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2/20/2020 6:09:21 PM William Jenkins Posts: 7	A high school party Bright colours and backwards hats Jostling Circling Lighting smokes Around a bon fire Hidden by silhouettes of trees. The intoxicating sips are an adventurous feeling. The girls get loose And the guys get loud. Fist fights And smiles. The hangover in the morning Recalls the joyous memories of the night, And begs for another round. Every weekend is another blast More drinks and more girls, Maybe more drugs. Years have passed, The weekend rituals have etched Tired lines in a sunken pale face. That goes to work each week To recover last week’s spent cheque. And comes home to be Mundane Miserable. Another night with no purpose Drinking Escaping Feeling diseased. Whether at the bar or dim living room. Surrounded by a new crowd. The frequent drinks Are an exhausting routine. The wise ones have stopped the weekend ritual Before their youth drowned out. Feeling tired and beaten The hangovers in the mornings Are a painful reminder. You did it again, You haven’t stopped. Maybe next week.I've been working on a few iambic pentameter poems and wrote this free verse the other day just to give my brain a break. I've combed over it a few times, but looking for more suggestions on what to edit or how to improve.
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2/20/2020 10:54:56 PM Jack Webster Posts: 255	I love its uncontrived depth. I imagine you are a devotee of sonnets as your volta is very strong even in free verse. I recently heard a talk by a Buddhist teacher distinguishing the difference between excitement and happiness. Your poem was really such a strong illustration of that; the fact that excitement is built on impermenant things that jazz us up in the moment, but dont really give us a sense of purpose or a feeling of fulfillment the way altruism can. I think the line “years go by” is redundant, because your sensory descriptions of the changes in the face show and imply the passage of time, as does the line about others stopping the weekend ritual. There is so much truth in this dukkha. I think it would fun to turn it into a journey, a series of poems, embraccing the reality of that dissatisfaction Sometimes the thought that maybe i havent partied enough or had enough excitement in my life haunts me, so there is actually some comfort for me in this poem, that it might have added some color to my life but that happiness isnt dependent on having it or having had it. Its so easy for our confusions and attachments to torment us, but at the end of the day an open heart is more powerful than where we’ve been or where we think we’re headed. There’s so much truth in the dukkha expressed in this poem. It would be fun to see it turned into a series of poems, a journey, an exercise in mindfulness of the disatisfaction - not wallowing, just self-journalism, watching, feeling, recording; embracing the disatisfaction by making a space that wants a happiness that is here to stay
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2/22/2020 9:41:19 AM William Jenkins Posts: 7	Thank you for your critique and suggestions! I shall take advantage of them when editing this poem. I appreciate it very much!
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