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FreeCell in the Afternoon
in your old age
you wear your weakness without shame.
You are a pair of black lungs in a high back chair.
A broken body slouched against the armrest
next to the ashtray and a glass of cheap merlot.
You stretch and you feel it in your bones,
you say 'my body is giving out'
and you carry your death around,
working your liver into the soil
with slow sips and a half-empty salt-shaker.
The burden of your wife's need weighs on me,
and I feel the son's betrayal;
I am unready to lay with her
and I am no father either,
only some ghost turned to skin by your leaving.
I am an angry child then,
and cannot forgive you.
My brothers need fathers
and you play FreeCell in the afternoon.
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| i like the title. the despair raised in the poem really emphasizes how desperate one can be, playing freecell in the afternoon. good work. |
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you say â??my body is giving outâ?
and you carry your death around,
these two lines break up the flow; the precision of thought of the rest of the first stanza. Make it connect, use the words you have to stir it all together, like a cohesive.
The first two lines of the second drag me further out of the picture. What about the wife's burden can vilify him, specifics, how is she burdened, how do you know? Something concrete. The same about the son's betrayal.
In the last stanza, I would play with that first line, there is much to be spoken about when it comes to being an angry child, make us feel it, what does an angry child look like?
"And you play freecell in the afternoon" This line is great and I don't know why it doesn't fit. I think it needs to be further up in the poem, maybe the first line? Or maybe where it is, but add more after it, it shouldn't be the end of the poem, I don't think, unless some things before it change, maybe then it would work? It really is a great line though. I guess it feels anti-climactic, there needs to be more lead up, or it needs to be the lead up to something.
The rest of the stuff I didn't comment on per your request for criticism, but there were some really great lines and images in this poem, and there is a really powerful tone and overall style that I really like. I think I addressed everything that wasn't great, so the rest was. |
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| Your poem gave me alot to think about. I wish you had expanded it out a little further in a way, but it has a great ending. |
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Comment by: PANDORA - 2006-06-16 07:45
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| "I am an angry child then and can not forgive you". Death, sickness, both can bring out the abandoned angry child in us all. |
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I almost want the poem to start with ' You are a pair of black lungs...'
and put 'In your old age....' at the end of the first stanza
that said, it's a powerful poem |
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