Flaws

[white camellia]

Greetings to the malfunctioning being
Impoverished kindness lingered on

Preaching philosophies of sound acting
Unsymmetric eyes a sad parade on

Dragging, drag madness in ample hailing
Whose imaginary horse rode off town

Love, vagabonds of a never-be comprising
Still Light, cast in the livelong dry-runs

[ktm5124]

Wow, white camellia! This is an incredible poem. It was certainly a puzzle to work out, and I confess to perhaps understanding but a small portion of it, but it was so lyrical on my first read that it drew me in. Then I realized that the prepositional object of the second and fourth line is love, and in this moment I was lifted. (Of course, if I am wrong here I would be terribly embarrassed!)

I really love your use of neologism, like never-be and livelong. I also love your use of rhyme, such as the feminine rhyme on the gerunds, as well as the echo of "on" and the slant rhyme on "runs" and "towns". And then the line "Love, vagabonds of a never-be comprising" is simply a masterstroke. Very beautiful! Bravo!

[white camellia]

Hi, ktm, so glad you enjoyed it. You're reading into my poem. You've got your wonderful understanding there, I must say. But to me, it's more a flow of feeling than a design.

[ktm5124]

Hehe, well that's a little embarrassing =) I think I just used technical jargon because I'm new and I want to impress. However, I did genuinely feel your poem to be a puzzle in terms of working out the meaning, even on the most rudimentary level such as "what is the poem about". And I wonder what is the prepositional object of "lingered on" and "sad parade on", etc. And I assume it is love, right? (Don't answer this, rhetorical question!) This didn't come immediately to me because of how you play with the grammar. But, of course, one isn't necessarily supposed to get the meaning of a poem on the first read.

I hope this feedback helps -- that it took me a while to work out what the poem is about, and that I came to think that the second and fourth lines link together with the last stanza (in terms of what is both logical and grammatical), and that I found this small portion of understanding to be very moving.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Despite what reads at first like such complex diction and philososophic reasoning, this works out in the end to be a poem of grace and, in a sense, of lightness.

[white camellia]

ktm, the way you read my poem helped me reflect on my own writing. That shouldn't be embarrassing at all. It's good for a poem to be understood in different ways. I did appreciate your comment and I really like it. I was to express a feeling of confusion, frustration, persistence, hesitation...but then I did not want it to be so heavy for readers, so I tried to make it a little bit lighter, and that's where Prince got that mixed impression - thanks, Prince, for your feedback.

[blp]

Magic.

[qimissung]

The words have a beautiful flow, like a stream trickling, then turning dry under the hot sun.