Critique welcome

[CharleyH]

OK, here is a poem. This is the moment I first met my well, five year partner. The moment we broke is pending, well do we ever break? - it will come. Any critique is welcome - wanted!

ANGELIQUE

I. Nature
We swell in the humidity of this moment
absorb into the heat of the earth
sister strangers, you and I
hovering with time, inside this moment,
like I feel inside of you
my limbs stretching in the swell of your cave
my branches shutting out all otherness
as your walls sun-proof our garden with shade.
Tommorow I will stress to bring back this night
and labour to return to your breast
yet now I am lingering and bathing
in the blood of the mystery we share
in the aura of our nature.

II. Identity
I am a tree trembling in the breeze of your touch
floating in the oceanic wave of this moment.
I am a blade of grass humbled by your deep and shadowed eyes
and lifted like the leaves on the forbidden tree.
I am the ground on which you sit, the dust,
not yet washed away by time.
I am the air from which you take your breath
rising and fading in our dream.
We are the rhythm of nature
as she swallows our wine, and will expire with the sweep of a thought.
We are this moment.
A glimmer and a glance,
soon to pass.

III. Genesis
We are re-born into the folds of our chosen reality
between every vibrating possibility,
and we savour every minute detail,
consume every image, amorphous and real.
I taste every ripple of water in your resevoire,
every ascending eclipse that splashes your face,
I rise with every supple sound from your womb,
and float with every movement of your body
as we sip on time
upon this moment
unsilenced.


IV. Ascension
My head soaks in your thighs
between your crossed and curving legs.
We suckle on the breath of our love
and breed above sequestered descriptions
of who and how we are supossed to be.
Not yet cultivated, not quite wild
male and female, ideal and real
we escape into the Dionysian moon with the thrust of a hand
and into the goddess with a press of our lips.

V. Eternity
I am drunk on our lunar moment
and linger on this vision of you and I
wishing that it could be captured by your camera
and savoured by your eye
as it stills in these, these eternal words.

 

[Guest]

Understand, there are other far better qualified than I - but I think this poem shows great promise.

I find it a bit wordy - over stuffed. I took the first verse........see what you thing.

I. Nature
We swell in the damp heat of the moment
absorbed into the warmth of the earth
sister strangers, you and I
hovering in time, with this moment,
held, as I feel inside of you
my limbs stretching in the swell of your cave
my branches shutting out all others
as your walls shade our garden.
Tomorrow I will labour to bring back
the memory of this night
longing to return to your breast
yet now I am lingering, bathed
in the blood of the mystery we share.

Some of your choice of words seem odd. "sister strangers". I had to go to your profile to make sure you're male. Also "blood" somehow breaks the mood. Would "essence" do better?

Cheers and well done.


P.S. Ignore me, I won't mind.

I like the "garden" references.

 

[Blackeyed Skye]

The areas guilty pleasure pointed out -- sister strangers, blood -- I found to be slight stumbling blocks while reading.

II. Identity
I am a tree trembling in the breeze of your touch
Leaf may possibly be a better alternative for tree.

floating in the oceanic wave of this moment.
I'm thinking about this line... maybe "adrift in the oceanic depth of this moment." Forgive me if that's too cliché.

I think the rest of part II is quite good. Yes, it could use more polish but there are some good phrases there:
humbled by your deep and shadowed eyes
the dust, not yet washed away by time
rising and fading in our dream
and will expire with the sweep of a thought.
A glimmer and a glance, soon to pass.


Skye

 

[Guest]

Verse 3 This verse is in danger of becoming pompous, which is never very erotic. I've changed a few things - but the last 3 lines don't mean anything to me. Maybe try

"Time is intoxicating
We sip, unsilenced,
in this moment."


III. Genesis
We are re-born into the folds of our chosen reality,
vibrating with possibility.
we savour every minute detail
and consume every image, imagined and real.
I feel every ripple disturbing the water in your lake,
watch every ascending eclipse that clouds your face,
I rise to every supple sound from your womb,
and float with the movement of your body
as we sip on time
upon this moment
unsilenced


Cheers.

 

[Guest]

I have changed a few lines - mainly for the rhythm but suggest you think about what it is you are saying here. It has the feel of words used for effect rather than to convey a certain feeling or action.

