Shards of Divinity

[ShadowsCool]

Lovely scenes fell out the sky,
Paradoxes throughout time.
Shards of divinity for some;
Others, lights with little fanfare.

Perceptions roam in freedom's quest,
Hallucinations fill stifled hearts.
When self nods nothing there
Cloaked by one's own cares.

[cogs]

i'm not sure but i think the meat of this is in the scenes, perceptions, and hallucinations, perhaps meaning dreams. the stifled hearts makes me wonder how they can have dreams (hallucinations), since there's nothing there.

suggestions: last line is accented on the first syllable, whereas the previous lines are soft there. the apostrophe on ones and freedoms is missing. the weakest line to express content, imo, is the perceptions one.

i like how you have presented this poem, with its rhythm and left justified text. also, i like the contrast of the two types of (dreamers?). thank you for letting me read.

[ShadowsCool]

Okay Cogs, thanks for reviewing. I made the changes with punctuation. As for the last bit of advice, I'll have to review it again.

Shadows

[MorpheusSandman]

There is a hint of Dickinsonian ambiguity here. I think it starts out strong with the first two lines, giving us a cosmic sense of these events. You then move to the subjective interpretations of those events, but I think the rhetorical device would be stronger if you rewrote L3-4 as:

Shards of divinity for some, for others
Lights with little fanfare.

"little fanfare" also sounds like a weak term to end this on. "Shards of divinity" is so powerful that I feel it needs a better paring in this chiastic paring here. If you want to keep lights, think about a way to pair "light" with something else that will make it more mundane or natural or even useless, because the idea is that some people see them as something divine, while others don't. Maybe something akin to "light without heat" (but less cliched).

The second stanza is even more mysterious, and I think less successful. I keep wanting to make it more Dickinsonian by writing it as something like:

Perceptions roam - on Quests
Hallucinations fill up - Hearts
When Self nods - Nothing there
Cloaked by one's Own cares

I really like those last two lines, but I think, perhaps, the "freedom's quest" and "stifled hearts" is bordering on the cliched. I'd say make the most out of the ambiguity. Plus, considering you end on a rhyme I feel like the rest of the piece should be more metrical than it is.

[ShadowsCool]

Thanks for the indepth review. I like your ideas and I am considering them. Your ideas have more pop to it. Indeed, wish I thought of them. Thanks!