Crit Thread

[Anonymous No.14531097]

Post your work and give feedback. Just wrote this maybe too quickly in my downtime teaching today.

how does a child, nearly
a smiling plum, quick to feign
some bullseye wisdom, last to mark their blemishes—
get from knots of smoke, mothers incubated
in sunless pits, expectations of grief & barking ghosts,
to the muted classroom walls.

how does a child, weighted
like a barge w/ hissing wounds,
sing so full of milk toast & fairy whiskers.

[Anonymous No.14531137]

>>14531097
What the fuck do you teach?

[Anonymous No.14531148]

>>14531097
it didn’t even rhyme, dawg

[Anonymous No.14531152]

>>14531137

I teach English and I’m with 6th graders in the hood rn. They are writing non fiction narratives about a time of struggle where they had to survive and the majority of them are writing about shoot outs or parents dying. Idk it started getting to me that they are able to laugh and have fun and be kids but genuinely hold so much trauma and I wouldn’t even know without this assignment.

[Anonymous No.14531180]

>>14531152
It helps that school is probably one of the best environments they have access to. Guaranteed food and enemies you at least have a fighting chance of matching in physicality. This may be the only space they have to exercise the identity of a child.

[Anonymous No.14531192]

>>14531180

For sure, and I’ve bonded with some of the more hard-headed ones, but the whole thing feels tragic at times. It’s easy to tell which kids are likely to gangbang and all that and those same kids can be so sweet and smart when they want to be, but there’s no concept of I guess, necessity to discipline and a lot of them aren’t confident in their ability. It’s a lot to take in but I guess I learn a lot about people.

[Anonymous No.14531443]

>>14531097
(Feedback is greatly appreciated)

Member, this most leader still
With quivered heart and arrowed will
Oldest pill to swallow deep
Heaven steep, the end is coming sooner
Than what we took for granted
And all do look to reap

For precious is the sound it makes
And all my bows and tarots break
Your meaning drug has come too late
To take away from here

A purest substance stops the clot
A purest heart indulges not
The holy rot and deep beneath
Is tortured

[Anonymous No.14531477]

>>14531443

This is better than most formal poetry posted here. The rhymes are simple but their music is fun, particularly those of the second and final stanzas. “Bows and tarots” is a clever play with sounds. Overall, as a thing in itself, not bad at all, but treating is as a contemporary piece, well, I don’t think anyone would be interested being that one could just read the same exact style but better from its appropriate time. I’d put my skill to the modern day if I were you.

[Anonymous No.14531498]

>>14531152
Wow you really do sound like a bleeding heart.

[Anonymous No.14531512]

>>14531443
Incomprehensible word salad, albeit tasty.

[Anonymous No.14531522]

This is kinda trash but I just want feedback on what I can improve

And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
The world turned a new decade as if it reading a book on a summer’s evening. Fireworks lit the sky in the absence of stars or the moon: orange, red, and yellow universes exploded into blue and green before the crowd stopped cheering.
At the strike of twelve, a chorus; namely, cars beeping, people singing, the sky erupting with light, and then there was quiet.


The celebrations in Hong Kong are very different to those Alexander experienced back home.
“3, 2, 1,” he said with the crowd, and he felt like he was among them. He wasn’t. He glimpsed moments of the people celebrating below; they were outside to witness the turn of the decade, he was not.
He remained at his window for a short while before laying back in his bed. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow will be the beginning. And he believed himself, so he closed his eyes to fantasise about what he would do tomorrow:

His room was clean. He hadn’t seen the floor since early on, first month of moving in; since then it had been littered with empty packets and reeking clothes.
He sat at his clean desk. Water, yes, he must not forget to drink water. That was at his desk too. His computer was open, a word processor on the screen.
Yes, he would write tomorrow, that was a good plan.

The voices from the streets pulled him from his fantasy. They were happy. They yelled and cheered still, how long since twelve struck? A mere half-an-hour.
He closed the window and laid back down. He needed to plan tomorrow right otherwise it would not happen. Darn those people, he thought, dragging him away from -
Quiet, he told himself, be positive. Yes, that was another thing. Write and be positive. Was there anything else? He couldn’t recall.
The toilet was broken. He cursed, it tore him from his stupor. He turned the water flow off. Better. Now where was he? Yes, writing and positivity. Good. That sounded good.
He decided it would be a good time to sleep. Sleep early and get ahead of the day, write a thousand words, maybe even two. That would be a good day. He went to sleep.

