I like it, but, unless its something I'm interested, I like things to be short and snappy. The poem it good, don't get me wrong, but my point is that I like poems to be short, to the point, and still be able to have me understand them.
Wow, thank you! And I suppose it is a tragedy/sci-fi/Mystery story. The MC's family dies in the first two chapters...
This poem will work wonderfully if death is a strong theme throughout. I would absolutely read any novel if it started with this, perhaps a poem that the protagonist's mother used to recite to him, and now it echoes in his head as he finds just how real death really is? And he slowly comes to terms with his own inevitable demise? Now that would be quality. Anyways good luck with the story, and if you need any other feedback just ask and I would be glad!
This thread actually prompted me to get to work on a chapter I have been putting off writing. Here is what I came up with for the first few paragraphs. Not calling it beautiful, but I think it at least shows how I find beauty in simplicity.
I'm particularly proud of this sentence: "The smoke gracefully ascended into the air in cryptic curls and entanglements."
13? Let's call Sean Connery. --- Anyway, I suppose it would be poor ettiquette not share something myself. Wrote this a few days ago: "There wasn't light at the end of the tunnel, but there was an end." It doesn't really fit in anywhere, but it's supposed to be a metaphor for hope. Wrote it loosely in the context of a depressed person who found beauty.
This, MC talking about his wife. Another major concern is we haven't had any form of sexual contact since Father's day and she's stopped trimming her pubic hair. This was something I noticed a few days ago when I walked in on her having a bath, and for a fraction of a second, as my eyes adjusted to the steam, I thought she was shampooing a cat!
I can't think of anything from the publishable short stories I've gotten through, but I like these two posts from a Swords and Sorcery RPG that started about the time I joined this site. I've started writing a lot of horror over the past few months - although nothing has been published as of yet - and I think the second of these posts is a particularly good early showcase of the Lovecraftian bent I've ended up leaning towards (despite my excessive wordiness at the time the game was going).
Especially because I struggle a ton to get voicing right when writing first person, I'm fond of this: "I still get a kick out of how we met. El Matador Beach in Los Angeles. 1954. My goofy ass apparently posing like a flamingo, LA Times notepad in one hand and an unlit smoke in the other. You and your girlfriends hollering look at that dodo bird! – but he’s kinda pretty though! I snap out of it and chase after you saying “Hey, I was in a dream as a flamingo not a dodo bird!” Getting into how I’m a narcoleptic, how it kept me out of combat when I was drafted. Start bragging about how I’m a journalist writing a feature on the prettiest girls in California. Hook, line, sinker."
After the first two lines I expected a touchy-feely, "heart-touching" poetry but eventually it turned out quite unforced. I like this. I can imagine this engraved on the tombstone - Tolkienish legacy of a deceased writer. Nice touch here
This thread keeps catching my eye but the irony of the title puts me off - the single most beautiful bit - ugh!
There's a piece that I always go back to -- one that's very personal to me. Chimera of Filth A gruesome beast with dripping flesh Clings to me as a sick fixture My throbbing heart it gnawed apart It stalks and hunts me through mirrors As a complete poem, I can see why someone could think it's too much, or feels unfinished. But you know what? I can live with that. It does what it wants me to do. It expresses everything I wanted. This piece will always be special to me.
Of course I remembered that when I lay in my bed at 3.30 am, not being able to get a good night's sleep. I hope you like it, and if you do, please don't steal it.
I needed a lullaby for one character to sing to a child, one that would come back to comfort him in later life so I came up with this: “Daddy’s always here for his little bean, Daddy will always be near. Daddy will always shield little bean, There’s nothing you need to fear. Anything that comes for my little bean, Anything that frightens my boy. I will fight them away from my little bean, For I only want him to feel joy. I will always protect you, my little bean, I will always keep you from harm. I will always find you, my little bean, And keep you quite safe in my arms. You will always be, my little bean, You will always be my precious son. No matter your age or your distance from me, From my side you will never be gone.”
My favourite is definitely one of my darker pieces. A man recalls how he came to be recruited into the Mongol horde: My education was in a way my saviour, but also my torment. I now have to live with the memory of my family, with that image burned into my mind as this heat now burns my skin. Our home, burning. The screams of my wife. My daughter. My son's decapitated body lying in the flower garden, among spilled bags of rice.
The last short story I worked on was about two boys who wished on the night a Hindu God passed through the galaxy and throughout the story the one boy was sent through a spiral in time and towards the end he and his adoptive sister (who he meets in his new life) see a boy in a reflection and then it cuts to the letter he sent years ago to his long lost brother. These few lines at the end of the story always make me cry: "The clouds were forming, thickening and spiraling like oceans in the sky as the Mahabharata passed through the atmosphere at great speeds, leaving material worlds behind. The windows shook with thunder, the rain came down with such a loud sound and Biel looked away from the window to listen to his mother finish the story." What do you think?
There's just something about using the ocean as a metaphor for something in the sky that feels off. Too much contrast. Cyclone - while aquatic - works better. This is good.
I like this: The blow on the candle flame gave birth to the deep black night, and as my worries got lighter, and my eyes heavier, it rode me towards the day ahead.