Crowley

Hopes built of twilight and dust
Alone in the skulking crowd
Spectre of wishful thinking
Struck, rebounds, then struck again
On the other smarting cheek
Love sends us for groceries
Changes the locks when we’re gone
Slurping gruel that seems a wine
Weeps, though pretends its laughter
Penitent hands hold only prayer
hearts pierced by stiletto shoes
bless solitaires questing tongue
as clay, to mould into hers.

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Crowley, out...

PrisonerOfPrey

When you write you should keep the idea of "shoe, not tell" in your mind. No matter what it is, (unless its a research paper) This poem tells me everything, but I can't feel the emotions it sprouted from.

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Now I lay me down to sleep/
With every passing thought I weep/
Lead me into nights dark bliss/
And let me wake in innocence. -Me

Noirllyn

Hopes built of twilight and dust
Alone in the skulking crowd
Spectre of wishful thinking
Struck, rebounds, then struck again (Should be "strikes, rebounds, then strikes again" or "struck, rebound, then struck again". Mixing tenses doesn't seem to serve a purpose here.)
On the other smarting cheek
Love sends us for groceries
Changes the locks when we’re gone <--- I like this part a lot.
Slurping gruel that seems a wine
Weeps, though pretends its laughter
Penitent hands hold only prayer
hearts pierced by stiletto shoes
bless solitaires questing tongue
as clay, to mould into hers.

I think you might have a typo or two in here, not totally sure. This is all very "free-flowing". You have a lot of good lines, but they don't really seem to fit together entirely. Punctuation would help this out a lot. I think you have a lot of good words in you, but you need to make this more coherent. Take a two line segment out of the poem and try to base a different poem around it, it'll probably turn out better.

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CMM_Kaleido

PoP and Noirllyn have covered the bases, just wanted to re-emphasize that I think this piece is worth working on a bit more. I second Noirllyn's vote for lines 6-7. I also liked 'Slurping gruel that seems a wine.'

Crowley

I think you mean "show not tell" as I'm not sure how to "shoe" though I am versed in "booting", but point taken. Thanks for the pointers. The line where tenses seem to mix it should read as "when struck he rebounds then he's struck again" but so many vistigial words seemed to clutter up the line so I removed them. This could do with revising though as its obviously not working.

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Crowley, out...