A State of Mindless
Tue, 17 Mar 2009 at 04:12am
untitled
We peer through holes of time and space,
Seeking the form of a forgotten face.
Searching with eyes untainted and bright
But seeing only darkness where there should be light.
A beehive of choices, so many, too few
To pick just the right one when you haven’t a clue.
We try to remember what we forgot that we lost.
A past and a path that we should never have crossed.
This much we knew, though it took centuries to learn.
There had to be a reason why our cities did burn.
There are books full of knowledge though our minds are blank pages.
Humanities great feats, lost for countless of ages.
We live in peace, we know no fear.
What man was seeking is finally here.
The dawn of mankind has dawned once more.
We should all be content as never before.
But men can’t be content not knowing it all.
Our peace and prosperity to them it appalls.
This gift we were given, to them it is rotten.
They have to put features to the face long forgotten.
If only time was spent in enjoyment not reflection,
Then mankind as we know it would not be facing destruction.
For the minds of my time finally found what was buried
And unmasked the demon and the corruption it carried.
We see now the face our fathers once saw.
It claimed their past and it claims our flaw.
It ate their minds and consumed their sanity.
Now our guests call on us whom we called in our vanity.
When we finally saw our fatal error,
From the heavens descended our judgment bearer.
They traveled the expanses in their ships made of metal
And told us in our affairs they would not meddle.
“We see in your faces the faults of your ancients.
‘If they help us, we’ll help them,’ so we sat back in patience.
But you can’t help yourselves so us you can’t aid
But this earth will do nicely whence from it you fade.”
One other likes this.
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I like this. Welcome to Indyfluency. Remember to head over to the forum and get to know us all better. :)
I like this too :)
Still going to nitpick yo ass anyway. Take it or leave it.
There had to be a reason why our cities did burn. <- I request immediate reformation of that line so 'did' is not required to meet rhythmic length. Most of the poem has nice rhythm and you don't fuck up your syntax for rhyme's sake too much, but honestly, really.
The dawn of mankind has dawned once more. <- I'm also going to fight your use of 'dawn' as both noun and verb in this line. I think it detracts.
Our peace and prosperity to them it appalls. <- one line where you do fuck with syntax for rhyme's sake. I get it and I sympathize, but rework it if you can.
When we finally saw our fatal error, <- pick a longer verb so the rhythm fits with the next line.
Also, it often helps with punctuating such poems to go back and get rid of all line breaks and look at it as if it were prose (i.e. paragraph form). You also don't need every line to be end-stopped (ending in a period or comma) and there are a few places where I think periods should be commas or semicolons but that is most up to your own discretion. Anyway. I second alise, come visit us on the forums and take advantage of the OMG list and Thammoc.
One last thing. Does Leto reference Dune or is it simply your name/a name you like?
Well met!
Leave it to sands to give an in-depth dissertation of new-person's poem.
Personally, I've spent so much time away from structured and/or set rhyming scheme poems that to me AABBCCDDEEFFGG etcetera etcetera seems a little... erngh. No to say I didn't like your poem, I mean.
Sands did call you out on your syntax, though, and I'd have to side with her on it. I like that you brought yourself to a defined rhyming scheme and a certain sense of flow, but it doing so also means that you have to be par for the course. A wishy-washy chump like me could just as easily hand-wave an unstructured poem as fluid or non-syntaxical (suspend your sense of proper English for a moment), but you have decided to rise to form that marries function and poetic rhythms! Make good its qualities! (and welcome to IndyFluency)
First of all, I appreciate the criticism. It’s nice to have someone who knows the workings of poetry critique it. Personally, I know little about its structure aside from what I learned in school. I’ve always been more of a novelist or prose writer than of poetry…
Now to comment on your evaluation of my piece:
You’re right, grammatically “did” is not necessary in this line. But, if you look at the implied protagonist’s point of view it does make sense. He’s fighting against the un-contented men who have overlooked the fact that the cities burned. The protagonist is pointing to that fact. That they did burn, and there had to be a reason for that. The use of this verb emphasizes the reality of the burning.
In the “Dawn of mankind” line the repetition of “dawn,” besides its obvious inference, also symbolizes the repetitive nature of mankind in our attempts to progress as a species. Often what we see as progress is really an old idea with shine new façade, that sort of thing. Then again, perhaps I’m just bad with symbolism.
The “peace and prosperity” line I’ve never been happy with for that very reason. I’ve thought about rewording it before and now that I see how obvious it is, I just might do that. The rest of what you say I agree with and thanks for the tips. And yes, Leto is reference to Dune.
I Question for you. Just out of philosophical curiosity. Being the writer as you are and a spinster of words, I was wondering about your use of expletives. Do you feel they give more credence to your expressions or more emphasis to the value of your speech? Or is it simply conformity to the standards of language set by your peers? The evolution of the English language fascinates me in how contextual terms work there way into casual vocabularies.
I enjoy expletives, most especially fuck, for the sheer flexibility of usage. According to wiki, fuck can be used in at least five different grammatical forms (my professor looked it up in grammar class), and I'm inclined to think there are several more uses, where possible. I also use sounds I enjoy (yo ass just rolls off the tongue, imo). Furthermore, I am not a writer; I just type shit.
lastly. we can totally claim in pieces thus I hereby do so (Unless he's made it onto the forum by now, in which case my claim will be retracted). Obviously this kid's meant to be mine, what with the Dune reference and all.
aha! thammoc brings familiarity at last. I still have a copy shuffled between writings of my own.
simplicity rings clear and definitely contrasts my efforts in writing my formal English lessons as timed imagery-decathlon at warp.
si muy bueno
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