I've heard this idea passed around on the forums a bit, so I figured I'd just start a thread.

If you want a piece of yours to be analyzed by the masses of Mingle and torn to bloody shreds with criticism post it here.

Go on. You know you wanna.

We're off to a tremendous start. Maybe I should post something to get the koosh ball rolling.

"it came like this"

by plastic_pancakes

i have dreamed of nothing since
tears evaporate
(the) eyes resist
and all the tempests howl with emptiness
just like this
it came like this

the sun resigned
her eyes grew wide
the moon got drunk
on wasted tides
that sped along
the seas of rome
and crashed their ashes
through our homes

despite the nothing
in the beds
of children bettered
by their deaths
i still maintain
this earthly ink
out my veins
back down the sink

better yet
i'm better spent
with selling deaths
for months on end
the day is mine
yet still defined
with watered eyes
still growing blind

the summer welts
her sores are heavy
they bleed and bend
down every levy
every place
i can't erase
and i still taste
what can't be swallowed

I hear you about writings being torn to bloody shreds...I have actually posted stuff at one place, that has been published and awarded at one time, and it was torn to bloody shreds and I was told it is apparently written all wrong...

Anyway, you write such great stuff, so no criticism forthwith...

soulfully written, desperate loss, and regret :-):~)

Not qualified to shred anyone's writing. I don't even correct spelling because I know mine is not so great. My grammar is terrible.

I have had a couple of small articles published and got paid for one too...go figure.

So inspiration and passion don't have to have correct spelling and grammar.

ok, shred away!!!


Midnight Blue


You draw your world differently
these days
With colors I don’t understand

In my mind I see the canvas you are working on

I am Toneless
My Monochrome state has no place in the Spectrum of your ever changing
emotion
This Hue of emptiness,
leaves me numb
Yet, I feel each pass of your hand
The breeze takes me back,
to a time when I was your favorite instrument; when we drew with reckless abandon

And oh, how we did draw…

Red skies
And fireflies
Passionate scenes
On sidewalk dreams

Life was beautiful then…
Filled with blossoming love in endless variety
and it’s only now that you see I was not the source of your unhappiness
It lies within you
Deep
No matter how many times you try to wash it away
with your White wine
Or the Green tint of the apple martinis’
It always comes back
Crystal clear
An effect, not even you could master

No, not in your charcoal sketch dreams
Or the watercolor reality of lonely nights
When my tears fall
no longer innocent
From my cheek
Forming a puddle around me
Leaving me floating
Like an island

Don’t worry
I am not fool enough to believe
You could swim
in my pleas and ever be touched
by their meaning
So for now,
forever
Pacify this empty easel
As time takes its toll
Staining the very fabric
And color my heart at
Midnight
Blue

kc..A beautiful artful piece..Reminds me of how musos talk about their guitars, drum kits etc..

i don't feel shreded?

thank you very much!

Like anyone would ever shred either of you....

i can take it...and i'm willing to bet he can as well

Great title, for the record.

I read this a few times to try to wrap my mind more completely about what was being said in the manner it was stated.

Toneless, Monochrome, Spectrum, Hue, and finally Green in another stanza are the only words that are capitalized that don't begin sentences, bringing forth a certain feeling of awakening to the piece.

As the writer describes feelings of inadequacy in regards to the spectrum of the addressee's world, the writer's own spectrum is actually realized, although only to the audience and not the narrator.

So, overall, despite the initial statements that seem to insist a lack of self-worth, of an overall valueless nature in regards to this other person's spectrum, it is the events and recollections that create the hue of the individual speaking, which is suggested as Midnight Blue in the title, but takes on a different meaning at the end of the poem.

What I really like about this, though, is how the most ample reflections of the narrator are his evaluations of the person being referred to throughout the whole piece. So when it's written,

"Crystal clear
An effect, not even you could master"

it rings doubly true for the individual speaking, since there's such cloudiness as to his or her personal hue or value and an inability to feel any resolve about it, the same way that White and Green don't effectively wash away the problems of the other, Blue is hardly a comfort to the individual speaking in the poem.

Overall, there really isn't much to shred, kc! With no artistic background I found this piece pretty fascinating in all its regards. There's an innate, dynamic vividness and life throughout the piece that keeps it interesting read after read.

Well, it was critical. Your poem was just really damn good, in my opinion. Cheers.

OK, I'll play -- this is from my second book:


WHAT’S ALL THIS CRAP ABOUT POETRY?

