For those following Namesakes
Jul. 5th, 2016 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mnemeI kinda dashed it off, but so it goes.
Trying to Forget
I gorge on poppies, stamens down to roots.
They fill me up, and yet I do not sleep.
My magic spent on hats and jumping boots,
But in my mind, the fears and doubts still creep.
I know my past: my sisters, ere the fall
(Despite my pain, my eyes no longer weep)
Before their deaths, that we created all.
I wish for death, and so this tea I steep.
Forgetfulness can't last, but it might ease
The weight of all this past, but it's not cheap:
My eyes, my magic, bounties that might please,
The folk of Oz, but truly it's no leap
To see that it's my sorrow that's the cause
Of everything that's wonderful (and terrible) in Oz.
Prompts: What's most recently been happening in the Namesakes webcomic (http://namesakecomic.com/comic/trying-to-forget), and the first post, "Forgetfulness, sleep, poppies...", which I decided to take as a poetry prompt.
(Edit to fix the punctuation and clean it up a bit; the original poem was very much a single stream of consciousness in less then 10 minutes, with occasional pauses to find a rhyme word).
Trying to Forget
I gorge on poppies, stamens down to roots.
They fill me up, and yet I do not sleep.
My magic spent on hats and jumping boots,
But in my mind, the fears and doubts still creep.
I know my past: my sisters, ere the fall
(Despite my pain, my eyes no longer weep)
Before their deaths, that we created all.
I wish for death, and so this tea I steep.
Forgetfulness can't last, but it might ease
The weight of all this past, but it's not cheap:
My eyes, my magic, bounties that might please,
The folk of Oz, but truly it's no leap
To see that it's my sorrow that's the cause
Of everything that's wonderful (and terrible) in Oz.
Prompts: What's most recently been happening in the Namesakes webcomic (http://namesakecomic.com/comic/trying-to-forget), and the first post, "Forgetfulness, sleep, poppies...", which I decided to take as a poetry prompt.
(Edit to fix the punctuation and clean it up a bit; the original poem was very much a single stream of consciousness in less then 10 minutes, with occasional pauses to find a rhyme word).
no subject
Date: 2016-07-05 08:16 am (UTC)Too many commas. You don't need one at every time you'd pause in recitation: English punctuation tries to reflect structure as well as speech. So
I gorge on poppies, stamens down to roots,
They fill me up, and yet I do not sleep.
My magic spent(,?) on hats and jumping boots,
But in my mind, the fears and doubts still creep.
I know my past, my sisters 'fore the fall, 5
And that's my pain, my eyes no longer weep,
Before their deaths, that we created all,
I wish for death, and so this tea I steep.
Forgetfullness can't last, but it might ease,
The weight of all this past but it's not cheap; 10
My eyes, my magic, bounties that might please,
The folk of Oz, but truly it's no leap,
To see that it's my sorrow that's the cause,
Of everything that's wonderful and terrible in Oz.
line 3: Makes sense either way, thus "?"
5: "'fore" will confuse when spoken aloud. "Ere", perhaps?
6–8: I can't parse these lines, can't see how they fit together.
9: "Forgetfulness", just one "l". The comma at the end of the line: if "the weight" in 10 is the object of "ease", drop that comma.
14: Eight feet. ???
no subject
Date: 2016-07-05 08:51 am (UTC)In general, I should either put them in everywhere there's a verbal pause or just where normal English would include them.
... I've made a few changes. Mostly stuff you suggested, a few thnings you didnt.
I like the 14 feet in the final line, though. It's basically a portmanteau line; combining "everything that's wonderful" and "everything that's terrible", and as a happy accident I ended up with a triplicate in the middle; everything bouncing to wonderful bouncing to terrible. But I'll add a further edit to put parentheticals around "terrible" to lampshade it's extra feet.