/crit/

>Sunrise

Between silhouetted sycamores
Roves a hermit, held
By rumor and hope of an
Unrivaled
Treasure.

The revealing beams
Share slowly, shadowing
Staggering breaths that
Starve for what is
Unseen by Solitude.

A lantern is lit,
Seeking its fortune
With fumbling flame,
Fervently fleeing from
The Bringer of Dawn.

Searching by light
Of dull, dim ego
Gold remains rusty;
All but forgotten
In its eastward ascent.

Sounds like it's been translated from another language. It's too obscure.

Too obscure?

Yeah, it's difficult to follow the narrative, to tell what's going on.

Okay, so it's sunrise, and a guy lights a lantern and doesn't watch the sunrise.

But you are playing with symbols:

>roving hermit
>Unrivaled Treasure
>The Bringer of Dawn
>Gold remains rusty
>eastward ascent

All of these have traditional symbolic meanings.
A hermit is a spiritual seeker, an unrivaled treasure (like the elixir of life, or holy grail), the bringer of dawn (either Lucifer or Christ, whoever brings enlightenment), gold in the process of purification = the soul in the process of purification, the rising in the East is a symbol of Christ.

So are you using the symbols without really knowing what they mean, or are you using them consciously? Because if you are using them consciously, I'm not quite sure what you're saying, because it's too obscure (the arrangement of the symbols).

Ya I know, I read it. I made your dogshit better. What you were trying to convey is trite. Your execution is less than poor. Don't take the compliments at your poetry slams seriously. Go read five poems then read yours, you sound like a child.

I am using them very consciously. One of the main ideas centers around people who are painfully close to an answer or solution to a burning problem but absolutely refuse to seek council or advice, even though it's all they have to do.

Why don't you post your shit then? Ellucidate me, oh wise master.

Well then you need to refine it so it's more comprehensible. You sound like one of the seers who uses such cryptic phrasing that it could mean just about anything.

But is that necessarily a bad thing? I personally love oblique literature.

Obscurity for its own sake is just pretentious. It should at least be comprehensible enough so that those with sufficient knowledge are able to interpret it.

not him, but answer me this - why did you break your lines where you did? what point does it serve? because i see none. just makes it annoying to read.

and yes is a much improved version of your poem, in terms of construction. I realize it completely cuts out the whole stone vs "stoneless soul" contrast but fuck, man. learn to be a craftsman before you try to be an artist.

The fellow is being a big sausage about your symbols, he's ascribing one particular set which is by no means eternal to some pretty standard icons, I mean honestly complaining that the sun rises in the east? A bigger problem is the fact that your poem has no rhythm and a seemingly nonsensical structure. I think some of your metaphors are a bit confused and the assonance is largely distracting. Also don't capitalise every line, it looks weird. You've got potential but I think you tried to hard to make this deep and intricate. More than that it feels like you've seen neither a sunset nor a lantern, nor for that matter a hermit (who are usually fairly stationary).

But my point was that his poem has nonsensical structure. I didn't demand that the symbols had one particular meaning, I was just pointing out that all those do have a traditional meaning in western literature, so I wanted to know if he was just playing with random images or consciously using symbols. In which case, if he was consciously using symbols, I wanted to know why he didn't arrange them in a perceptible order/structure.

Hermit, in this case, was used because they isolate themselves. They don't necessarily have to be stationary imo

Beach games
For two players:
1) The players take turns in throwing stones, paying attention not to hit each other. To score a point, the thrown stone must be prettier than the received one. The game doesn't take place on the beach but on a field of stones, and telling the opponent's stones apart results very hard, or rather, impossible. A match lasts two billion years and there's no winner.

Go home Yoko

Rate me porfa
Conocí bien la lluvia al final
Cuando crece mi sombra al acabar
La dicha que cubría mis melancólicas notas
Las plumas que ya llevo rotas.

Ocaso subrepticio nubló mi vista
Su soga corta me abrazó el cuello
El árbol y su rama mirando al suelo
Fueron el retrato sobrio apagado
Frente al espejo refleja falso sosegado
Que esfumó las rosas complacidas
De un destino a otro en destierro
Fuera del sonido fuerte del frente ciego.

