small my cage

[Guest Phoenix]

I am small

in my cage

huddled against

the side

of a

diamond

wall

unbreakable

in spirit in mind

you will not hold me

my mantra

a litany of sadness

for all that lost

 

my bile and spittle grossness

flushed away down a drain in the marble floor

though, sometimes, the putrescence

returns to me again

and I must sweep and scrub and mop it away

till my inside is again white

and clear

as glass

 

this will not pass

 

my uphill Sisyphus struggle

a lifelong endeavour

against an undying foe

who will last long as I will

 

yet there must be

hope and beauty and joy and love

in the cold feel of the marble

and the glint

of the light

through crystalline fracture

through the bars of my cage

 

 

 

i can't quite get the hang of this indenting thing... meh.

i'll work on it. may edit this later.

xx

Phoenix

[Sweetcherrie]

Welcome at the Pen

 

I still don't get the indenting correct, and I've been around here for a while already now.

 

And though indeed some things might never go away entirely, they will get better in time...

 

Nice poem, and I hope to see more of your work around here

[Mynx]

I like that Phoenix. Well written and it caught my attention.

It's nice to see some of your work at last.

*grins*

I hope to see much more

[HappyBuddha]

Wow! I really like this Phoenix. I'll be frank - it seems unpolished to me, but that very feeling implies that it has the potential to be a really kickbutt poem. I usually comment deeply only on better poems, works I find captivating and evocative. Yours certainly ranks among those.

 

Again, I want to stress that the base material you're working with here is great. I'm just trying to help your refine it with the following comments (which are all based off my opinion, not fact):

 

I think that the 1st stanza might benefit from chopping off the last 2-3 lines. The bit about "a litany of sadness/for all that lost," seems a bit cliched and over the top. Perhaps if you edited the line preceding those to read, "my listless mantra," or, "my saddening mantra." I think you can capture the sadness without spelling it out as explicitly as you currently do. Bonking a reader over the head with your emotions is never as effective as hinting at them, putting the words together in such a way that they evoke those emotions within the reader, that they suggest something the reader can identify and empathize with.

 

I think the 3rd and 4th lines of the third stanza are redunant. I don't think it would be too difficult to combine them into one line that implied the imagined foe's lifespan as attached to the speaker's. Perhaps you could use the metaphor of a parasite? That holds some real promise here.

 

The fourth stanza is my favorite in this poem - it has some really simple and pristine imagery, especially in the latter half. Perhaps you could revise, "in the cold feel of the marble," to read better. Something like, "in the coldness of this marble," might do the trick. Note how I use, "this." It's more effective than, "the," because it implies familiarity, making the happiness you're trying to evoke less distant and more immediate for the reader.

Edited October 30, 2005 by HappyBuddha

[Guest Phoenix]

thanks for all your thoughts.

 

i've been struggling with this poem for a while now. i _know_ its unpolished. most of my work is, unfortunately - i'm fine with starting them, but then they sound slightly off key and i can never figure out what i need to do to polish them up or trim them down.

 

so please feel free to comment as much as you like

 

no new draft yet, just realised i hadnt posted for a while

and wanted to thank you for your comments.

 

it will come in time...

 

...watch this space

 

and thank you again

 

xx

Phoenix