He woke later than he expected. No problem. He got up almost immediately and sat down at his computer, opened up the word processor and yawned. He had all day, he could write later. He opened his video game folder. Yes, he’d wake up with some video games and write later. Just one game.

[Anonymous No.14531562]

>>14531522
>And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
>for auld lang syne.
Write this like an actual epigraph plz by putting an em-dash at the front and a line break after, with a Burns credit.

[Anonymous No.14531714]

>>14531522
>as if it reading
What?
Grammatical error.

*Fireworks lit the sky for the absent stars and moon...
*explosions of [orange, red / red, orange], and yellow universes transmutated into blue and green, ere the ceasing of the crowd's cheering.

*The stroke of twelve---a chorus: cars beeping, people singing, skies bursting. And anon---silence.

*The celebrations in Hong Kong were little like those Alexander had experienced back home.
*"3, 2, 1!,"
*He thought, "Tomorrow, tomorrow will be the beginning."
*to fantasize about what would be done.

*His room would be clean.
*He would sit at the clean desk. Water, yes, he musn't forget to drink.
*He would surely write tomorrow. Indeed, the plan was solid.

*snatched / yanked him from his fantasy.
*They hollered still; just how long since twelve struck?

[Anonymous No.14531878]

>>14531097
Bryan Kent Ward

[Anonymous No.14531895]

>>14531878

[Anonymous No.14531902]

>>14531895

[Anonymous No.14532087]

>>14531443
I love this! Honesty to virtue has been the center of everything I've been trying to communicate lately.
The line,
"The purest substance stops the clot"
Are you purposefully using "stops" instead of something like "frees"?
I could follow another tangent of connections from there because that word choice has a big impact on the stanza.

Here is another revision of
Birches in Winter:
Alabaster branches reach,
Ivy drapery dressing each.
Nests hang low from birds’ exchange
Of berries and grubs for pocket change.

When the higher branches flare
Like tinder in the evening air,
A distant hunter’s excited crack
Starts, like sparks, the birds to black.

Plumes race the golden hours.
Currents berate the ivory towers.
Silhouettes twist against the blue
Like children dancing candy through.

Tired kingdoms enjoy symposia
Of what they had found on Golgotha:
A nail wrenched from manus dei
Announced the king of today!

[Anonymous No.14532315]

1/2

[Anonymous No.14532320]

2/2

[Anonymous No.14532341]

And so he was laying there on his bed on his side, trying to sleep, curled up in the fetal position in his lonely bedroom, but not really fetal, more like half-fetal: his body was like one period of a square sine wave completely stiff because even though he wanted the feel-good-inside the fetal position usually gives you he was unusually self-conscious of wanting it and so he remained like that the whole night looking sharply at the wall next to him thinking about how bright the moon is shining tonight and that reminded him that he should really try to fall asleep as fast as possible because it's already so late in the night and he needs to get up early in the morning but he remained in that stiff square sine shape through the whole night looking at the wall and trying to get into the fetal position but then realizing it and becoming square again until the sun eventually started rising up and he fell asleep with his eyes still open but his body was at least now more like a theta wave because that's what they call the waves your brain makes when you sleep, I think.

[Anonymous No.14532594]

i make big doody.
strain self very much blood from butt.
die on toilet, sad!

[Anonymous No.14532611]

i drone mean sandman.
but why is nobody glad?
they should thank me, sad!

[Anonymous No.14532650]

>>14532594

second line is eight syllables dummy

[Anonymous No.14532700]

>>14531148
ikr like wtf? howm i spose ta read some bishazz pote-a-tree iffin that shiet dont ryme like a da rabbidy meeoosick?

[Anonymous No.14532702]

>>14532650
>die
>on
>toi
>let
>sad
Are you having an aneurysm?

[Anonymous No.14532784]

>>14532702

ITS THE SECOND LINE
THE LINE AFTER THE FIRST ONE
YOU FUCKIN DUMMY

[Anonymous No.14532800]

>>14532784
>strain
>self
>very
>much
>blood
>from
>butt
I count 7 dopey doo very sad! My haiku is very good big time bud.