Responde mis cartas nacidas en vientre de fuego
Plasmadas estarán imágenes de mi consciencia
Por si el tiempo fuera a perderlas en su polvo si piensa
Cuando mis cenizas estén tomadas de mano tímida
Con la arena de la playa de pasiones rígidas
Donde mojan las olas de ruego
Disipan la vida que fue y fue mi pañuelo
De piel encantada, piel pasmada
Habré caminado en ésta, cada temporada
Mis pies se hundían en el húmedo suelo
La anchura del horizonte desangraba mis venas
Caminantes en mi compañía estaban las penas
Y pronto lo abandonaré sin saber
Qué me hizo ver
El final del tierno
Por qué las cadenas fueron cuento.

No sabré la respuesta y su llegada
Pero estoy seguro de que será sol.

I've lost a lot of my Spanish vocabulary, but I remember phonetics. It rolls beautifully.

Thank you. My main concern was the flow, because i don´t know anyhting about metric, i just make sure tahat the last word rhymes with another.

here's my attempt translation. the tenses were all over the place and i'm not sure why - for example stanza2 line5 & s1L2. or maybe im just reading it wrong. The lack of grammar makes it difficult. how'd i do?

I knew the rain well, in the end
when my shadow grows in finishing
the joy that covered my melancholy notes
the feathers that i [now] carry [already] broken.

(surreptitious?) sunset clouded my view
its short rope hugged my neck
the tree and its branch looking at the ground
were the sober & (dimmed?) photograph
in front of the mirror reflects false (sedatives?)
that (evaporated?) the satisfied roses
from a destiny to another in exile
outside the strong sound of the blind front

respond to my letters born in the belly of flame
contained shall be images of my conscience
for if time were to lose them in its dust if it thinks
when my ashes are taken by timid hands
with the sand from the beach of rigid passion
where they wet the waves of pleading
dispeling the life that was & was my scarf
of (haunted?) skin, skin contained
opens a walk on this, every season
my feet submerged themselves in the humid ground
the breadth of the horizon de-blooded my veins
walking men in my company stayed the pains
and soon i shall abandon it without knowing
that it made me see
the end of tenderness
because the chains were a myth

i shall not know the answer nor its arrival
but i am sure it will be sunlight

i'm stupid. it should be 'the horizon drained my veins' not 'de-blooded my veins'

me no english good

No problem. I read it out loud and it sounded like this: youtube.com/watch?v=duV2G5XTgQM

I still need to watch the whole thing.

Overall the translation is pretty good. Instead of using more complex words like surrpetitious, you could use secret or hidden, i just use that word to say an uncommon word kek.

Sosegado would mean something like tranaquility.
Esfumado-diminished.
Retrato-Portrait.
Also this.
About the tenses and all of that. As i said before, i know nothing about the thechincal aspects of poetry. I´m still willing to learn though, when i have more free time. For now, i just write whatever's on my mind for about 15 minutes and leave it there. with few corrections.
I have been writing poetry for about 5 months now, i still have a lot of time to improve.
I read the book that the movie is based on and it wasn´t very good. It was never interesting and i finished because it was a college assignment.
Maybe the movie is better.

Hear the shadow moans,

outspread ghosts,

a monarch tempest

sure sky, groping high

the shriness golden

out from the sainted, beautiful sea.

the line breaks either create a staccato rhythm that is frustrating and otherwise unpleasant or it doesn't do anything. So, work on that or create a reason for the line breaks (if you are trying to be sculptural, sack-up and go e.e. cummings on it)

The use of slant rhyme is great with the whole, "rocks/drops" thing. It was legitimately surprising to hear myself read. I thought that was very pleasant. Maybe consider playing with another distant rhyme as opposed to the "turbid/rapid" thing.

The 2nd stanza needs a revamp, as it feel weak and unnecessary for the piece, but it helps create distance for that slant rhyme i mentioned.

Maybe change the liast couplet to something like
>stoneless souls
>take no notice

overall, it seems decent, but not particularly mystifying. That title is gross though. Untitled would be better for now at least.

Line breaks are frequently used as pauses in works, if not, then pieces like his have no place doing what they're doing (even then his shouldn't)

hOLY alliteration, I understand the appeal of playing with them (and my piece could be considered guilty of this easily) but I feel, your piece goes overboard in a way thats unpleasant.

Again, my piece uses it a lot as well though.

interesting play with syntax, but ultimately feels a bit weak dues to the weird mid-poem rhyme that's so jammed together and strange commas that don't do much for me.

