Westfall

Note: This is will more than likely be very painful reading for most, because it's utter rubbish, but I would appreciate some help and ways to improve it, or simple state that there is no way to salvage it.

It's Winter, Laura, Winter

You can sit there under that fast food
Marque and think back to when you once
Lived right across the street, how blissful
Your life was then, but when did it become so hard
To say that you're not okay? You found hope
In an upside down novel, some portrait of a person
More noble than you could ever hope of being
So you drew yourself into that painting and watched
As your life withered away, it was water based.
The people come on by, fives at a time and throw
You some change, hoping you'll buy something
Useful, like a post card addressed to the five
People you gave up on; you shouldn't be so
Scared of taking up a new novel.

Remember back to when you spent nights
On end fighting the armies in the basement
Where you grew up, and the day your General
Died when he dreamed up a fever to take away
The chill of winter; you ran away then and you
Haven't stopped yet. If you can't even start to
Make yourself feel better than how can you except
Others to care about you, it all starts with a telephone
Call home.

__________________
Playgrounds are graveyards
and all of our scars are permanent, permanent.
There’s no replacement for places.
I’ll always love you, you’re mine.
Numb is the new high,
all memories die out ‘till nothing and nowhere is golden.

Eiji Tunsinagi

Hm. I liked the 1st stanza much more than the 2nd. Aspects of this, I liked. I didn't like the repetition of certain words to close to each other, it's literary deja vu.

I feel I can't give an honest critique of this because I've been reading too much about enjambments and causura and what-not - long catching up on my poetry studying.

One thing I do think is that it's a little too prose-heavy. For how you enjamb, there is not enough rhyme to make this nothing beyond formated prose. Maybe. Get other opinions first before you take this one...

__________________
"nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished."

"how will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

Westfall

Can you tell me what "enjamb" means, I looked it up but didn't find anything. And what exactly do you mean by too "prose heavy?"

Sorry if I'm asking what you all will think are dumb questions, but I appreciate the help.

__________________
Playgrounds are graveyards
and all of our scars are permanent, permanent.
There’s no replacement for places.
I’ll always love you, you’re mine.
Numb is the new high,
all memories die out ‘till nothing and nowhere is golden.

Eiji Tunsinagi

Enjambment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No problem.

Enjambent is something I had never heard of until someone on here mentioned it to me and I was enlightened. Usually we do it unintentionally. It is breaking a line and splitting a poetic verse in half.

And by prose heavy, I mean that not enough poetic techniques are used to make this anything beyond simply prose. This is only my opinion of course, but that's what I can tell.

__________________
"nothing is perfect, nothing lasts, and nothing is finished."

"how will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

Voodoo

Not exactly breaking a line, but breaking a phrase.

Rather than doing

I can tell that man,
I can kill that man

It'd be

I can tell
that man, I can
kill that man

But for purposes, yes.

I'll suggest you don't think poetry need begin with a capital line hanging on every line. It's not so shitty as it is in most modern poems, though, because you turn phrase.

I do like the first strophe more than the second. In the second, you start to bring yourself too into it, with

than how can you

That's too direct.

Ending that line with a participle is too much, I think. Not savvy for every break, but it's natural enough, except for that one in S2.

vangoghsear

I agree with GV here.

The observational phrases of the first strophe is the most poetic you get in this piece IMHO. With lines like:

The bold phrases are actually pretty good.

__________________
If writing is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Westfall

Thanks everyone. I don't have time tonight, but tomorrow I'll sit down with it and see what I can do with the second stanza and hopefully get it to flow better as a whole.

I greatly appreciate the help.

__________________
Playgrounds are graveyards
and all of our scars are permanent, permanent.
There’s no replacement for places.
I’ll always love you, you’re mine.
Numb is the new high,
all memories die out ‘till nothing and nowhere is golden.