What’s all this crap about poetry –
And meaning and depth –
“A melancholy cloud of unrequited love”
Or “Running like Kimble from Gerard” --
It’s all just words in the end;
(“But pretty words,” she used to say)
Hiding the meaning, the words masking thoughts

I’ve done it myself –
A circumlocution, avoiding a truth;
I choose my words carefully;
I’m lining them up (for desired effect)
And I wonder if anything
Slips through the cracks –
Or if you might figure it out....?

And then your picture appears on the screen
And it seems like you know what I wrote –
Am I making assumptions?
Am I making things up?
Are you reading my mind?
(Such a practical skill!)
So I jumble the words further still

What’s all this crap about poetry –
I wish I could tell you
Without disguising the feelings
Under layers of colorful fluff
But I’ll never be direct enough –
Maybe you’ll even see through the maze
Before I change it all around again....

Heidi used to be a manager at the Atlantic City Pet Emporium before she got randomly tested for drugs and came up positive for cocaine. Her story became one of the legend almost instantly, and though they recorded the event as a dismissal by the company she was asked to stay an additional two weeks while they found a replacement for her. Needing the money she agreed, and reminded herself of this often throughout the day as the eyes of straightedge coworkers drifted towards her through the bird cages and and glass walls of the dog pound.

Three months after this incident, which Heidi now regarded as nothing more than an unwitting, yet slanderous attempt to reduce her even further into the depths of her seclusion, she decided that her life had become unmanageable and that despite her efforts she had become addicted to poverty and to a lesser extent Little Debbie snack cakes. The jobs that she applied for had ranged from adjunct cleaning associate to wash station attendant across the street from her old pet store. Still, unwilling to list her previous occupation that had coursed her through the three years that she lived in Atlantic City she had no job to show, no taxes to explain, and though financially stable for the moment felt as if the incident had left her as something of a ghost in a town designed for the dead.

So late at night when she walked the neon streets she felt strangely adrift a limbo designed for kings with no eye-sockets. She started imagining all the street performers as zombified business men with nooses instead of ties and glasses made of marble through which she skated miles around whenever she passed one. These thoughts became more than fantasy when she found herself waking up at bus stations instead of her one bedroom apartment. When she came home after what she thought had been a particularly rough night out on the town, eating hot dogs and smoking cigarette butts out of ashtrays even though she had money to buy a pack and didn't smoke, she found the corpse of her cat strewn across her couch, sprawled out in some inverted banana shop with horrible, petrified eyes.

The cat wasn't just dead, but frozen; it was stiff in its rigid pose like a tumbling riggormortis, all wrinkled up and frizzed. She deduced that the air conditioning had been on for... a while, and the cat clearly hadn't been fed in... a long while.

"What was it?" she asked. "Days or a week?"

She would ask herself for the first two days after this if it hadn't been some kind of ****ed up timeshare scheme or something, designed to make her doubt her intuition and buy into some nice Colorado landscape. The ghosts of this town weren't satisfied with her life, which she accepted, and now couldn't even tolerate her in death. She was the indefinite dancer at a bar with no electricity - the daily washed dollar at some strip joint that was recycled to the floor each night.

She was a broken girl who didn't brush her hair anymore and couldn't stand the sound of food cooking the microwave. Sometimes she wondered how long it had been since she took her pills. Then she would frequently remember that she didn't take any pills.

Now nearing the five month mark since her release from Atlantic City Pet Emporium Heidi's exhaustion was the only thing marked on a calender from the year before. Just a blank canvas reading 1997 at the top and a single box filled in with a red marker - "Anxious".

"What now?" she thought.

She couldn't just go back to the quiet, residential facilities of her home town. Still, the smell of the cat was becoming something dreadful and what became procrastination now became overt distraction whenever she walked by it, pretending not to see things crawling all over it. Heidi imagined that the cat was just twitching because the air conditioning was up too high but all she could think to do in those anxious times was turn it up even more. It wasn't enough. She emptied out her bank accounts and bought three small air conditioners which she put in the bedroom, the bathroom, and the other window in her living room. The house was colder than any of the casinos in the strip but smelled about the same to her.

Sunday on some rainy day she decided that she couldn't stand for this injustice any longer. She had to take action and decided that if she didn't stand for herself she would fall through the hole in the center of the world that was eating her out inside like a tapeworm made of grease. She showered for an hour or two, put on her father's best tie that he had given her as a gift when she moved out to the city, and wearing only this packed her cat into her only suitcase and proceeded to walk the block from her house to her car which had been parked there for a week.

Music was on the radio but she didn't recognize any of the songs. Smiling, she made up the words on her way to the Atlantic City Pet Emporium and turned the bass volume up to its maximum as her car crashed through the glass double doors in the front. She leaped out of the car, suitcase in hand, and walked proudly with her tie shaking against her shivering, still slightly wet body, double windsor knot and all, towards the back of the store to the Customer Service desk.