Yeah, I never know when to use commas in poetry. (It is only slightly easier in prose.)

>Progressive Sun-worship Poem

I sunset.

Feeling out

almost hard-won coins

and find damned the minutes

between verbs: powerlessness,

unearthed blessedness.

Alterature:

symbolic work,

black imagining more alive

eternity of how life, flesh;

indefinite the self-consciousness,

definite hours look machine and dead

(wonderful dead)

depresent-tense.

Sleeping supposes struggle.

well here's a rough-shod revision
>Hear the shadow moans (my favorite line btw)
>and outspread ghosts (potentially fucking with whether outspread should be a verb or noun in the piece)
>a monarch tempest
>sure sky groping upward (another time i'm messing with grammar in the piece)
>the shriness golden (2nd fav)
>out from the sainted, beautiful sea.

If you like the poem, feel free to claim it as your own and use it how you like. :)

I have plenty of better ones.

i was just suggestion changes, bro

I know. :)

I just like to see my ideas "out there" influencing and inspiring others.

>delete world fear

//Synthetics Anonymous

Research error:

bloodlust, binary warmongers;

the sky is cracked cerebral yellow

(unorthodox with reality)

ah, i play with syntax similarly in some of my pieces, but I think that was because of someone else.
got any advice for mine?

the word 'warmongers' makes this piece feel jarringly political in a way that is unexpected. Not sure if it works.

My only complaint about your poem was splitting "rhyme", but visually I understand why you did it.

This won't do. These threads need the Ashberyfags.

some of my work is vaguely inspire by the Skaters
does that count?

Post some and we'll see, amico.

here ya go

I was driving to work when the policemen forced a detour.
There had been a forest fire, and they were worried it was spreading.
Of course it was spreading, what am I saying, Of course it was
Much like any other fire, but huge and brimming. The basin
Held it like a child to grow, but as I drove around I never saw the smoke.
I didn’t know it was a fire at the time, and assumed some monster
Was running about shirtless and bloody. I guess i thought someone had been killed.
Maybe someone had been killed, but because of the fire, not the monster.
Maybe the monster was running from the fire too, its heat too much like hell’s.
Still, whether or not anyone had died, I began to breathe rapidly, needing quiet
I shut my radio off. The window won’t close all the way. That whistling sound
Grew out of my door and wrapped around my mind, like these country roads
I drove much too fast on. Maybe the wind whistled louder in the heat of the fire.
Maybe the monster whistled to stay calm as he fled the infernal basin.
As the monster grew out of my door, I began choking on the smoke
Of hell and felt the heat of the whistling screaming from my radio.
I knew something wasn’t right, because I had cut my door off already
And was sitting in the parking lot getting the nerve to call-in at work.
Maybe work was on fire and that’s why the detour made me so late.
Maybe the fireman that pushed my car down the country road
Knew how dangerous the situation was and needed me to drive
In silence for a bit. As my breathing slowed down the smoke stopped
Rising and I felt the oxygen rush back into the door. I was afraid
To turn the radio on, so I drove back home in silence.

Decent, and quite appetizing.
Some of it feels maladroit but not necessarily "bad", for intent isn't always an easy cat to pet. The fire/monster relationship is witful, I like it. The way "threat" can fit its meaning with different (and not exlusive) poses, it was almost sensual at times.
As always, it could be better. But I enjoyed reading it and that is what matters.

If you feel like sharing more, I'll read it.
Cheers

Short Poem #5

perhaps the grim weather on remembrance day was an omen of the vast misfortune that has loomed over us since our first meeting.

perhaps any sign from God was actually just a coincidence, & every time i held your hand our footsteps were cursed, & heavy with doom.

Your walls, your bare markets
marked by no impurity.
No flashing of harlots,
or adverts of old jewellery.

You, my moral and perfect fiend,
who many have never and will never have seen,
a place gaudy in its grey.
Saccharine salient and clean in your way

Wizard's Oath

Would you wonder at my dare
would you have a care
that, I, a wizard, desire succubi?
that, I, alone on my own(I, wish'd)
would take your company alone?

That, I, would say:
"Succubi, suck my supply of sacred mana!"
"Drain me dry before, I, cramp and cry!"

That, I, against those Succubi, would dare?

