still love it

--
A picture, like a human, will speak a thousand words, and never say a goddamn thing.

I clicked the thumb hoping for a higher-res shot of that picture. Such is the action of a visually oriented person. As for the writing, all I can say is "I read it."

--
My Website | My Prints | My Music

Did you spend a lot of time making that first verse's wording and flow perfect? Well it is. :]

--
Dictum sapienti sat est.
*unknown-poet-project

I'm speechless. o.o That's amazing.

The flow of words is quite smooth.

However, I feel the enjambement at certain points has a weakening effect.
The last stanza in particular.

& your highway hips don't have
enough bend to salivate my
mouth. i can't moisten the
whetstone & this only
gets duller by the
train ride.

There is always a slight pause at the end of a line - one result of this is that the mind creates a very brief 'conceptual stopping point' at the end of each line.
This is what allows enjambement to be so effective when playing on words and double-meanings.

Lines that end with 'my', 'and', 'the', and with phrasing that does not really contribute meaning to that line as an individual entity - such lines are weakened in their impact. The line following such lines is also slightly affected as well.

Apart from that consideration, I quite enjoyed the rhythm and imagery of this piece.

Well written.

Benedictions!

--
There is no escape from metre; there is only mastery.
- T.S. Eliot 'Reflections on Vers Libre' 1917 [link]

Well written, smooth, tatseful. I love the imagery... it reminds me of times when visiting new cities and there's so much to take in that it all melds together in my mind to create a blurry magazine-cut-up collage.

Well done.

Skillful use of rhyme and alliteration, particularly in the first few stanzas. Nicely done.

"better to burn out than fade away."
From "Highlander"?
Nice pic by the way.
//Jimmy

These are just my thoughts

This poem left me very frustrated for a number of reasons, mainly it doesn’t say anything to me, there are nice words and nice usage of words but (for me) the message is obscured by them, or not there at all.

The rhythm is jarred by your use of punctuation, some of which I can’t get my head around, for example, why have you used a colon here:

too fast & water lukewarm at
best, put in a kaleidoscope,
you on one end: with me,
looking in.

Also the commas really break flow on this stanza.

In the first stanza I feel the contractions forming false sibilance are very forced, specifically I tripped up on “rubber’s”.

There are other things that seem _too_ forced to me:

maternity, fraternity
certainly uncertain
like, a dislike

They’re clever, but are they just there because they’re clever?

As `darkcrescendo explained, i too was disappointed with enjambment. I feel like you chose structure/visual format over clever play with enjambment and I think you chose wrongly.

& rich in the unplumbed metro where rubber's glued to walls
lit with florescent flickers
choked by cascade perspective
there's a feline famine screaming
to be seen here, standing
stationary among left off carry-on &

Though I am just approaching poetry as a visual art form (thanks to * shotgunmessiah and :devinnenui: ) it should enhance the poem; not detract from it. This stanza is also crying out for some punctuation. Enjambment (in my opinion) should play with the reader, it should tempt them with breaks, dare them to stop, make them question classic structures and excite them when they realise it wasn’t the end after all.

Some of your word pairings are hard to sound, but this is, more than likely, personal preference.

e.g.
among left off carry-on &
“amongst left” would assist reading in my opinion. It’s probably because of the way it synthesises on the page (visually) with the way it leaves "st" sound in the air (and thus the shape of your tongue) right before enunciating "left".

It’s been suggested to me that I’m disappointed with the poem because the description on the DD is out of place. That may be so.

There’s some cracking imagery and clever word play but I must be missing something, because it doesn’t come together for me.

As a side note, I seem to have read this or parts of this before, on a different account.

--
You may see a silly fop & a worshipful justice, a griping rook & a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer & an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist & a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose a medley of impertinence -- at the *Coffeehouse