IV. Ascension
My head rests on your thighs
between your curving legs.
We suckle on the breath of our love
and breed above sequestered descriptions
of who we are supposed to be.
Not quite cultivated yet not wild
male and female, real and ideal
we escape into the Dionysian moon with the thrust of a hand
and into the goddess with a press of our lips.


Once more, ignore if you choose.

 

[CharleyH]

Thanks to both of you. I will rethink and revist!

Cheers.
Charley

 

[Senna Jawa]

[...] "blood" somehow breaks the mood.

When I got to that "blood" it cracked me up, I was laughing my head off.

Would "essence" do better?

No (and it would be less fun ). Read my poem Nothing Will Help, which should be a standard reference when faced with pieces like "Angelique".

Cheers and well done.

Guilty Pleasure, you have a great sense of humor.

 

[Guest]

Not even an "A" for effort?

You're a tough one Mr Grinc........er Senna Jawa.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Not even an "A" for effort?

You're a tough one Mr Grinc........er Senna Jawa.

Who's Mr Grinc...? I honestly don't know.

I've seen a movie about an amateur jazz band, joined by a real jazz player. Only one regular band member had the ability to play above the amateur level, while another one was making all the reqired gestures and motions. He was even showing up for extra practices with the serious musician (who happened to be Black, while these amateurs were white). At one moment the jazzman, when somehow induced into it, told the persistent amateur: music is not religion--devotion is not enough.

 

[CharleyH]

Ah, Fortunately, I take cruelty as a sign of love, and pure rhyme, as a sign of inexperience!

Guilty Pleasure: You said:
“I have changed a few lines - mainly for the rhythm but suggest you think about what it is you are saying here.”

Thank you for your input. Honestly. With relpies like yours, and that is why I am here, I hope to learn a thing or two possibly!

For you:
My head soaks, because women are wet, and in reality, as an actual experience, she was wet, undressed, when I put my head to her thighs, it was in a park, it had been raining, I was soaked. Addition, one soaks in female ejaculation, one, never rests during sex? No?

My poem is written as a biblical referral, hence my using 5 chapters so to speak, each referring to the bible my way, not biblically– why not? Often people use the bible to repress sexuality. I use the bible then to reflect a different garden, where the fist, or hand of another woman ascends the ever so all powerful, western world phallic cock.

I have thought about what you say, and so my poem begs question. I have changed it, ever so slightly with question. It is the moment we had sex, but also the moment when I realized that I loved this woman, despite stifling labels about being gay, despite the culture that I live in half of my time.

This poem, more than any I have written, is based on multi-levels, of symbols that transcend the block of one meaning, transforming through tiers. It is meant that way. I know how to rhyme, I know how to metre.

Rhyme is unwanted though, certainly un-needed in this poem. To me rhyme lends repetition. I am always a non-conformist, thinking how does something work, both form vs. content . . . And though there is an amount of conforming, there is also the hand, the fist, as ascension replacing the cock.

In your next post you say:
"Verse 3 This verse is in danger of becoming pompous, which is never very erotic. I've changed a few things - but the last 3 lines don't mean anything to me."

Again, references to the feminine, to being gay . . . to being woman, real and imagined. I use water imagery to continue the thought of femininity, and eclipse to meet dionyssus, the moon god, the god of transformation: a drag queen perhaps….. unsilenced simply as women as silenced in sexual desire, in history. As a lesbian of the moment – I felt like I could shout it out! As a woman, I felt no longer bound by culture, silent, subserving.

To Skye: See above for some references.
To you:

“I am a tree trembling in the breeze of your touch
Leaf may possibly be a better alternative for tree.”

Simply put, a tree is whole, a leaf is a part of something. I was a whole in her, not simply a part.

I cannot be adrift if I am whole, that would be to be lost, I am floating on the moment – lingering. The ocean, the water, in all of my poems is always associated with the feminine . . . from Freud you could get the unconscious . . . but women accordingly live in the fantasy of culture . . . therefore the symbol water becomes the starting point of feminine power as it relates to other women.

Verse 1:
I. Nature
We swell, as women do . . . enlarged, engorged, wanting, desiring. Can I say, "Oh my god sweetie, my clit is so swollen it hurts. If we don't have sex - I'll die." Women should!

For sister strangers, needed to get across two women, didn’t really know how to say it . . . see above, somewhere.

Plus, I am not male. No need to look. Sister strangers, well at least it made you look!

Thanks for your input again.
Charley!