No. I have one care.
My magics await me in my tower,
My tower missing it's power is no shame,
For on this evening hour do, I,
Wish I had an endless name.

I, Wizard, deny thee Succubi.
I, Wizard, will not cramp and cry.
Alone on my own(I, wish'd), I, cry.

My magics await me in my tower,
At the height of this new power,
You will not drain me dry, Succubi!

Thanks! is mine too

Had a good laugh, user.
Nice read.

Here's some of my age-old angst, for what it's worth:
(Disregard some cringe, but I didn't want to edit it just to post it here)
--------------------------------
Folks,
the hoax
you trusted
when you thrusted
and bred
in bed, possibly, probably
led
to the addition
of cognition;
another stunted cunt
of your cumulative emission

Dad
you had
one job, one shot
to not probe, to stop
or wait, hold on
at least a while
'til I was gone
from your penile bile

Mum
the sum
of both you and
another
is a spot of bother
I can't seem to shake

Wake
me up
to nothing

Forsake
your blood
It's gushing

Here it is
Another person
to worsen

Another cut for a surgeon
Another scourge for a virgin

The first spit in my face
In this god-awful place
Where we'll all go to waste
defaced
erased
replaced

Growing
overflowing
throwing ourselves
in galactic shelves

And somewhere
elsewhere
there's this blunt cunt
grunting
shunting
hunting in pain, in vain

for a hole to fill
and still
a hunger,
a lingering lust
to trust
just
himself

and no other
not bothered
by the need to succeed
proceed his race
waste time
to find
another blind

to procreate
populate
germinate
bigoted idiots

more cunts and cocks
concocted
devised to despise
oneself and another

Fucking hell
well..
Can't stop it

Todo Casa ran down the 5h Avenue looking for the Papaya burglar. Just the night before he was in the bathtub listening to some motivational tape when the sound of a breaking glass awoke him of his meditative state; laying in the hot waters he pondered for minutes about the oddity of a burglar breaking a window to enter the house when in fact he never locks his door, then laughed at the idiocy of the thief, murmured out loud “Oh, such a waste of effort. Darling, the door is open!”. Having pictured the many thousands of remarks and comebacks he would make upon encountering the burglar he got up and walked through all the rooms, opening and closing doors, finding nothing but piles of trash he had accumulated over the years and he would not bother to look at anymore. There was one single room he had not searched for: the kitchen; “The Papayas!” he screamed realizing the fact, and after opening the fridge he was finally certain: the papayas had been stolen.
The papayas were a gift. Five or six years ago at the peak of his career when he showed his pieces at the park Colonel Stronzo presented him with a bag of papayas; “Per l’artista, papayas!”, everyone clapped, Todo never though he would receive such honor. The papaya-winner piece was “Artist in Despair,” a blank canvas covered in feces that was praised for its representation of the artistic effort in the process of creation and appreciation from the uncultured masses. The papaya-winner was a mistake. Todo had painted a dragon using impressionist techniques. The dragon was panned by the critics before, they said it showed nothing of the human condition, and he didn't want to send it to the museum because of that. Months later when he was in New York and his money had been stolen, he called his retarded uncle Joe and ask him to send the painting to the museum, he would arrive there later and take whatever money they offered for the canvas. Retarded uncle Joe has the bad habit of getting creative in his butt-cleaning, he still believes that bottled water and toilet paper are a scam, and when it comes to looking for a replacement for toilet paper, pretty much anything will be good enough. It all hapenned when Joe needed to take a heavy shit and, naturally enough, the glase paper he had been using for the last weeks would not be enough to take the sticky shit spread all around his anus. He got out of the toilet and scour the room looking for something good enough, and he had to find it fast because the shit was already going down his leg. Then he spotted, in the corner of the room: a shiny wide blank canvas, big enough to clean his fat ass. Joe thought of keeping the canvas, in the future he might show it to a businessman and make a living out of selling canvas to clean butts.

Coup de Grâce

a eulogy for the nights
we didn’t have to speak.

a warm blanketed embrace was
our aubade to the settled serein and the rising sun who
illuminated the steam of our breath as
we said farewell;
you, so fair, made me well.

these nights I long for loneliness to
constrict me & choke me to sleep but
my bedfellow looms over me;

a tumultuous love that deafened you and
weaved it’s way into my long, greasy hair that
won’t ever terrorize your bed sheets again.

if I cut it off perhaps you’ll be free of me.

my God gives me signs and your universe gives you signs.
We read them & burn them down.

