Downfall
I grasped your hand
between two open wounds.
With just a quick reply of 'No",
I saw in you our end.
I felt within this searing heat,
conquering all my love for you.
As this burning consumed me,
my stars fell from your eyes.
My earth began to shatter
as you stood so close to me,
but still so far away.
You never did know me at all.
I changed it up a bit, took out the rhyme. Any better? Did I screw it up? Any opinions would be appreciated.
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5 comments:
caitlin,
thanks for posting this.
i think the first two lines are really strong, probably the strongest of the poem.
the poem seems to lose itself a bit toward the end, specifically in the last stanza. what i mean by that is it seems to try too hard to explain what, exactly, it is trying to convey. i think your first two lines accomplish that task beautifully.
i would encourage you to focus more on those surprising images rather than focus on communicating an explicit meaning to the reader.
'my stars fell from your eyes' is another good line. could that be used in a method like the first two lines?
hope this helps.
I agree with Chris, especially about those first two lines. I think I'd do one of two things, which is to either expand upon those three lines, and see what comes up, or to cut it down to something like:
"I grasped your hand
between two open wounds
my stars fell from your eyes
as you stood so close to me.
You never did know me at all."
or something along those lines
there's some good shit in here & i'll agree with those other two fools by saying that your job now, i think, is to simply 'unbury' the especially good stuff.
a line like "conquering my love for you" doesn't need to be in there, since some of the stronger images already convey the ideas of "conquering" and "love." this poem is definately working best when it's providing images, not when it's explaining those images to the reader.
I'd also play around with the title. "downfall" seems too easy, like it's not really adding anything to the poem itself. titles are fuckin' difficult, but just mess around with it and see what happens.
The last two lines of the first paragraph are pretty strong; it's straight forward and simple. And the way your poem ends with you basically telling him that through good and bad, he never really knew you at all.
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