There was a girl wearing her uniform. This injustice had become downright comical. She flung the suitcase onto the counter and opened the latches, watching the petrified stare of this new girl working dart from her mostly naked body to the horrible glare of what was left of the cat's eyes.

"You sold me a bad cat," she said, "And I need to know what your return policy is. It's been awhile since I've shopped here."

Satisfied with this she rushed back to her car and turned the radio up as loud as it would go while small bits of smoke rose out of the smashed radiator that was sticking out of the front of the hood. There were violins and cellos and assorted instruments she didn't know the name of, but since she didn't know the song she just reclined her chair and screamed the lyrics to "Freebird", waiting for her suitcase to be returned.

Words and people, people and their word,

Don't always act or do, just what they should.

Shred my paper, use it as toilet-paper.

Who really cares about what I write.

They don't give-a-damn, just want to start a fight.

Poe could write it, and still be shot on site.

Passions, reasons, wills to make you cry or die.

To most, they would have no need, to let them fly.

So trash my shlt, get rid of it.

Because in the center of me, I will always be free.

Free to form, free to write, free to flow on any site.

One mans bad, another mans glad, to me its simple, its ALL just sad.












Bare your name, bare your game, bare it man, without any shame.

Proof is in the pudding, that sweet mixture of delight,

which flows through every word, made to sound, just-right.

Get on your mission, type to its finale completion.

A poet, a writer, a story-teller through and through.

All of these people live their lives, wraped-up in YOU..

This is the third time that I've tried to write an analysis of your poem, Lex. The first time my computer got shut off and five minutes ago I accidentally clicked the window closed. Third time better be a charm. Hehe.

Alright. I liked this poem and the immediate irony of it, but beyond that what kept my interest was how it is clearly more the author critiquing himself than the medium of poetry. In the first stanza when you refer to "her" it leads me to believe that all the "you"'s in the rest of the poem are written directly towards the reader.

In that sense it felt a little hazy and lost part of the personal quality. It maintained its rhythm and meter and scope but somehow lost its touch of personal connection as it steered into the repetition of the title. Good writing throughout that seemed to become less ironic and more introspective near the end.

As I said - I liked it. That's my vibe and evisceration of your piece. Mad props for using "circumlocution".

Well, I think you're right in that I was critiquing myself more than anything else. I have never really been comfortable with writing poetry (my summary: "I took to poetry like a moose takes to a flight simulator" is most likely going to be referenced in the title of my planned poetry book) --

Whereas writing a novel or a short story feels like (fits like, if one can ignore the O.J. comparison) a glove, writing poetry always strikes me as somewhat stifling and restrictive....I have issues with things like structure and meter, and I end up with a couple of decent lines connected by a lot of vague circumlocutions (there's that word again). Which is OK; I see it as a learning process, and there's something about the sheer challenge of it that appeals to me. Not to say that the newer stuff is any better -- the one above was written in 2006 or 2007 -- just that I think the newer ones have a little better flow, a little less awkwardness.

Just for the record, this particular poem was addressed (albeit indirectly) to two people in particular, although the "she" comment was about only one of them.

I'm writing one now that has a snip that goes like this:

Ordovician escalator
Oxymoron supreme
Like "American poet"
Or "American dream"

You said this was part of your 2nd book, so I am seeing this out of context, but here is my take on the piece.

I took this more of a way for the subject to not have to reveal his feelings straight away. His lack of confidence in both the writing of poetry and possibly, his relationship with her, lead to a conflict for him.

While he suggests he doesn’t understand the appeal of the medium, he does find a comfort in the ability to use its “disguising” nature (even if he has doubts about his skill) and this is where he protects himself; “in the layers”… hiding and yet, hoping to be found.

I think the piece gives the reader a clear look into his insecurities and holds its course through to the end.

i'm not a shredder
i'm an admirer



i do it in public

I think that's a bulls-eye, even if I wasn't aware of it at the time it was written!

The acceleration, of separation,
compares most formally to its exaggeration.

Promise notes, of inhaled tokes, weary from their many pokes.

We need Excalibur, to slice through the dead cadavers.

Words tossed aside, minds left to bleed. The epidemic is Nationwide

Compulsive dork syndrome, spreading rapid, into your cranium.

Misfits of mind, constantly unwind, tangled, twisted, entrained.

English skills against their wills, sniping at Webster's heel's.

Bold with conclusions, emancipating their intellectual illusions.

Adulterated saturation, their untamed Grammar, constipated.

Uneducated, underrated, these fine students are over-stated.


High fives,,,,,all around..Thank You!