I think your poem is brilliant user.

I, on the other hand, am distinctly unhappy with my opening. The story sort of came to me on a walk, but I can't quite figure out how to start it.

cut the first paragraph and it's great. also you've got solid characterizing here, but to extend it any further you need some kind of motive or drive or goal or conflict

Thanks user, the first paragraph is a meandering rant that got the juices flowing and should rightfully be purged, you're very correct. I'll see if I can weave it in as an ad-lib or something later.

I'm rather stuck plotwise however, and would appreciate advice. I kind of had this inspiration to paint a city that's really every city, this sort of dreamlike globalised frankenstein that I'm really starting to notice in my day to day life in London. I want it to feel like a desert and a dutch harbor, like Cairo and Delhi and canals and French crennelations, with these almost anonymously ghostly links. Ultimately, and it's rather trite, I was going to have Piro and the protagonist get into some kind of fight, and then have one of them run over. But that's just a skeleton, and I'm really digging my brains for something that can work with the kind of alienation I want to portray plotwise, because I actually have a really good idea of Piro's character and how I'd describe the scene.

I don't write or read poetry, but I enjoyed learning what "serein" meant. I think your rthym was quite flowing with me however, but it's not a bad poem.

This is funny I suppose.

>stunted cunt
wonderful
>penile bile
terrible
>galactic shelves
nonsensical

Very edgy, but not totally awful. I think it would be better if you focused less on rythme and more on flow.

A teacup sits on my windowsill.
Mist from the heat swirls and rests on the glass,
Clouding and covering the foggy day
That started off with an overcast sky.

As I finished my morning the mist cleared
From the window and the brightening air.
I put down my book and opened the door,
Pocketing my glasses as the day came.

>It's about vision and refusing to live life passively.

Feels comfy

Thanks. I wrote in about 5 minutes while I finished my tea.

Please be gentle:

Nothing stirred in the empty weathered seat --
Not even the leaves cast off of old oaks
Dared to take the spot from the empty chest
That waited for its missing piece to come.

And so they waited, taking half the bench
And watching the thin hands of the watch tick
Steadily ahead to disappointment
And to empty arms resting on cold knees.

As the shadows of the trees slowly grew
The face of the watch shined int he sunset,
The hours opening the metal arms
As if to embrace the teary-eyed soul.

i’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. i’ve just been
busy
i really haven’t been feeling well, is the problem
you see,
my stomach just doesn’t feel right
it must be
something i ate

Bump

Rta, The Architect

Rheostats protrude from his skull,
gut, and genitals. Buzzing
a shrill peregrine scream
over the painterly desert of a broken hourglass.
When the dunes shift he dances, with electric gusto
an Al Gore Macarena.

Mechanical scripts for noiseless dreams
are read in the lost limelight which, filtered, is mixed
with Pygmalion's bride-to-never-be,
with pay dirt, and with the aforementioned sands of freedomed time
while he waits for water.

Careful, the trees' green fingers
are true to their name. We do the Doppler Dance.
we stay in step and color.
The light turns red-- ¡Olé!

Cold control, brother. Be nothing
but a human mirror. Drink the sap that leaks
from the blind spindlers' throats.

issuu.com/kelvinmatheus9/docs/mooncity_issuu

Mooncity
16 page poem if anyone bothers
give it a chance senpai

As the other user said, the only thing that is glaring is that first paragraph. Lop that off and keep your voice restrained without sacrificing the invention you have shown here and I think this is absolutely publishable.

That said, here are my nitpicks:
>jilts his head
The word jilt here is strange and not particularly evocative. I recommend finding a word that more precisely captures the expression.
>Don't think anyone wins an argument but don't feel like losing one either.
I assume this is free indirect discourse, but even so it seems like it needs cleaning up. Difficult to parse without adding much for its opacity.
>it's wiry vermilion flesh darting about all crazy
Very nice phrase and does an excellent job of destabilizing the reader. That said, make sure you are using "it's" vs "its" as you are intending. Seems like it could go either way.
>The whole next paragraph, specifically the last sentence
Great. Excellently structured, excellently written

Nice work overall. Best of luck.

