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2/4/2020 9:27:31 AM Victoria Lucas Posts: 9	Dreaming drunk Teeth grind under the weight of Time; An anomalous and vile passage I writhe in my own grime Feverish and mad, I cry to my demons Ask them to remember me Not as the shell to which I’ve been reduced But a spirit, untouched, worth life I have never done it well Every day passes, hurts like hell And I miss the spot in the sky from which I fell And to no avail, I scream out to that sky but Whoever He was has left. edited by junkycosmonaut on 2/4/2020
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2/6/2020 10:33:14 PM Jack Webster Posts: 255	I think “Teeth grind...” is a really strong opening. I would cut the line at the end of ‘grind’. It’s extremely direct, it’s kinesthetic, the spondee is very tense, the ‘t’ in ‘teeth’ is a sudden release of tension that immediately plunges the reader into the poem. The way the work is presented here there is a larger than life scale: the weight of time, demons, alluding to angels/heaven/God/paradise/happiness. The scale adds a sense of artistic and aesthetic drama, but I think the poem would be stronger if you stick with, or include more of the kinesthetic sense, that you instinctively reach for in the first line. My hunch is that the sense of epic scale perhaps a fear that the suffering itself doesn’t contain its own artistry or scale, so the demon/angel device is used to construct something aesthetically artificial (in a technical sense, not a critical sense - in a critical sense the demon/ angel motif could work; the line of thought I’m offering is merely to suggest a different point of view for the sake of experimentation. It’s always nice to have options) For instance you talk about the passage through grime - but you completely abandon the opportunity to offer the reader a way into the grime. Is the room dark? Is it hot? Is every pore of your skin trying to ooze out the poison? Do the bedsheets cling to your sweating skin like a mistake that can’t be removed? Does the alcohol burn your stomach like a demonic fire you can’t put out? Is the skin stained with dirt from the road - from the crossroads, the crossroads of life? I would really focus on the tactile and physical aspects of the ugliness of the passage through grime - get some grime on the reader too; take them on the passage with you. Find ways to describe the physical details that reflect your theme of hellishness, agony, a struggle. Do the aluminum blinds sound like demonic laughter as the dark wind knocks them against the open window? I think you’ll find the epic scale can still be preserved in the sense that every detail contains some part of the agony, represents some part of the struggle, life itself has stained and infused everything in the room like sulphur. Just my two cents. Good luck! edited by superlativedeleted on 2/6/2020
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