[Anonymous No.14532824]

>>14532800

God I am probably just falling more and more for this bait but “very” has two syllables you fuck

[Anonymous No.14532846]

>>14532824
I’m not the guy you’re responding to but it’s not if you mispronounce it and say it very quickly like the author of the post clearly intended, why can’t you be comfortable with a bit of experimentalism? Does it challenge your fragile ego? Or maybe you’re too stupid to comprehend concepts like that?

[Anonymous No.14532855]

>>14531477
>I’d put my skill to the modern day if I were you.
Why do you people have to come out of the wordwork every time poetry is posted? It's self-evident that most poetry in most styles by most people will barely reach any audience at all, even moreso than in prose, so let people enjoy classicism and stop trying to recruit people to your desolate "modern day" aesthetics.

[Anonymous No.14532857]

>>14532824
Tiny brain ted over here doesnt know how to spell! Sad! Maybe he should

[Anonymous No.14532911]

>>14532846

What are you talking aboutttt
How the FUCK do you pronounce “very” as one syllable? Literally nobody talks that way he made an obvious mistake how can you defend this.

Give me a phonetic spelling of “very” with one syllable, I just want to see what you’re even trying to insinuate.

[Anonymous No.14532920]

>>14532911
>Give me a phonetic spelling of “very” with one syllable, I just want to see what you’re even trying to insinuate.
>very

[Anonymous No.14532938]

>>14532920

I hate you all so much.
Very
Veh-ree

How else can you say it? And btw, literally nothing in the poem suggested vernacular usage and the poster didn’t even mention it in his replies. He made a mistake, you both need to admit it.

[Anonymous No.14532945]

>>14532938
Are you a woman?

[Anonymous No.14532954]

Down the eye of a frying egg.
I stare in morning empathy.
For in its yolk is oblivion.
Ne'er to spark from entropy.
No nulling eve of unhewn ink.
To decant in rays of lightning'd cracks
That pour am and nill, all and not.
Down brilliant black, up striking sun.

[Anonymous No.14532959]

>>14532938
Stupid woman

[Anonymous No.14532962]

>>14532938
That's two syllables

[Anonymous No.14532964]

>>14532938
show tits

[Anonymous No.14532975]

>>14532962

Yes, two, and it was misplaced here >>14532594
because it gives the line 8 rather than the obviously intended 7. Ok I’m done here all of you suck my dick you’re all insane.

[Anonymous No.14532982]

>>14532954

It’s aesthetically pleasing but otherwise anachronistic.

[Anonymous No.14532989]

>>14532975
are you kidding me? You're nitpicking the metric validity of a shit-haiku while calling me insane?

[Anonymous No.14532993]

>oh shit how can they tell im a girl better say "suck my dick" to throw them off my trail

[Anonymous No.14532998]

>>14532982
That's true, I've been reading Pope's Iliad recently and it's been stuck in my head.

[Anonymous No.14533000]

>>14532938
Kek women showing they can’t write

[Anonymous No.14533013]

>>14532954
This poem is aggressively nonsensical. Shel Silverstein made more sense than this.

[Anonymous No.14533021]

The only warm blue glow of the black mirror is the only light that shines on me. It's 3am, do you know where your kids are? I know where mine are, all of the million an billions of them caught in tissue after tissue on a one-way ticket to the Wampalaunee Landfill. A talented man once said that we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine and the machine is bleeding to death but I don't see any blood just estrogen and trans fat. I tried to get a key lime pie at Burger King the other day but all they had was Hershey's luckily though it's the holiday season and they put extra vomit in flavoring> Nowadays I've cut the sweets out of my life and I subsist on Slim Jims: Beef, Mechanically Separated Chicken, Water, Corn Syrup, Onions Protein Concentrate, Less than 2% of Salt, Spices, Dextrose, Paprika and Paprika Extractives, Flavoring, Hydrolyzed Onions, Corn, and Wheat Proteins, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Sodium Nitrite. If Kafka wrote Metamorphosis today he wouldn't have transformed into vermin, he'd transform into the hottest instathot in all of the land before flying out to Dubai to take a steaming dump to the chest for 10 grand from the same guys pumping millions into fundamentalist mosques in France that only exist because radical atheists wanted more votes. The only way I have the attention span to read a paragraph this long is if I vape.

[Anonymous No.14533024]

>>14533013
Care to explain how it's nonsensical, or did you mean for your critique to be meaningless?

[Anonymous No.14533069]

[Anonymous No.14533089]

>>14533069
Enjoyed this. Part of an actual story you’re writing or just a little exercise? Either way I enjoyed it. You have a sharp and sardonic wit and a good way of making the banal seem entertaining.