Snowbound in the mind
With the new spring thaws old ice
Eternal is the past

You're proud of this one, I can tell. Good to see another one like me, Veeky Forums inspired us didn't it?
This place is hell for some. That poem needs love just like Veeky Forums does, how fitting. What a cry for attention, and how sad and beautiful.

Keep up the good fight. I wasn't going to post my story but after that I couldn't let myself hold back.
royalroadl.com/fiction/8693

Here's a poem too:

Wizard's Oath

Would you wonder at my dare
would you have a care
that, I, a wizard, desire succubi?
that, I, alone on my own(I, wish'd)
would take your company alone?

That, I, would say:
"Succubi, suck my supply of sacred mana!"
"Drain me dry before, I, cramp and cry!"

That, I, against those Succubi, would dare?

No. I have one care.
My magics await me in my tower,
My tower missing it's power is no shame,
For on this evening hour do, I,
Wish I had an endless name.

I, Wizard, deny thee Succubi.
I, Wizard, will not cramp and cry.
Alone on my own(I, wish'd), I, cry.

My magics await me in my tower,
At the height of this new power,
You will not drain me dry, Succubi!

Uhhhh, are you a female

>its another wannabe Joyce

You gotta problem with Joyce wannabes? Well, heh, nothing personnal Mr. Funn.

]Out of the Giants Mouth[

Inn began God wayward northern
lights shimmying (dance_glow.yhwh)
till the tetraheathen quaked awake
]hohohohoho[ the sorror, the drawer
tis’ OPEN agape agrape am orchard!
Winepresh schlurrs pashh the inn’d
so sober, so cold, so-so wishy (again
with schlurry ov frusshchrTREYATION!
-k it, ten) paws so soft, so-so warm
skin (my skin?) buh-bye, buh-buh-buh
Bum! buh-buh-buh-BUM! Bum looking a
round for Wehs to grow to blinding
Trees across shapely and uprighteous…
(but this is where I draw the line)… … …
through lines and through planes
through cubes, through hyper(cubes)repyh
Recurse, recurse, recurse! that wretched
fractal! So alien, so bright, so-so God
ly down and hope for noon to fold
Into itself. As on is in my mine laid up
On, the altar of is, laid up and up until
There it’s gone! And my wine unclouds
My water is cool and I understand everything.
My fears are real, and I embrace everything.
The giant has spoke, and he said everything.

Is this about white privilege?

Is this an episode of Xavier: Renegade Angel?

never heard of it. what's the resemblance?

I quite like this one. But I think maybe the last line could do with some work; maybe keeping up the ice theme?

Anyway here's one of mine:

She is as a star at night
That flashes bright, then blushes,
Then fades away, to be
Lost in the starry void.

The waves assault the rugged granite cliffs, which scrape the roof of the planet amidst the brushstrokes of nebulae. The sea is in a seethe, and the spray of water off the cliffs strike the men’s lips, where it mingles with the whisky dripping down from their moustaches to create a taste one might associate with hell: salt and fire. There is a music only audible within the gunwale’s ring. The men’s throats are humming. Mmmm mm. Oar stroke. Mm mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm mm. Oar stroke.

The bowsprit taps against the cliff face. From the stern leaps to his feet a figure, thin and tall and gangly-limbed, like a skewed shadow in the afternoon. In his hands are two akimbo pick-axes. He bounds onto the benches and jumps from one to the next between the oarsmen, and placing both feet on the bowsprit, flings himself off into space, for a quarter-second, before the axes dig into the rock with two splitting cracks and he is climbing up the cliff face as a child climbs a tree, flexible limbs flailing about with a total lack of fear. When he reaches halfway, he pauses, dangling from one axe, and fiddles with his belt. His hands move hastily and haphazardly. A rope is unspooled and falls down to the boat below. The thin man, without a glance below, continues his helter skelter climb.

pastebin.com/raw/esbj07Z7

first 600 words of a short story

I'm pretty sure it's pretty good - thoughts?

