CRITIQUE DEARTH

Nightjar

Breakbeat dance rhythms,
coordinated cauldrons of disintegrating Dodo feathers
sewn into scarves
by sleepwalking museum guards.
No sight ahead of the them,
can't anticipate the next avalanche in the summer.

It's too hot in Antarctica to play fantasy football
so my barbershop quintet rescheduled
the bowling tournament for the next epoch—
downgoing and playing the chrysanthemum pendants
levitating in the ocular atria of Norwegian tennis playing spider monkeys.

They hobble with sugar canes—the best of them—
suavely schmoozing vulnerable supermodels
modeled after emotionally healthy adults
so rarely simulated in reality—really actuality.

The gypsy trials ended in Nuremberg disaster,
cannonball birthday cakes riddle the walls
freshly nude of parlor style artwork
curated by blind vicars
from the year 2096.

And so she likes dancing,
he added,
and night naps:
hands in front of the face
in pitch black darkness.

>up the stares

stopped reading

oh shit goddamn how did i let that one slip
thanks m8
beta readers are always needed

Monopoly Games End in Trust


Raw sewage
filtered through selvage,
abandoned bacterial Roanokes,
Jamestowns left for salvage by more driven men,
manning chassis built for over 401K blue miles
stitched together by arid cityscapes
and blossoming cacti Northwest of the Big Red
trying so hardly to rush the evidence out the mouth,
soon to be or not to be engulfed by black razorback packed geysers
of moribund barnacle gush,
streams of gills, seagulls, and 2¢ thrills
reaching, with minute grabs,
the top 40 low hanging fruit
from the forbidden pine tree
covered as well in scones baked by bored gods
enervated by eternity's infernal presence on the present,
only momentarily giving way like Katrina's eddies
to fervor fermented in the psychosocial interstices
created by ocularly entangled passersby
by the municipal courts for micro-cellularly managed peoples
squandering their livelihoods
by betting on losing dogs in the Thunderdome,
a panoply of gruesome twosome banality
and stagggering quotidian cleft,
leaving firefly crescendos flaccid in concert
with important impotent stillness
heard in the hearts of oblate spheroid hominid self-sycophants
in intra infanticidal marathons
of self-mutilating listlessness
lilting to the mute tones of tickling shoulder men
borne out the breath of a persecutor's dragon
suffocating in clouds of nitrogen liquidated,
poured upon the linoleum lined leagues of ticker tape
counting each incredulous cough of green bile
sputtering forth, fifth, from the esophagal railways
of a Detroit long bankrupt
due to a ravenous infestation
of a tattering, withering, usparsimonious apathy,
forlorn in its praise as the penultimate doorstop
between pain and frame, nagged incessantly by a dead wife
unfaithful to you the waif, naive knave,
stultified by the sheer neuronal gravity
of a thought postmaturely gestated
but constipated by opioid reluctance to kneel
to porcelain deities known as duty
to reflect back up from the tile
and steel away an iridescent fragment of one tomorrow today
so as to enshroud upon oneself an irrelevantly false sense of solace,
shorn comfortability, to deny denial one more claim
upon the throne within the Taj Citadel
centered in the cosmopolis orbiting the neutronal pivot piece
of a system on/off balance
at every torades des pointes
of the quasi-cyclical cycle of day-in-day-out
of redundant repetition sowing so-so's
into grinning grim reaps of the hidden hand
that Christ followers forget as kismet.

repost since I'm a tard

Here flies night by branching thunderspikes, by Millow P. Winkson's clattering teeth. Windowsills boom, stormy vines clasp the tower, threatening collapse. Minutes left, he thinks, until the stones blow over, and I'm crushed by a brickladen boulder.
The desert radiated heat against a goatskull, tempting Winkson's eyes to sleep. But how could he afford a moment's rest? how could the world return to his side, where the most imposing fears felt so familiar? grass bristled along the scorching wind, every gaunt plant played a minor key against the air, Winkson listened. Dangling his legs from a low ledge he considered dropping down and starting for the saltlakes, sundown would meet his reunion with the covered wagons.
Then a voice: "as water knows rock, as it bends and breaks itself to accommodate the hardness,"
"must you carry yourself through the days."
Winkson gathered himself and turned back for the splinters. In the town he met a staggering woman, who answered him, saying: "mister, O! my longhatted coat!"
"Join me for a couple?"
She named herself August Schnell and poured Winkson the strongest silver he knew of. Together bursting out, arms locked, they wandered until falling through a cardgame, the table smashing apart with a blast of beer and a coinface rain.

