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This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-02-24 13:43:50 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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Black is the knife

Black is the knife that I lay in shadow, Hollow is my heart as it takes its heft: My tongue, maker of the shattered window. Ready is death and the grave is fallow, All will be received until none are left: So black the knife that I lay in shadow. How shall I tell nightshade from the mallow, What shall reveal how chaff, how grain are cleft? My tongue, maker of the shattered window. Deep blackness of daylight, onyx pillow By which my dreams, desires, all, were reft, Blackened the knife that I lay in shadow. Thundering lord with no light to follow, Of choice, by choice damned; of choice bereft, My tongue, maker of the shattered window. Soft were my eyes as I sent my arrow; Eyeless remorse, though more slow, was more deft. Black was the knife that I sped from shadow, My tongue, maker of the shattered window.

This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2006-03-07 10:26:06
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
MAH, That's quite a line, "My tongue, maker of the shattered window." The old nominalist/realist debate howling in the veins of one of my beloved contemporaries. Or rather the mouth. The meter seems rocky in parts, as if you wrote and posted this fast. But I'd rather read Hislop scribble on toilet paper than about 99.9% of the stuff that's posted here and about. MSS

This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas H. Smihula On Date: 2006-03-07 09:15:09
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.28571
Your repetition of the last line in each stanza repeated is well contructed leading into the final four line stanza. I wonder if the rhyming would have appeared more structured without there use and only have two line stanza's leading into the four line stanza. Especially since you tried to rhyme each line to the matching line in each stanza. Just a thought on a well crafted poem. Thanks for sharing.

This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-03-01 10:17:32
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
Your use of alternating refrain here is interestingly effective. Ending with two, "My tongue, maker of the shattered window", a highly developed way of bringing this poem to an end with the focus you want. Although there has been so little discussion among TPL critics of such devices (I think I might have been the first to broach parallelism,) the elemental qualities are just as important as structure and form. With your use of refrain we see another interesting permutation, progression, as you go from, "So black the knife that I lay in shadow", to, "Blackened the knife that I lay in shadow", to, "Black was the knife that I sped from shadow". Of course, the state of being implied in, "My tongue, maker of the shattered widow" would not work with that and you are clever for discerning that. This permutation allows for a sense of action and causes the reader to aprehend your "knife" to be perhaps more than metaphor. Which, I would take it, penetration, even in the less physical sense, is. Your use of language, at times, appreciates Elizabethan, with the lines, "Eyeless remorse, though more slow, was more deft." almost detached from modern precept. No flaw, however, it has no splendor such as the Elizabethan-like, "What shall reveal how chaff, how grain are cleft?" where you hit meanings that are struck so well on even more modern cord. The penetration to truth is this poem's superlative universal metaphor. You obtain vast slaps at ordinary comforts enough to disturb complacence with such challenges to the modlin, as, "Deep blackness of daylight, onyx pillow" wherein the reader ponders contradiction by this hiccup to reason, made to look more for the subtle than the less earned. Something I enjoy doing myself. Only this time, you have moved much closer to providing a "message to the world" you are obliged to obtain for your endearing audience. JCH

This Poem was Critiqued By: arnie s WACHMAN On Date: 2006-02-24 16:17:29
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.66667
Wonderful...best you've written in a long time. It could be sung. I remember a song I used to sing as a dippy Hippie..."Black is the colour of my true love's hair, in the morning..." This has a definite lilt to it

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