Crown Heights

Lodestone

the sun set earlier. it wasn't even may.
the air was translucent with dust &
smog and I welcomed it to fill
my lungs as we welcomed each other with an embrace.
even now i long for that dense fog to make its way into my blood just as she did.
trains are confusing (not like in London), &
i followed her blindly &
knew we wouldn't get lost.
she was born to travel (alone).

looking for bathrooms in Manhattan
while in a paroxysm of
panic was fun; long walks in Williamsburg left my soul silent;
it will be again.

nothing will ever compare to
getting off the C train at Franklin &
dreading the narrow three story staircase which i knew would lead me to a
bed with loose sheets in a filthy room where I'd wait for her to wash her face &
gaze on her amaranthine beauty &
fall into a dreamless sleep and hope we would not sleep in too late the next morning.

Opprobrium

can i go back in time?
can i prevent or reverse this ignominious memory that shattered us?
let's start again and find the
Brooklyn Bridge together.

in Brooklyn Heights, alone on a
bench, crying tears of glass that fall to
the ground and slice my feet with woe & compunction. tears i will never be able to dry.

maybe i could just eat more slowly,
maybe if i wasn't sick,
maybe if i got your keys back.
maybe if you'd just lighten the fuck up.

a morning walk through Crown Heights reveals the sight of a mother letting her child urinate on the side of a building.

who knows? maybe this was all a lie as well.

Posting some haikus in Spanish.

Alas de polvo:
fuera y dentro del fuego;
te desmoronas.

La voz que llama
el nombre reverbera:
el viento calla.

A medianoche
las sombras se prolongan:
espero el día.

El fuego cruje; // Crepita el fuego;
su color se consume
en un incendio.

With the last one I can't decide which one to keep for the first line. What do you think?

really clunky
you don't have to write like you speak, but try at least to write like some person somewhere might
there's a lot of weird repitition that doesn't do any work
>she had longed for... longings
you say "party" four times in the third paragraph

>realising that she would not be able to depart without being unseen
you need to reword this; how about "realizing she could not leave in plain sight" or something else some human person might say
the whole thing reads like it's written by someone who is not a writer and wants to sound writerly

They nod at Ada and their presence will settle only slightly. Despite their stillness something paces behind their eyes and again Mordecai eyes the bandages on Nico’s calves. Nico smiles, and the eyes will reveal nothing. His hair would spill into a fringe, his arms were unconcealed and thicker than his own. If Nico would speak it would be in impenetrable cajun and the voice would be confident in it’s lownes and laziness. But the bandages on his calves would be loud and grieving.

crepita el fuego illo

Wet leaves flattened by many.
Distant calls from memory.
Unexpected showers of rain.
Reliving childhood to entertain.
Wind blasts cover away.
Think of when and what to say.
Pretend conversations in head.
Not quite alive, not yet dead.

Problem number two, who am I? No one, barely 20, not even a real human being yet. So how can I be the one to make this conceptual breakthrough in literature? I have very little of any skill necessary to even be a fledgling writer. In fact I create an absence of originality or maintained thought. I am a vacuum of creativity. And that’s my exact plan; I will border on post-modernist bullshit; the absence of anything that offers a solution to emotional bankruptcy in the economy of feelings today.
I hope to be so grossly vacuous that genius will naturally fill the void.

I was born, I remember.

While I was linked with you,
blood tainted, my self started to grow.

And I screamed, for there was not a pain more grand than the first.

tienes más?

No. Te agradaron? Si pudieras darme tu opinión te lo agradecería.

The weather-beaten trail wound ahead into the dust-wracked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Noregolian Empire. Age-worn hoofprints smothered by the sifting sand of time shown dully across the dust-spattered crust of Earth. The tireless sun cast it parching rays of incandescence overhead, halfway through its daily revolution. Small rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives.

Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts as they bore the burdensome cargoes of their struggling overseers.

"Prepare to embrace your creators in the Stygian haunts of hell, barbarian!" gasped the first soldier.

"Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch," returned Grignr.

