Welcome to Gaia! ::

cool, i'm excited!

as to your first question, no. wherever you want to start is fine with me, seeing as how you're the teacher and all. as to your second question, the only forms i'm anywhere near familiar with are the sestina, the villanelle, and the sonnet. i've written one or two things in other forms, but those three are the ones i've dabbled in most.


here are the samples you requested, although i have to say only one of them comes anywhere close to not embarrassing me. (the reason i didn't post any sonnets is because i wrote a sonnet redoublé, and it's hella long. but if you want the link i can post it.)

Before you break

Indeed, she's always braced her knees to push
her way from my cocoon, as paper-thin
as she must feel each time she's told to shush.

A mother's love, the veins that show full-flush--
she kicks them, arm-leg-arm, runs out of limbs.
Indeed, she's always braced her knees to push

and form a gap. With thick red streaks she thrusts
away. I feel, with each drunk needle's limn,
as she must feel each time she's told to shush.

She's home at last, her wings spread wide in trust,
tattoo exposed for loverboy. "It's him"
indeed. She's always braced her knees to push.

This boy, he flutters towards her, just a crush
that's got her pinned for sure, fresh through the skin--
as she must feel each time she's told to shush.

The two of them will never know the rush
of flying free within the womb. "Begin"
indeed. She's always braced her knees, to push
as she must feel each time she's told to shush.


Bear down

My vision, hazed, runs thick with liquid tar—
such honey, black and sweet, that floods the comb
to seal my window where it sits ajar.

I clench the mattress, swelling in alarm,
and fingers sink as if through cream or foam.
My vision, hazed, runs thick with liquid tar.

I huddle, huddle back, for nothing bars
the needle puncturing this viscous dome
to seal my window where it sits ajar.

It’s dripping black between my shoulders, carves
up ridges, weeds. While yanking life from loam
my vision, hazed, runs thick with liquid tar.

The sky tonight is metal, shining stars
whose promises of soon now ring like chrome
to seal my window where it sits ajar.

A needle gushes sticky hot, too far.
Conceiving this one won’t be coming home,
my vision, hazed, runs thick with liquid tar
to seal my window where it sits ajar.


Butterfly pins

My insides are a muted shade of mauve
from top to bottom, flushed and dripping down.
A line tattooed in indigo will mark
the parted hair and where my thoughts are forced
to choose. So many sloping sides that lead
in curves, toward broad expanse of naught but flesh.

For surely underbelly counts as flesh
most tender, blooming pink from center mauve.
(A niggle-worm swells skin to itch and leads
my eyes to bite the thoughtless place it downs
blood-- mine; layers stripped away.) I am forced
by nameless ones, them-- my exposure marked

on ashy paper, proof a question mark.
The hand is cupped, but holding what? Not flesh--
that’s never certain, just easily forced.
The dot is jutting out, wrist clear as mauve.
Vast waters uncontained, they trickle down
through bones, drops aching, pulling at their lead.

A nose ahead, reigns slacken, free the lead.
I drag a stick through dirt, a jagged mark
that rapes my hands up ruddy raw and down
before they have a chance to open (flesh
or tranquilizers, all the same, spread mauve--
a haze of poppies dull and sometimes forced).

When I was younger, water drowned a force
inside me, forming scars with weights like lead
around my arms, enough to sink their mauve
enlightenments. But no one left a mark
or taught me how to swim or showed me flesh
could float-- do more than spiral, dying down.

A petal spins. I blow it up and down
with breath. In small sedated puffs, I force
a change. The time for sleep is not yet. Flesh
has fat, though thin and pocketed, that leads
me warm through cold, to kiss my pock-like marks
however angry. Yellow clears, and mauve.

Once more in downward flow, foul thoughts all lead
away and out, are forced from concave marks.
In time, my flesh will again embrace mauve.



Untitled

That first fresh itch and then we're hatching out.
We never doubt our start as eggs, of course,
before our feathers even think to sprout;
the fluffy bits are popping pyramids
of gooseflesh while our shells fall to the floor
where heels of water crush them into white.

The foaming caps and tranquil flows of white
are seen inside and once we’re fully out,
still more. Unsticking eyes from bottom floor,
we want it, oh so much, to run our course
the whole way through, to see the pyramids
amongst such brown and yet undying sprouts.

The stairs we try to climb refuse us, sprouts
instead of ivy. Trapped in membrane’s white,
we lack the knowledge that such pyramids
had needed, long ago, to be built out
of nothing. So, enrolled for the one course
we need, the years all pass and leave us floored

at gaping skips that come with brand-new floors.
Such blanks, they teach us how to carry sprouts
and homes aboard our backs. Called life’s crash-course,
the crawling shows us how to carry white
and thus escape. When out of sight, it’s out
of sight, still felt atop the pyramids.