Here's a useful tip: whenever you describe something, make sure that thing is embedded in a meaningful context. Your description of the sunset doesn't feel relevant enough for its level of detail. Level of detail should correlate to import, and if its purpose is that of stylistic verve, then it better be impressive and gripping enough for people to feel that they aren't wasting their time reading it. Adjectives ride on the coattails of action, not the other way around.

Also, many of the words in your excerpt feel clumsily malleted in: 'perched,' 'lurid,' footfalls,' 're-calibrated,' etc.

And prepositional phrases. At the beginning of the sentence they don't always belong. Sometimes, sure, but ideally only with good reason.

To be as blunt as possible, you haven't yet written something I as a reader want to continue reading. But considering the title, I'm not really sure if that's a problem.

hey thanks for the thoughtful critique. Will think of this when editing. I do see the weird variation in tone throughout that is glaring when looked for.

it would probably make a little more sense given the entire context thus far. it's an escape from a rather abusive foster home type situation at night... the poetics of the nature is meant, i hope, to convey the difference in situation.

Grunts groans beleaguered moans
Travesty strikes when in Rome
The catapult slung a tortoise yon
And missed the hare by but a yawn
It isn't cheap to save your attention
Esp. when using abbreviations
The stifled shepherd dogs almost howl
By day against the twice golden owl
Just as Archimedes leaps out of the bath
Queen Oprah unleashes her very own wrath
Upon blind ears curdling rose ambrosia
Buried in the new found land of Nova Scotia
Where shoulders reveal themselves in sand
And the jester is dealt one last hand
Double down he does against the devil
To in the limelight interminably revel

My net, wide and wiry, casts a prickly shadow
The Mayflies fly through it willynilly
Escaping the whistling thrush
For the most part.
Some entangle themselves with crochet ease
Quasi-deliberately without slinging a please
My grandfather handed me the web down
Like his spongey blood seeping through the gears
The generational twirl marries the pests
Entomologically currying favor with centipede breasts
Save the rest.
I hear a high pitch stiletto squeal from one stuck
"I'm crushed under the gravity of my own existence"
It says and stuff
Tickled pink, I shake my head at the knockoff gnat
And tell him to hit the road Jack, you got that?
He did or he didn't, can't remember
Anything but the porridge like fact that in December
Atlas' butterfly catch is my home—
God forbid when in Rome I froth alone.


Bunnycleaver

cute dog

Thomas comes to, tucked to the chin in a half-sized bed placed at the center of a small, dimly lit room. Over his chest and between his upturned feet, a long corridor stretches yonward before him, breaking the maritimed darkwood walls of the chamber. Fully dressed all at once, beard clean and flowing grey by his chest, he leaves the bed and makes his way down the gaping hallway, right shoulder leading him in caution. All dark turns the hall as he proceeds, until it ends with a mahogany door framed by a sepian light that sounds from its edges. It swings by its hinge and Thomas brings his hands to his aching eyes as he emerges into a great goldenbright grassfield. Wincing, he waits to bear the light, and as he does, a heaving melodic hum comes to him from all around. He sees: a great choral ring at least two hundred men strong closes off his place in the field. Men, women, and children alike, they stand wallstraight and proud in lovely white dress burned gold by the warm light of the day. A great array of diverse instruments wait in their palms and at their feet, taught and brassparts gleaming: harps, trombones, hurgy-gurdies, celestes, banjos, harmonicas, cellos, flutes. Smiling at Thomas, they continue their melodic seethe in careful harmony. He proceeds forward, eyes finally adjusted, and there standing in front of him, they are. His father, looking no further than thirty years, in a pinstriped suit like a barbershop quartet, and his mother, all dressed up in an exquisite display of feathers and color, just like the Rio girls in Carnival used to be, fruited headdress towering high and brown skin glistening in the day, stand side by side before him. They are just as handsome and proud as they once were. Thomas begins to totter towards them, mouth parted, and breaks into a desperate run, hands wildly reaching out. The choir's tune builds and stirs, and closer he stumbles, eyes welling up, mumbling and whimpering, and here now he's thirty feet, now twenty, now ten, and the singers all mount their instruments and he's right there and the song explodes in a great bursting chorale of holy unity and play, strings shimmering and reeds revving and cymbals crashing and voices belting, and he falls in agony at his parents' feet, unable to meet their eyes, sobbing and snotting and shaking, screaming at the ground and screaming for forgiveness.