yeah, this is pretty good

I think I've read this before in crit threads though

not too much to say/correct but I would keep reading

An Azerbaijani broadcasting satellite came down that September. It left a broad crimson streak over a gloamy sky, and the image was no less beautiful for having been seen countless times on countless kinds of social media.
Nick Grey tells me now that parts of it landed outside, on the waterlogged pitch we’ve just left.
“You remember Max from two years back? He went down that day. It was his ACL. He swears a piece of it hit him, knocked him over, or something” He speaks between great big frustrated breaths, as he struggles to untie his boots. They feel tighter after rain, or maybe just harder to pull on, I think.
We leave the changing rooms, and the floodlights wake up. They’re scattered around the three rugby fields like a haphazard Stonehenge.
“He never came back. He left and did not return. After surgery he said it didn’t feel right. He saw physiotherapists, acupuncturists, osteopaths, masseuses, G. P’s, and none of it helped.”
There are younger teams still playing. The echo is disorienting. You can hear adolescent war cries bounce around weirdly.
That’s not where I am though. I’m in a hospital bed now. The orthopaedics ward is sleeping, but sometimes a trolley is wheeled by and the light in the hallway stutters for a moment, as it’s blocked. It blinks. S.O.S St James’s says.
“He had a model of a knee, anterior cruciate ligament, medial, patellar tendons, you name it. No artistic liberties taken here. Took him weeks to have one shipped from Bulgaria.”
Most of the lights in the ward are dormant, but the few the nursing staff have left on have a way of settling. They know you aren’t supposed to be here, but that’s OK. In a certain context fluorescent light is wholly oppressive. In an uncanny valley next to sunlight, it tells you that you’ve gone too far. We have no need for a charioteer to pull the sun up again, we’ve made our own tiny facsimiles. These lights are more gentle.
“…….and it was kept in a shrine, at least for a while. He burned candles and incense around it day and night, read it poetry and sang it songs. Every nook and cranny was cleaned meticulously twice a day……..”

Literally the first thing I've ever written. There are some fiercely questionable lines there and its just the first few paragraphs of something going nowhere so there isn't much of a plot.

Fuck my shit up

I made a complete balls of that formatting

Pretty good. The first half has a good sense of detail. Personally I'd change "It left a broad crimson streak over a gloamy sky" to "It streaked broad and crimson through a gloamy sky". Less passive, more immediate, more intense, like a satellite skyfall should be. Very minor, though, obviously.

One major critique I can give you is the latter half, in the hospital room, you don't do a good job presenting the scene. A hospital room is a very emotional evocative place, so if you spend more time detailing and presenting it the reader will get hooked more. As it is now, the environment feels abstract and I'm disconnected from it. I get that you're trying to ball out with your description of the light, and that's cool, but you have to build a foundation first. You did a good job of presenting texture in the first half, so bring it into the second as well.

Perspective and tense is a bit janky but I think you're trying to be purposefully unsettling, so it works.

Awesome, thanks for the help.

I think you're spot on with the hospital room comments. My plan was to alternate between a sort of surrealist/magical realism style story of max visiting a witch doctor to have his ACl fixed, with some sterile hospital kind of prose in between, talking about a real hospital experience.

I think the formatting contributes to the jankiness a bit, but I was trying to have things be a little weird. i think I'm going to write a few hundred more words and then come back and sort things out.

Wrote this a year ago, shit feels really pretentious :

Quand le soleil s’éteint derrière les toits,
Une toile se tisse, vive telle une étincelle.
Pris dedans, je prie le temps d'un hurlement.

La télévision allumée, des allumettes consumées,
Une lourde monotonie dans la voix du vinyle...
Ce soir encore, je vis naitre l’araignée du spleen.

J'approche toujours mes doigts de la bougie en feu
Alors que tous jouent des rôles aux répliques vaines.
Finalement, lors de l'aube rose, le soleil rapplique.

J'applique rarement les conseils. Je concède plutôt
Les fondations bancales de l’édifice d’excrément
Que je sculptais hier encore, avant que Satan n'exulte.

L'oubli, souvent avare, saisit les Saints versets,
J’espère que Dieu l'ignore, l'ignoble gaillard que je suis
Supporterait mal l'enfer. Je crois voir depuis l'enfance,
Les choses de la vie les plus communes à l'envers.

Her smile was a blaspheme creamer.
With a tongue crimson as hot cold blood.
A holy hell fire hydrant's slippery thick mud. Outspoken in chastity yet embarking on roads of cleavers.
Her smile was a blaspheme creamer.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

A laughing breeze flicks the leaves from the sidewalk.
Brushed onto the street swaying in the gust.
A car swooshes it into incline, and it falls with gradual ease,
once again before waiting to be picked up.

Friend, I am the leaf, never picking myself up.
The highest I've sailed is from which I fell
Moving along only when pushed
Once again waiting to be picked up

Post in English fag.

I can't read your baguette runes.