We make our bricks and hope for pyramids
to rise up, molten-stark against the floor.
The pendulum is up and ticking out.
Dead-center brings us to a halt, we sprout
our wings, refuse to fly, spread out too white.
We’re chickens now-- we don’t intend, of course,

on going any higher than discourse.
The clock’s soft crown, the tops of pyramids
have never been reached past, the closest white
is on our heads or shed on broken floors.
We’re ready to once more have thick skins sprout,
to be the bellies tucked inside and out

the rock. We merely course across the floor,
form ice in pyramids, not cubes, and sprout
our water white inside but never out.






so there you have it. am i still supposed to pick one of the three forms to learn? i wasn't clear on that, sorry.

alrighty then! i'll get reading and, hopefully soon, writing.

Crop circles

I passed the hours pressed against the grain
that rotted in my stomach, hearing sounds
and falling fast into the same refrain.

They searched the fields despite the acid rain,
the mud a second skin, and said they'd found
I passed. The hours pressed against the grain.

My mother, how could I have shown disdain
like naked skin? It left us on the ground
and falling fast into the same refrain.

I beat the stalks, the womb, I felt the pain
in giving up and bending down, was drowned.
I passed the hours pressed against the grain.

Wrong, wrong. I was alive despite the wane
of consciousness, though huddled in a mound
and falling fast into the same refrain.

The world then faded in, remorse all feigned.
The need-- it sloughed away what kept me bound.
I passed the hours pressed against the grain
and falling fast into the same refrain.

yeah, it was a reference to alcohol, but the narrator is hiding in the field as well, so. the best of both! but really, i see what you mean. hmm. i'll work on making that bit more clear.

i'm looking forward to seeing yours, too! the hardest part for me is trying to make the voice normal, like a sentence i would write regardless of structure. as soon as i've written another one, i'll post it.

agh i'm sorry, i haven't posted in forever!

as far as one phrase per line, i'm not sure what you mean. one sentence per line?

I just finished an hour-long critique which got wiped when I tried to post it. Goddamnit! *sighs* All right. It's not your fault; it's my own stupid error. Here goes again! lol

This is a good beginning. (Not much more was said the first time around here.)



I'm getting images of an alien set down on our planet, due to the title and the stanzas above and below. Whether accurate or not, that's the feel I get. I like your rephrasing of the third line and wish I'd thought of that. I'm going to try it sometime.



Well, I can comment here instead of at the end, where this was originally. I think your "It" is too generic and that it does not pull its weight for the poem. One of the things I tend to push here the most when critiquing, is that every word in the poem must tell. If it's not working, it doesn't belong, and there are a couple ways people use weak words. Either through ignorance of a better word or ease of composition. Your use of "It" here falls into the latter category. (How?) Like so. It allows you to have a reference which refers to nothing. "It" is just thrown there without something for us to tie it to. (By the way, this stanza furthers the impression that it's about an alien, perhaps defending its actions...in which case the "It" can be seen to be a vessel of some sort.)

Now, I know you're confined to a certain syllable count, but don't feel it's a life or death issue. Having eleven or twelve syllables is not out of the question, as long as it's not the rule for the poem. (Assuming we're going with iambic pentameter as a rule for now.) It's going to be difficult to rephrase this line...but you're up to it. I've seen enough of your writing just in what you've put in this thread to know that. Go for it.



Good. Nothing to say here beyond that.



Good use of "wrong". You managed to bring the character from what seemed like death, in a way which is plausible. Good job, that.



The only other thing I have to offer is that you may wish to look at "into the same refrain" again. If you were to construe "the same" as being redundant, plausible because a refrain is a repeating of what's gone before, you could then use those syllables to descriptive advantage, instead of merely "the same", which is rather dry for such a full poem.

You might try something as blatant as "into a bleak refrain", or some other such nonsense.

Well, I'm pretty sure I got all the points I had in my original post, though surely with more brevity, which is to your benefit, I'm sure. xd

I would like to say one thing more.

This is a strong poem, and you're very close to it being a very strong poem. If I were grading it, I'd give it the weakest possible "A", with the note that you could tune it to the highest "A+". That's how I feel about it, and I hope you'll at least make the attempt...it's why we're here, isn't it?

Take care. If you have questions, pepper me with 'em!

You've been Shatnerized.

Don't erase the first version, merely repost it with "Edited version" preceding the poem.

Thankees!

(This way if any strong points from the original disappear, I'll notice.)