[Anonymous No.14533113]

Thom stared into the dying kindling, its heat too weak to light the rain soaked logs lain haphazardly upon the the wooden mound. He’d been left alone at the house by his parents, they had jobs in the city. The winter weather was supposed to reach unseen lows by evening and the sun was alreading dimming. That’s what they’d said on TV, February 12th freshly engraved in the lower right hand edge of the only source of illumination in the room. It was one of those days when Thom felt in between dates, he’d awoken late from a hangover, a second attempt at the day since morning, but the clouds of alcoholic afterburn were still in his brain. The static that hangs in the air and makes everything seem dull and dumb, a mold on the grapevine. He felt stupid, throwing news paper after local newspaper at the premature hearth, their stories, now of less than no use. Thom had taken double his ill-prescribed adhd medication to counter the drudge and was feeling manically hopeless. Grabbing object after flammable object in chemical hope, his veins electric with still-born potential. Two adderalls in the absence of college feels like taking cocaine in one of those escape rooms made for those urban yuppy-types that seek novelty to excuse any social distraction. Thom wished he could throw an axe at the fireplace and have it burst into a bush of fire with a satisfying whack.

[Anonymous No.14533123]

>>14533089
Thanks and it's part of a longer story I'm writing.

[Anonymous No.14533136]

The Gship Inciting Incident came tumbling into space. Blone was taking it all in and trying to forget. Suicides increased several hundred thousand percent momentarily until laws were changed to redefine the term. People desynced and flooded out to other universes. Going faster than light became a commodity. AI fused with hyperspaced hardware as it made the stream watch credit card commercials. Surviving natives hawked voodoo mind mapping practices. State control ran through the local stack. Collective reality was now defined by bending many into one. Uncertainty had not ended. Adhocracy could only see an hour into the future. Earth declared a humanitarian emergency. Warship orders spiked across the metacivilization. Between commercial breaks the stream was content with following their new president. The Inciting Incident leaned down to the surface for a closer look.
Gluos had forgone sleep and ignored the non-trivial number of calls and messages piling into his administration. Finally abandoning solitude late at night. Wonks could not speculate on his policy as of yet. Media relentlessly tracked him. Waves of intensely communicated emotions emanated from wherever he went. A panic under neon lights of City streets as he left a car. Unsynchronized bodies of a deranged attacker bursting outwards. Offenders were fielded and moved away instantly after. The single remaining weeping man was flipped into a Comfort and room in the nearest acro. Gluos went into the club hurried with his head down learning why the man had flown apart.
An initial cabinet was formed in the bathroom of a downtown nightclub. Adrenaline and throx kept them together in consensual hallucination. They isolated themselves in a stall until supplies ran out. After a brawl with security they exited the building in the presidential coupe. The cabinet then met at a C-Town seafood restaurant where Gluos was seen vomiting into the ocean while hanging from the edge of a pier. Executive orders flowed from the most productive session of government in two years. Contentions over the final tab flared into smashed screens and pepper spray. Afterwards their location was lost for several hours. In dawn light a farmer’s hovering sheepdog drone caught a glimpse of his contorted face as he crashed a golf cart through a fence that bordered the presidential mountain chalet nested northwest in Arspem.

[Anonymous No.14533140]

Late evening right before sunset... After a few... I stumbled into an oriental buffet a little off the main drag. The sign said open and so was the door. As I walked into a cloud of cigarette smoke I noticed empty trays and empty booths. No food and no one around. after poking around a bit I heard the dull roar of laughter coming from the back of the establishment, an older short gentleman sat a little ways from the threshold taking a sip of a beer I had never seen before. As I was about to turn to leave he caught me with welcoming smile. He said something in a language I had never heard before but I knew he wanted me to join. I walked through the kitchen and into the back office where the staff had set up a friendly game of dice, my favorite. I played decently for an hour or so, didn't lose too bad... In a break from the laughter I noticed your song was playing on the small bakelite radio in the corner. To this day. It takes me back and I feel like I'm wasted away again...

[Anonymous No.14533141]

>>14532993

Listen, you definitely just caught me because I was thinking exactly that minus the being a girl part. More like “ok they think I’m a girl better remind them that they can suck my dick”. Nice read anyway lol

[Anonymous No.14533143]

>>14531097
Is she gonna be ok?

