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This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2010-01-16 17:37:09 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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From beyond

Don't come to me half-lit, I am not paraffin. Do not seek my clothing between the stars or sheets. I will keep you panting as long as you wax green and brittle while your streets lie anywhere unswept. The underwhirl of fates is singing high and mean places and won't be stripped down to an anything that can ever be kept like greyhounds to unchain when the hare is racing and you fancy sweetmeats. For all your harrying, an obscene petition that common prayer defeats, a chit fully unclipped, I'm not the heart that beats in your quarry, unseen. After hot coals have ripped flesh from bone, true-carving the true magical script that I will and have been, the tincture of being, being you, sublimates

This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2010-01-19 10:29:09
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
MAH, I sacrifice critiquer weight to get to you. Would shedding pounds were so easy. A keeper. My, what quality on this site now!!! And none of it canned for publication! The only sites now that compare to this, I think, are the ones with published poets who submit to the journals. And those fail by having their eye on a bogus prize: publication. The poetry smells of being written by the rules by those with MFAs who have been fed the rules. As Jesus said in another context: they have their reward. We rise toward a higher prize, I think. Deep work saying, "come back again and sit with me, and talk." I shall. MSS

This Poem was Critiqued By: Terry A On Date: 2010-01-17 16:54:30
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
Hi Mark, I read somewhere that we shouldn't critique poems we don't understand and I don't understand this poem, nor do your images come alive in any coherent way for me. Having said that, which I hope you will forgive, I just want to say I'm glad you're back and writing poetry. I have really enjoyed many of your poems, maybe this one is just beyond my understanding. Terry

This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas Edward Wright On Date: 2010-01-17 10:17:59
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 1.00000
MAH: While they dig out the Haitians that they might reinvent themselves as Western Bankers or Conquistadors or Carib bean exporters or Poets of the Realm I bid thee a hardy "hello" from the frozen land of frozen lakes, of hockey heads, of Lutherans, of - As a dog returns to its own vomit, so I. A bride can stand at the altar only so long, you know. The initial intervention is a subtle debasement of the currency. From this all else follows. A man with head will stand up in the back of the room and they will take notice when from his mouth answers flow. You dabble in the dry pool whose dust settles heavy upon your lashes. Between your toes squirms the last warm worm, whose cold world you blow into a small gale. But meters away, whose feet are remembered there but yours? Baked into the cake a constant: the rate of decay; the speed of night; the misery of company. Count your cards and bid accordingly. Waste not the opportunity to wait. Eventually wins every time.

This Poem was Critiqued By: cheyenne smyth On Date: 2010-01-17 10:14:15
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
Hello Mark, I am glad you renamed this poem, tis easier to understand (at least for me) I'm not the heart that beats in your quarry, unseen. After hot coals have ripped flesh from bone, true-carving Now this strophe stands out. You are showing your readers that the protagonist is not dead, burried or cremated, but in fact is quite alive to speak his mind to someone one who would threaten him. Now you have me rethinking my original critique...not such a bad thing. Excellent. Best, cheyenne

This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2010-01-16 19:23:06
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.86667
Well, yes, it reaches broader. A defiance to encapsulation. That we are sometimes more for what we are reaching than what is measured in the eye. Brazil could be a euphemism for that expectation, the place of "true magical script". A place that Sam Lowry, in the 1985 movie, Brazil, mentally designates an escape from his Orwellian world. At another level you are more than that for which you believe you have been taken. How many times we have all seen those we care about slight us by taking an inferior partner. And we'll never know how much is intended for just hurting us and how much is just poor taste. You, like me, may just attribute too much thought to others. It might surprise you on what thin basis preferences can be made. And/or how much revenge plays in all of it. JCH

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