Riddle In Red - Writers Forum

Cold Twilight · 05-09-2006, 01:20 PM

It runs like water, falls like rain,
But thicker than both and neither.
Red as ruby or as itself,
Crimson jeweled drops, like fine wine.

Copper-scented and a cousin to tears,
The grisly drops of blinded eyes.
A living liquid of cultured murder
That dies even as humans do.

Scarlet stains and endarkened ground,
Are its violent cost and price.
One catch there is for one and all;
It is only bought, not borrowed.

Twist you thoughts about however you may,
There's just no getting around it;
There is as harsh price you will have to pay,
...For the living liquid of blood.

Oasis Writer · 05-09-2006, 02:33 PM

I liked it

But I love darker poetry. Very good, nice imagry. Crimsoned, I'd change to scarlet or something. You used it once before. Otherwise, great.

holdyoualways · 05-09-2006, 05:08 PM

i like it
& i agree with oasis writer about changing that word to scarlet or something else

Cold Twilight · 05-09-2006, 05:45 PM

Yeah, I'll take care of that. scarlet and crimsoned have the same # of syllables as far as I can tell, so it'll work. Thanks, Oasis!

Thank you also, hya,

lol. I'm glad you liked it.

speakerphone2 · 06-22-2007, 01:05 AM

I liked it. I thought overall it had a wonderful tone of malice to it, and I can easily picture some crazed serial killer scrawling it down on a tiny book....

I liked your second stanza best, and the third by contrast didn't do anything for me; I felt in that stanza the thing sort of grinded to a halt, but textually speaking it's a very appealing poem, as well as tone-wise.

Still though, well done; a great exploration of subtle tone using powerful vocabulary deftly & accurately.

Cold Twilight · 01-24-2008, 05:45 PM

Thank you. I'm going to take a look at how to improve this.

Wishing4Rain · 01-24-2008, 07:27 PM

Just brilliant, well written and some very nice imagery. I did find one flaw though, just a minor typo.

"Twist you thoughts about however you may,"

Shouldn't the first 'you' read 'your'?

Great work here, no crit's from me.

dannyboy · 01-24-2008, 07:52 PM

didn't like it, for me, it says nothing about blood and doesn't use the image of blood to say anything about anything else.

But mostly I want to know why harsh?

Baron · 01-25-2008, 07:00 AM

Where's the riddle? I think that this is the kind of poem that you write as a teenager and get ambarrassed by when you look back on it and think that you ever took it seriously.

Cold Twilight · 01-25-2008, 12:53 PM

Wishing for Rain -- Thank you!

I'm very glad you caught that.

Danny boy -- The entire poem is about blood, and only about blood. And wouldn't you agree that death is a harsh price to pay? You've heard the quote, "Blood for blood." ?

Baron -- The poem is a riddle. A riddle that I give the answer to in the last line. And, no, I'm really not embarrassed by this one at all. It is one of my earlier syllabically defined poems, and I'm rather proud of it, considering.

Miraenda · 01-25-2008, 12:59 PM

Do you really feel it needs to be written in red? We won't get the color from reading it and need to have it further pressed upon us? Just saying, I don't think it needs to be in red. It can be, but why push the point? Also, if you do think it needs to be in the color blood would be, blood isn't that color

You might need to prick your finger then match the color using the color spectrum to match it

Cold Twilight · 01-25-2008, 01:07 PM

lol. No need for it to be written in red. I forget why I did that. I suppose I must be a bit hard to read.