[Anonymous No.14533145]

>>14533141
doubling down I see.

[Anonymous No.14533163]

>>14533141
Your writing is too feminine in tone and almost no men are retarded enough to both take a poop haiku seriously AND take the "it's just artistic style" reply seriously. Aka lurk more you dumb bitch or get off my website

[Anonymous No.14533169]

Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til' ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!

[Anonymous No.14533178]

Y’all niggaz are played the fuck out, take up another pass time because literature isn’t for you

[Anonymous No.14533186]

POOPY SMELLY POOPY STINKY
I MAKE POOPY IN THE SINKY
MOMMY SCREAM AND MOMMY YELL
I BRAP LOUDER THAN A BELL

PULL UP PANTSIES WITH NO WIPES
MY BIG DOODY CLOGS THE PIPES
WIPE MY HANDS ON MOMMY'S DRESS
HAHA POOPY MAKES A MESS

SMELLY STINKY TASTEY POOPY
HUFF FROM BAG AND MAKES ME LOOPY
PICK POOP CORN OUT OF MY BUTT
SWALLOW DOWN MMMM INTO MY GUT

POOPY SMELLY POOPY STINKY
I MAKE POOPY IN THE SINKY
MOMMY SCREAM AND MOMMY YELL
I BRAP LOUDER THAN A BELL

[Anonymous No.14533199]

>>14533186

[Anonymous No.14533210]

>>14532784
cute

[Anonymous No.14533218]

It was an Autumn afternoon near the campus bookstore and Billy was seated inside a coffee shop called The Brown Dog. The coffee shop was a square forgettable building that resembled all the other buildings on the street, only to be distinguished by its black banner with The Brown Dog written on it and a giant window covering the entirety of the front except for the wooden door in the middle and the subtle vestibule naturally formed outside the door. The window, being transparent, allowed for all passerby to see the interior of the shop and its proceedings: the scant line of customers, the several baristas taking orders, and the provincial comfort felt upon entering (which cannot be seen, but certainly felt). Gazing in, one can also see several trinkets such as a wooden stool in the left corner of the window, and after walking through the door one would see an abstract painting of various shades of purple and various types of squares on a wall immediately to their left. The accompanying other trinkets ought to be left to the reader’s imagination, but suppose we decide to be precise and list the most notable ones: A white guitar with a scribble on it, an apple ornament with a bite from it placed on a wooden plank with a cartoonish worm, several garments such as framed sweaters, gloves and other clothing, and the most prominent, a large bookcase with records, DVDs, and old worn books adorning the shelves. And so, it came to pass that a pretense of bohemia was emitted, and this was complimented by quaintly dressed young patrons and elderly people in pseudo-bohemian scarves, as they had clearly outlived such a lifestyle if they ever truly lived it all. Of course, there was also a sizable portion of customers dressed in regular clothes and much like Jews make up only a small portion of the United States, yet distinguish themselves as a majority in upper-class society, the bohemians did the same in the shop.

[Anonymous No.14533221]

>>14533178
any specific crits, or do you usually speak for the sake of breathing?

[Anonymous No.14533222]

>/crit/ has both a femanon and a scat-poster
Truly these are the darkest of days.

[Anonymous No.14533233]

>>14533222
watch her be samefagging this whole time

[Anonymous No.14533237]

>>14533169
>tfw your boss gaslights you so hard you kill him

[Anonymous No.14533240]

>>14533233
Can't be because I'm the scat-poster lmao. I'm a bit insulted that you'd think a woman could have the creativity to create my masterpieces.

[Anonymous No.14533250]

>>14533240
Only a woman could create that magnum opus and then proceed to spam criticisms about it to stir up drama.

[Anonymous No.14533294]

>>14533218
this is pretty neat, i'd suggest that you hold off on revealing the coffee shop's name until the second sentence to avoid repeating yourself, unless that's what you're going for.
like end the first sentence at "coffee shop". also then you can start the second sentence with "it" instead of restating "coffee shop"

also you can cut the "which cannot be seen, but certainly felt" part, that's pretty redundant

also the bit about Jews is jarring and not a great analogy

[Anonymous No.14533302]

>>14533294
Ok thanks for the advice anon. The Jews was a transition Btw and intentionally jarring, but I could remove it.