>gaping hallway
>he waits to bear the light, and as he does
>great array of diverse instruments
>looking no further than thirty years
>etc.
why

I tought it wasn't bad. Very playful

1/3

Infestation!
Blame the Arabs
on the planes!
Blame the Polish
on the trains!
Blame the Jews
on the cruise ships!
Cut the power -
Stop the nuisance!

with little cartoon hands and scissors drawn severing an electric cable – a pursuit that would surely get the acting party killed – a noble one? Through the fogs of imagination, I see myself walking the docks. A metallic roar fills my headspace – friction? The sound of a large machine halting? Old friend, we are lucky to be awake this time of year for it is. Look to the skies! The perfect antithesis to our frosted forest of silent perseverance, wooden kings of yore eternally chasing sunlight, bottom-up, crowns to be surmised someplace beyond the clouds, like an impression manifests itself, top-down: Metallic cigars plummet toward the waters, wings broken, winds laughing, howling as they alleviate themselves at their surfaces. A good shake for the dung inside – imagine the smell (ew!) those cracked tins will be shedding in a few hours. Time enough for the quick-witted among our people, approaching with sharp knives. Those still intact, not yet dissolved in the homogeneous brown mass of engine oil, shit and fluid flesh, we must separate. Sun baked, raised on figs and goat cheese, once honest lives on a no-pig-flesh diet, awash in sewage now but scrubbed, shaven, toweled, […] brushed with herbs and oils, blessed by our shaman, still might live up to their promise. Over a fire, that is. Imagine the feast: Strung up bard hanging from tree, sounds of oiled meat on hot iron drowning out festive clamour, consequent fog obscuring eager hands superseding mutual consent, all melting into one blurred silhouette. Becoming tribe, becoming people. Winds, equally frolicsome, play around, nudge and caress scent of roast and wine, sweat and sperm, back and forth and beyond the tree line. Against frozen shafts of the immortal it condensates as distilled pleasure, and all the creatures of the forest smile a knowing smile.

2/3

Drawn-out groans penetrate the fringes of my botanic retreat from aeons removed. The man in the neighbouring stall as well has reverted to some savage state, and judging from his howls, his winds too are frolicsome. My own delivery shows no sign of progress, immobile, impenetrable, not painful yet commanding attention – a totalitarian experience. Brown marble that sits in my underbelly like a second heart, beautiful until birthed into the world of shared experience, even then a presence to behold, soon to burst from my bowels like an egg tooth, in this moment you are my world. Leave no room for conscious reflection, thoughts and wishes, identity or ideology. All are banished, expelled from this body as age and dross. For a moment I am vessel and I am fulfilled, in no hurry to return to my seat, friends or beer. My lone companion mewls, admitting defeat at the hands of his colon, though unintelligibly. Few decimeters from my left boot, herald of things to come, a tear hits the ground. From beyond the castle walls a distant thought reverberates in my throne room: „Every man for himself“, and I redirect my attention at the door: Layers and layers of glossy hieroglyphics preserve varnish and presswood, as evidenced by yellowish-brown splatter all over. Adverts, jokes and provocations provide reading for generations. In places, sculptors have a taken a blade to the collage, entrenching runes and crude innuendos, partially exposing stickers from long-forlorn times in strange dialects and typefaces. Poets and painters, armed with pens, crayons, coal, brushes, greased fingers and whatever paraphernalia the toilet stall grants an inspired, have created an enormous palimpsest – a complex, ever-changing Gestalt with a rich history of addition and subtraction. No single creator, no clear intent, no end and no beginning. For all intents and purposes, a life unto itself.

3/3

Opposite the bathroom stall door, this magnificent wretched monument to human creator spirit behind which I cower, a procession of urinals protrudes from the wallpaper – Out of time, seemingly untouched by the grime that millennia of defecation left for a scrubwoman who never showed. Locks of shining black hair line the floor, dampen each step, occasionally at the cost of lower, mostly insect, lives, at times rustle and grate upon impact, at times swallow a man whole. Doomed are who tread heedlessly in curly forest, where pubic hair pastures conceal urinary sloughs. Enter a pair of piss-willing friends who had had a few beers too many:

“Not too long now, I am afraid. The brass city is upon us. What impressions today her progenitors carve in words, in laws and ideas, voicing watchtowers and prayer niches, air castles, invisible to the less perceptive, will tomorrow be filled with matter and peeled at the touch of curious generations, revealing what could well be all curiosity’s end.”

