you, can, not
you,
bring me back home
first night, first light
the twilight of an early winter
descends between us
calm and collected
you
bring all the burden
of an unloved woman
stifled in a breath
the onrush that you hold
long, in your gaze
and when you
leather-strapped the stars
and whipped them into my lap
time and time again, it grew dark
and my foot slipped
six feet under
for time and time again,
we did not wait for time
to sift sense and sensibility
but reached over,
one tardy hour
when light broke out from night
and fell
brazen and bold
but I want to escape
from this destitute bargain
from a love, fractured
listed in dockets
served in daily doles
the prison of broken men
that you became
when you saw that woman
with a head between her hands
I still cannot believe
that it was me
Hera, I don’t know how you poet people come up with such amazing imagery and such a different way to say stuff that I want to say too. This talent is unfair, lol!
I simply love:
“and when you
leather-strapped the stars
and whipped them into my lap”
whipping stars into someone’s lap, WOW!
&
“but I want to escape
from this destitute bargain
from a love, fractured
listed in dockets
served in daily doles”
You know the Urdu meaning of ‘dole’ adds a little something of its own to this too!
In the fourth stanza, I know ‘time’ is supposed to be repetitive, but it gets too repetitive for me, personally. Maybe you could delete that from somewhere and reduce the number of times its repeated. But really, I’m not good at poetry, I’ll leave that to Noor.
P.S: great job on with posting! It wasn’t all that hard, was it?
BUT YOU ARE GOOD! Sidra, I am mad at you for saying that. You are wonderful and Shh! Don’t argue with me.
Hera,
You must already know that the imagery presented in this poem is innovative and breath-taking at times. I admire your effort to introduce fresh images to make your readers SIGH! Wonderful job.
Some issues:
These phrases are somewhat overused and not elegant enough for the imagery in this poem. I would ask you to rephrase them if you agree with me.
“calm and collected”
“six feet under”
“sense and sensibility”
The last stanza was absolutely gorgeous. I loved it.
The repetition of “time” was actually working quite well for me, but then that’s sort of similar to my style. What do the other poets and writers think? Mavra? Fraz? Imaginary?
It was very pretty indeed.
Noor
I agree with Noor about the phrases she pointed out.
I have some more.
In the first stanza, “the twilight of an early winter descends between us” is wonderfully put, but twilight is “first light” of the day. I’m thinking you meant to have it that way but the “first night, first light” line isn’t working for me.
Third stanza, along with the line Noor mentioned, I think the line “when light broke out from night” needs some work. The rhyming of light and night doesn’t sit well with me. Its too common to be written within the vicinity of lines such as the ones before it.
The last stanza is perfect aside from the first line. Its too..direct and unpoetic for the rest of the poem, methinks. If you could try rewording it?
The above suggestions are exactly that – suggestions – and it is your poem, so keep that in mind if/when you choose to edit it.
All in all, wonderful poem.
Erm..why do the quotation marks show up as question marks?
Thank you everyone for the very very useful critique. Sidra, I’d love to write the way you do. You know it, so Noor is right. No arguing haha.
I would really treat this poem as a draft, which is why I put it up here because once the poet in me is out, the critic sorta numbs to the background and that is when I need you guys. Hehe.
The repetition of ‘time’ does disturb the flow, I agree.
As for the overused phrases that Noor pointed out, I totally agree. I think I should put twist on these phrases to make it sound fresh. They do need rephrasing.
I also think the line “when light broke out from night” should be removed altogether. The verse would flow better then. What do you say?
The first line in the last verse. Well, to be honest, the purpose was to make it sound as direct as possible. Adding this direct line within the stanzas filled with imagery only intensifies the effect for me. But I really appreciate your feedback, Gin de Loon.
Gin, the quotation marks are an inherent problem with the wordpress software we use. We have battling with it since the birth of RIL, but there’s really now way around it, at least not discovered by us yet.
For some reason, when you write in MS Word and paste it here, wordpress does not recognize the ‘, ” and … So it changes these to ??? To avoid this, when you paste, manually remove all ‘ and ” and … and rewrite them in the wordpress window again. Then it won’t replace it with ???
I know its a pain, really. But part from this one flaw wordpress really is the best blogging software around. We looked for others but couldn’t find any as good. And don’t worry about the ??? if they show. I go to the back end and manually edit the comment, replacing the ??? with the right thing, as I did with your comment above.
the repetition of time worked for me, the imagery was wonderful and didn’t become forceful at any point. i love how your poems have a unique soul hera. write more : )
awww, that is so sweet. thank you mavra.