[Anonymous No.14533756]

>>14531097
>>14531878
I'm too much of a brainlet to crit literature so I'll crit the paintings: they're yucky and scary

Here's mine:
With hesitant steps the mother entered the living room. From the fire she saw those painted eyes which where now teary and pleading. Her mind began screaming and she felt obliged to let the voices out.
"Parricide!" she yelled. "Parricide! You foul Parricide!" Her cries wavered and seemed weak to her own ear, but to the son they were profoundly distressing. She pointed a rattling bony finger at the son and yelped some more. The room grew hot and smoky, tears welled in all eyes, anguish saturated the air. It was as if three lifetimes of pain were being expressed all at once, and all in the same room.

[Anonymous No.14533767]

>>14533069
>>14533756
nvm I just read this and really enjoyed it, although the first paragraph may be a bit too weepy and almost put me off reading it. It really picks up, however, and I would like to read more.

[Anonymous No.14534287]

The excitement of the kill has faded and the turmoil of survival is still present
as always

Sleep no longer a casual pleasure
the choices of frustrating boredom has corroded into the terror of freedom and survival
True freedom the kind that destroys society and only leads to destruction and death at the hands of fools

yet the sun still rises

The questions of why should i leads to the screams of what should i do
the power of wealth,status and class obliterated by sheer strength,ruthlessness and unwavering malice

No time for melancholy
their must be a peace somewhere
somewhere without man
in a forgotten past
in a dream in history

The choices of freedom for the common man is complicated and more frustrating than the creation of worlds for a god.
the harsh reality of the fact that coincidence took us here
blind leading blind small truths too loud for cowards to hear

Yet the moon still falls
and man still fails
no one will ever change the world from the heart of a crowd

Anarchy blues

[Anonymous No.14534292]

>>14531097
A beautiful poem but dumb, OP. Doesn't say anything.

[Anonymous No.14534372]

>>14533024
For me it's when and everything after "No nulling eve..."

[Anonymous No.14534386]

>>14532341
Readable but boring; I learned nothing.
A story should be more than telling what happened and how the characters feel about it.

[Anonymous No.14534392]

>>14532611
*is no one
*I should be thanked

[Anonymous No.14534413]

>>14533021
*The sole warm blue glow of the mirror black is the only light [that's] shining on me.
*It's 3am---
*I know where mine are---

>on a one-way ticket
*on Charon's boat

*A man of great talent
*to death, but I
*blood, just

new paragraph for "I tried to get..."

[Anonymous No.14534428]

>>14533069
You're gonna need more practice zoom zoom.

[Anonymous No.14534448]

>>14533113
*upon the the pyre
>they had jobs in the city
so what?
*throwing newspaper
>premature hearth
*fledgling hearth
>their stories, now of less than no use
not true since he's now using them as kindling

Okay, but I haven't read anything that really makes me think. What lessons could be gleamed from this situation? Or, what contemplation would this moment inspire in him?

[Anonymous No.14534480]

>>14531443
I like this. its cool.

[Anonymous No.14534494]

>>14531097
I enjoyed the imagery Op. Couple of questions for you if you don't mind. I'm a pleb so cant crit but would like to learn more about the process of modern poetry. Why "milk toast and fairy whiskers"? Are these metaphors or symbols for something physical we would recognize everyday, or something more abstract?
And what kind of hood is it? Trailer trashy desert, black inner city, mexican barrio projects, mix?

[Anonymous No.14534547]

>pt 1

There’s an image, one that comes to mind every so often. For me, that image, that place… is the view from a window on the second floor in the distant past. With one important note of remark, only on days it rained and ceased to do so, along with the day following said deluge, usually resulting in a heavy fog… I’m not one to name names, but I can, without a doubt guaranty that everyone who has lived or still does live in the Chicagoland area has witnessed this phenomena.

I suppose starting at the beginning is an apt place if any to try and describe… well, I’m not quite certain of what. There’s a bend in the road, more of a corner, a curved 90° turn of pavement with two street lamps in view. The closest being across the street from my window and the second, farther away, on the same side as I. It was in my late adolescence when I first noticed… An uneventful day, followed by some rain until it slowed into a drizzle and finally subsided into a light mist until stopping. This happening right around dusk.