“And yet, dearest friend, lover, spear master, god of flesh and hairs whose weight I bear nightly – excuse my drunken spiel but I want your fuckings – look at the floor of this place, we could make a little nest for ourselves and you could peck the warblings out of me – who could deny the poetic justice, the beauty, the comedy of the situation? Like sticking your dick into a knothole behind which, unbeknown to you, a raven nests – such is the fate of the curious. It’s a bloody fate – emasculating – but thoroughly satisfying from a narrative perspective. The funniest thing: All you had to do was look!”

What?

It's nice. What are you trying to do with this? As is, it works as a relaxing piece of fiction without meaning, without too much immersion. If immersion was your goal, if you wanted to coax the reader into vividly imagining the world, the nature Marten wanders in, you should go into more detail. As is, the details you choose to explore are surface-level and kind of cliché. The red of the sunset, the creaking board, snapping twigs - why? I do like the segment overall, the simplicity of it, just a guy wandering, nothing really happening, I just think you need to be more creative with it.

I like this. Good story, nicely worded, feels very whimsical.

> you should go into more detail.

Aye-aye, m8. Thanks for the words of encouragement... sometimes Veeky Forums can be pretty cool desu

I want to see if I can avoid using the first phrase that comes to mind to describe something, and hopefully describe something else as well
“Gaping” was supposed to bring attention to the emptiness and uneasiness of the hallway
“Waiting to bear the light” because you don’t consciously adjust your eyes to a bright environment
“No further than thirty years” was supposed to hint that time is working differently here
“Great array of diverse instruments” was because I’d just finished reading Hobbes and thought it sounded grandiose. I can kill the line if it’s not worth it

>Aye-aye, m8
It's completely dependent on what you are trying to accomplish with your writing, don't just do what I say. Think about what you are trying to do because it's not quite clear.

>“Great array of diverse instruments” was because I’d just finished reading Hobbes
*divers

thats the ugliest beast i have ever seen

dont make fun of a woofer, man

not cool

hey man, that's my dog

Toilet Humour, why the 'what'?

I tried really hard on those two poems, id love at least a little real feedback

I appreciate that, but what were you trying to do?

Your excerpt is plagued with beginner's misconceptions about what makes good writing.
>Breakbeat dance rhythms, coordinated cauldrons of disintegrating Dodo feathers sewn into scarves by sleepwalking museum guards.
Now,
>Breakbeat dance rhythms,
What exactly is happening here? is the reader supposed to picture some thumping dancefloor? the rhythms by themselves? you failed to make this clear, which, being the first line of the piece, has already thrown any potential readers off the scent of what you're trying to convey. You've lost them in the muck.
Next,
>coordinated cauldrons of disintegrating Dodo feathers sewn into scarves by sleepwalking museum guards.
Allying with alliteration is perfectly appropriate (in diminutive doses at the dawn of your development), but here it's meaningless.
>coordinated cauldrons
What the Hell is this supposed to mean? brings to mind a deformity of the opening scene of Macbeth. Say exactly what you mean, damnit!
>sewn into scarves by sleepwalking museum guards.
I see the attempt here, but again, it's your use of language tilting your ideas into an unflattering light. Also, I can understand the tone you're trying to establish is zany, disjointed and possibly the "dark-underworld-innocent-facade" aesthetic, seeing the mood-flattening reference to Nuremberg. What the Hell is that reference? it's like popping a balloon in terms of the "airy" kind of ideas you tried painting above it. (Not that snap-of-your-finger tone changes are something to avoid, but here it's done so jarringly.)
Then,
>cannonball birthday cakes riddle the walls freshly nude of parlor style artwork curated by blind vicars from the year 2096.
What the absolute shit is this? The Sound and The Fury I understood reasonably well, but this? where do I begin?
>cannonball birthday cakes
This is NOT a coherent image. Is the reader supposed to picture a pastry-shaped antique warhead, a antique-warhead-shaped pastry, or the divingboard maneuver with frosting from the sides of its mouth? Time and time again you hang your remaining few, faithful readers out to dry.
>freshly nude of parlor style artwork curated by blind vicars from the year 2096.
Brings to my mind that Aerosmith album with the metallic Monroe, but I'll never be sure that isn't what YOU had in mind, because you didn't outright say it. (And don't respond saying exactly what you were referring to here, it's simply rhetorical.)
>blind vicars (from any Goddamn year)
What in the fuck. I remember years ago when I first started writing bullshit, and it wasn't dissimilar. Here's a hint: when you're starting out, nobody gives a flying shit about any obscure or erudite references you make, nor will anyone bother looking up shit like this you've written, they will simply think to themselves: "Holy Hell, what a pretentious cock fiend," and they will drop the piece and move on with their days. No one is willing to invest that kind of time in you until you've climbed to the top of the heap.

