Modern Minds

[E.A Rumfield]

The ghosts of men not yet dead but no longer alive
cry out from damp basement apartments deep within the depths of solitude
as more minds purge themselves of the organic
and become densely populated sprawling metropolises,
Minds that produce insanities greater than the square root of all the worlds asylums
minds more cancerous than suburban power plants in Pennsylvania,
As the television plays, white noise transcends silence
and the last humans scream from fifteenth floor tombs

[Pete Ak]

The ghosts of men not yet dead but no longer alive
cry out from damp basement apartments deep within the depths of solitude
as more minds purge themselves of the organic
and become densely populated sprawling metropolises,
Minds that produce insanities greater than the square root of all the worlds asylums
minds more cancerous than suburban power plants in Pennsylvania,
As the television plays, white noise transcends silence
and the last humans scream from fifteenth floor tombs

The opening description requires a lot of thinking. We're introduced to ghosts, no men because they aren't dead, but they aren't alive either, so what's going on? I think this is just about as far as artistic licence will take you especially as these 'no longer alive' men are crying out...etc.
'...deep within the depths...' tautology methinks. anyway 'the depths of solitude' is something of a tired cliche.
L4 is interesting but problematic. It links back to the beginning in that we now find out the crying from the basement happens AS more minds purge themselves. Is the word 'more' important here? I presume this is the latest batch of purging ghost-men, the others came/existed before. Or is the crying FOR the purging ghost men, rather than BY the purging ghost men? This is unclear. Also your use of 'organic' is interesting. I thought it an adjective but there's no noun.
L5 I'd hoped would be revelatory, as it starts 'and become...' but what I'm told they become is 'densely populated sprawling metropolises'. If the metaphor itself were not so dense I could pick out easier that you're telling us that minds become this rather than the purging ghost men we met earlier. I can see a mind being 'dense', even 'sprawling' but not the metropolis bit. Incidentally the word 'metropolis' itself is not a naturally poetic one (for me that is.)
In L6 you perform a trick that backfires a little on yourself (as N). I quite like the way you put it that 'Minds can produce insanities...' but then to convince us of how much insanity you tell us it's the square root of a number we don't know - but the square root is going to be less than any number we can estimate which kind of blunts the edge of what you're saying.
L7 I have to take N's word about the power plants but I'm sure some of this can be culled, 'Pennsylvania' perhaps, 'suburban' maybe but I guess not 'power plants' unless some Pennsylvanian wants to tell us otherwise.
The last line is excellent tho not convincingly led into by the penultimate phrase regarding white noise transcending silence - all noise transcends silence doesn't it? One might even say the television transcends silence. Nevertheless the fifteenth floor tomb is a great and appropriate image.
I realise on reading my critique that I comes across much less complimentary than my first impression. I believe that's an inevitable consequence of delving into line by line details. Overall I actually quite enjoyed it notwithstanding some confusion.

[WolfLarsen]

I like this poem. Some lines are better than others. My favorite lines were:



cry out from damp basement apartments deep within the depths of solitude


Minds that produce insanities greater than the square root of all the worlds asylums
minds more cancerous than suburban power plants in Pennsylvania,

and the last humans scream from fifteenth floor tombs

The white noise of the television is cliché.

But some very good lines.