From my window, those two street lamps would come on. The rain-wet pavement glossed the concrete and asphalt like pottery glaze in the light of the street lamps, lighting up the bend in the road. Shadows would dance and play like insects over a stagnant pond in the summer, requiring only a change in perspective of my viewing them. Tilting my head, leaning in or out of the window… everything would change, like a chess board being able to shift its pattern at will…

On nights like this, I was inclined to open the window fully to let in the cool night’s air along with the sweet smell of petrichor that seeped up from the ground after the day’s rain. On nights like that, there was little traffic, pedestrian or otherwise. Any lights from adjacent buildings or the moon, should it have been full, would scatter among the street-lit shadows that lived in the damp pavement below me. On those nights, it was silent, really, really silent… Cars on a main road close to the bend, were nowhere to be found. No headlights peaking through the brush or engines revving past. This truly was the calm before the storm.

Nights like those would often be followed by fog… This is no ordinary fog. Many mornings after those occasional rainy nights would be followed by the thickest fog, as if the clouds heard the wishes of a child longing to know what they felt like, obliging with gusto. I’d admit to having wanted to know that too, but the veil cast on the ground would always make me question if it was not the clouds that wished to know what we here on the ground felt like. Silly… maybe… Regardless, the street lamps would continue to burn in mornings such as these. Instead of the dancing shadows they cast during the night, they would blind us instead. The water hanging in the air reflecting the light in all directions; a hue of pure white, being practically solid all around me, starting at just five feet away.

[Anonymous No.14534550]

>pt 2

I was bored one morning, drinking my coffee and sparking up a cigarette on the front porch, and decided to see what a close friend was up to. We shared an almost identical schedule, plus a walk to him would lift the stench a cigarette leaves on one’s clothes. It was surreal. Walking through the meteorological foam that engulfed my home wasn’t so difficult as I first thought it to be at the time. It was home afterall. Not a ten minute walk from my home I encountered my good friend a street or two from his place. Genuinely surprised and curious, I asked him what he was doing out in the fog. My friend was and continues to be a heavy sleeper. Staying the night after drinking with him, I’d be able to briskly walk through his home in the middle of the night and not wake him on my way to the restroom or outside. Not even the creaking of the floorboards or accidental slamming of doors in a drunken stupor could rouse him from his slumber. At five or six in the morning, it was surprising to see him up and about. Said he just felt like going for a walk.

Asking what brought him out yielded the same answer. He was a smart man, and very well spoken, yet always reserved. It didn't bother me none, after all, I didn’t have any better reason either. My… It wasn’t until we parted ways and the fog began to clear up that I realized how long he and I spent walking through the fog together. Our walk ended a little after noon, and the conversations we held will remain private. As a request from both him and I. There’s no need to write about private matters from years past.

I will say this, we both acknowledged how dense the fog was, and just how eerie the whole setting seemed to be. Just the two of us enclosed in a packet of vision not five feet out. I’m not sure if it was our imaginations running wild, but both of us can swear that we saw eyes and heard a kind of shuffling where they were spotted. I truly don’t mean to be cliché, but there were wispy lights every now and again, popping in and out of view and going between buildings and behind trees or brush. They were white, but a much more intense white than the fog or the blinding white light of the street lamps. We would hear the rustling of leaves even though the air was calm that morning, or the crackling of what sounded like someone walking. There was an overwhelming sense of us being followed, though if we were, my gut feeling says it was not meant to seem malicious… My friend and I parted ways just as we passed another bend in the road close to where he lived, and then I passed my own back to my porch.

[Anonymous No.14534558]

>pt 3 (final)

I appreciate all critique, just some shit I wrote in the style of Lovecraft. Main inspiration was partly from his story "The Music of Erich Zann".

That night.. Many nights, I thought about what we experienced and waited for the next time such a fog would engulf our town. Then, looking over my bend in the road I heard raindrops. Again it started. During the night I watched the shadows play then in the morning, with what I could see, searched for those eyes to the best of my ability. Only managing to spot a handful of pairs for as long as the fog lingered.

With all of this recounted, I can’t help to think of airplanes. We humans have engineered a way to touch the clouds, fulfilling many a child’s hopes and dreams. I think back to those eyes… I remember what it was looking up into the sky… directly straight up. It's frightening how with nothing in our way, all we here on the ground can see is variations in a shade of blue. With the hues layering in circles above us to form an iris when looking straight up in the air.

From my window looking down below, I was always fascinated with how those night time after-rain shadows danced in the light of the street lamps, flickering in the wet mirror of asphalt and water. That bend in the road perplexes me, not out of mystery or beauty, but now knowing better, out of fear. If we have once looked up, dreamt of going up, and then doing so… What’s stopping someone looking out of their window, down on their bend in the road, and dreaming of what it might be like.

