should have listened closer
To hear the wailed warnings
Of your other victims
And the wingbeats
Of your conspirators

Instead I stared, hypnotized
And arched at the shock of your touch
As you held me, saying: Cold hands—warm heart
I did not realize that you had no soul
And that was why I was pulled in
To the drowning-pools of your eyes
Or that your words meant your hands ached
To claw out my yet-beating heart
For your own devouring

No I was so afraid I was senseless
As I slowly showed to you more of myself
In my despicable foolishness
It was your ultimate rejection I feared
As I revealed all of my weaknesses
And bared the marks of my wounds
I was ignorantly incensing you to feed

Stupidly I mistook your encouragement for caring
And growing enthusiasm for something more
So soon it was surprising me
How much I truly loved you
And basked in your acceptance

Boldly I went on
To uncover even more of myself
Until I was showing to you
My most painful and private scars

I did not know how you relished them
Monster that you are
You could still smell the blood
Caught inside the tissues
No matter how deep or long past
Those scars had formed

I was like a bouquet to you
Each scar a tender flower
For you to pull apart, one-by-one
As I heard demons somewhere howling:
He-loves-you-he-loves-you-NOT!
Until I was undone and bleeding

But my soul was still strong enough to fight
To confront my mind with terrible knowledge
To make my broken body run and
Instinctively I ran for higher ground
Faster than you could yet flap
Though I feared you swooping down
Evilly sudden and silent from behind

I ran so far I reached the daylight
Rising above my lost city

As the first rays of salvation hit me
They burned all the places you had hurt me
Dissipating your poison like the morning dew
Until atlast the sun itself broke above the ridge
Cauterizing every wound on my tattered body
Nakedly I breathed in the growing heat
And began to feel alive again
As the light took over the world
It replenished my soul as well

On that long walk home
As the whole of my skin was burned
I knew that I would never again be cold
Or Afraid

After that I noticed that the cemeteries of this town
Are placed on the highest of its hills
No coincidence, I believe, that their keepers
Are always closest to the sun

Tonight I walk the largest cemetery
Recalling your special attraction to this one
Indeed it is for you that I will wait
Just past the unmarked graves
Inside the circle of stone angels
Watchful

On the edge of the trees here I notice
Stron
My email is [personal info prohibited per our forum guidelines][/QUOTE]

 

[butters]

arielsgoddess - are you still working on this piece? I have some suggestions but if you're not currently working with it then there's not much point.

as a brief overview, though, I would say this is more the draft than the done-deal for me. Like these are the things you wish to express, but now you need to find the very best way to do just that.