>Brings to my mind that Aerosmith album with the metallic Monroe,

That's exactly what I was trying to convey—!

>brings to mind a deformity of the opening scene of Macbeth.

Here too, right on the money.

>Is the reader supposed to picture a pastry-shaped antique warhead, a antique-warhead-shaped pastry, or the divingboard maneuver with frosting from the sides of its mouth?

Yes.

All in all, it seems you've got a pretty strong handle of the work's meaning. You summed up the message pretty cogently with the phrase: "What the fuck."

Thanks—!

The oracle satiates the auricle
Of the green giant known as Blue.
Mountains hang from his earlobe
And galaxies squaredance in his poo.
Excrescences divine thorough wishes
From Smurfette and her concubines
I can't explain who the I is
Nor can lovelessness explain Columbine.
Cleansing curates myriad sentiments,
Each new word a broken sediment
Of a mine long drawn to discomfort
As luxury tortures its own comfort.
The serial circuits run in parallel
To a marathon of beleaguered Matadors,
Freud Mayweather committed matricide
In the womb of another timelines pataphors
Written on toilet tissue in Bangladeshi palaces
Where the queen of future England lost her virginity
To a scorbutic reflection of you the reader
Whose non existence verges on infinity.
So deplete the first drops of the last rind
Of bitten forbidden veggies in cartoon rhyme
And tell myself the curses scourge your humanity
When all they do is bless Terrence Tourettes the mime.
The Odyssey translated to Lojban tickles ten Venetian furs,
A strand of transcendence each kiss infers
To the lonely mongoloid stranded in the crowd
That only the infirm lifeless pussycat purrs
And purrs it does as it expounds
How shitty life really was in the pound.

sex

Cemetary headmaster's familiar
typical ready set go mentality prose
dimwit, hardly as original and profound as the great me
me me me me me
look at him gargle correct syntax, writing and rewriting
tap on his shoulder, banana in hand
"Marty McFly called, wants his pen back"
he doesn't get it, that old coon
wubba lubba dub dub
Naked Lunch is the only book I ever read
it's very tragic and melanch-holy and profound
zippedy doo dah
vote Bernie

A continuum of rain pours up from the floorboards
Syncopated by the Peter pipers drum roll.
The rubber on the road punctuates the static between notes
Culling the herd of children
Into hobbit holes trademarked by sightless feints.
The destination is the journey
Reminds us of communicative properties
Such as the Dallas/Ft. Worth
International airports. Stop me if you can,
Say when if you catch me.
I'll be Tom if you'll be Jerry
And Ben'll be none the wiser, no more
Than angry men sitting in a room
Arguing over the placement of Ö
In the new worlds newfangled alphabet
To be named in time due unto itself
As others hath fury as a woman scorned in hell—
Hounds hopped up on meth
Rabidly file taxes
And flee the state
Scoping out resistantless paths
Offshot a road not taken,
Offbeaten and not traveled
By any streetcars forgetting their name.

there is a designated thread for shitty beat poetry

Lost in the jumbled imagery. Try clarity

>this magnificent wretched monument
this line's gotta go, pronto

True, I've been thinking about different expressions, I just haven't found the right one yet. Thanks for the input.

Nah, I won't.

Bump

This thread is pretty dead, huh?
I blame /pol/.

I've posted a piece in three separate threads now and received no feedback
This place sucks sometimes
I blame the poetryfags for their line breaks that take up a disproportionate amount of space and draw the eye away from the prose posts

"Poetry" fags. None of this is poetry except perhaps