[Anonymous No.14534568]

>>14534494

Black inner city, and it’s just an abstract image that I believe conveys gaiety and the magic of childhood. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.14534788]

>>14534568
If you've never read Turnabout by Faulkner I'd recommend it. It deals with some of what your poem is about I think, that we think war and certain experiences will shorten childhood, when in reality people just develop within that experience. They still develop and mature and go through puberty all in that experience. They joke and find ways to be risky and immature in the chaos, including probably exaggerating some stuff, keeping the things that are really hurting them to themselves, maybe not even able to articulate thise things to themselves because of their complexity.

[Anonymous No.14534905]

>>14534788

I’ll look into that thank you. And yes it’s quite interesting and tragic in its own right. It also grows my perspective on “the negro problem” being that I’m seeing the same kids who may very well become robbers act as moody creatives in the classroom. It’s so bizarre, especially dancing between proximity with 4chan culture and black culture, I was never immune to colonialist brainwashing about my own people, though I always knew we were legitimate, but to see the same kids called “thugs” act as impish and maniacally as all kids do, it’s strangely revealing. Despite myself already knowing “black children aren’t thugs” SEEING and NURTURING the reality of that statement is much more profound.

[Anonymous No.14535130]

>>14533178
This. This iteration of /lit/ unironically does not know how to write. It's pathetic.

[Anonymous No.14535156]

>>14534547
>>14534550
>>14534558
Why are you so allergic to dialogue? And how come you still managed to not include anything thought-provoking?

[Anonymous No.14535173]

The chair let out a low creek as the conformist sat on it to write, what he was writing was of little bearing to this story, whether it was his work for a living, or the work of his life, it was bound to be set in a corner, a location hardly ever accessed. But you the reader, should not think this made the complacent man think any less of himself or his work: the fact that no one cared was a reflection on the quality of his work,written not for the masses, but for the educated mind. For as he saw it, only a true gentleman would derive pleasures on his writing of science or politics. His pay, despite his qualifications, was not great, but he saw that as a failing of the system, rather than a failing on his part. A system which, despite hating, he vigorously defended. For he was, you see the worst kind of bureaucrat, an unapologetic defendant of all the rules and regulations that condemn society to a slow servitute, for he knew without these rules, he would be out of a job. Yet, despite this naked self interest he would argue to you that all these hoops and hurdles exist in order to promote a more fair and just society. For without them you see, who could know the legitimate from the illegitimate. He was after all, a man of academic valor not oft read, rarely ever cited, and absolutely never useful, but a man of enlightened ways nonetheless, and that, in his mind, must confer him some sort of legitimacy. And for that reason, ever since leaving his teen years, he made sure to behave like he saw fit of a man of science. Boring , Verbose and Incomprehensible to anyone outside of his specific circle of professional comrades.

[Anonymous No.14535175]

>>14535156
Drunk writing at 11pm. And I said it was some shit I wrote. Just not too good at writing dialogue, rather have my things structured like a journal entry or memo written to oneself.

[Anonymous No.14535237]

>>14535175
Well next time include at least some shower philosophizing.

[Anonymous No.14535270]

>>14531522
The language is really formal considering the mundane scene. Phrases like "a mere half-an-hour" stand out to me, most people don't think to themselves like that

[Anonymous No.14535361]

>>14535270
>most people don't think to themselves like that
Most people are retards after all, who don't use the word 'mere/merely' to begin with, and only when they're using it as a joke on what they perceive as over-intellectualism.

[Anonymous No.14535574]

>>14535361
It’s sad isn’t it? Talking to someone that’s highly educated and rich, but completely retarded and devoid of sincerity.

[Anonymous No.14535639]

>>14535574
>Talking to someone that’s completely retarded and devoid of sincerity.
My average day on 4chan dude.

[Anonymous No.14535967]

>>14535639
Hey, I’m a different anon than who you initially responded too, but yes I agree

[Anonymous No.14536521]

I haven't wrote a story since I was in elementary school. Haven't wrote poetry since I was in high school. That was 8 years ago. Only started reading a month ago.

What the fuck am I doing?

[Anonymous No.14536531]

>>14536521
nothing apparently, but those video games sure are fun to play right? woohoo

[Anonymous No.14536575]

>>14536531
based response