Interestinely

hmm. good, but the rhythm needs work.

I love pain. 9/10.

Gshcäft (Disguised as Deerfly): "and yet you skipped over my babelfish poetry?" :)

hehe 10

sweet, tint. 'To dive below and find for you The perfect pearl within a parted life' damn. nice job. i disagree with jbh abot the opak reference--i think it does, as you intended, imply their differences. i'll come read it again in the morning. but, damn, this is fine.

I can picture you sitting there absorbing the sights and sounds that fuelled the mood so well expressed in this poem. Yes, I absolutely love this. (God its nice being nice aint it?) ^10^

Ever heard of hitting a nail on its head? rickshaws pedaling giddy tourists on goodwill jaunts along the slithers and scattered patches of asphalt.

Tis fine. Even though I misread/rewrote the last line as I read it: Too proud to scrawl.

I like it. It works. But I'm gonna offer a critique as well: musk is from oxen. Was it ox for dinner? Pheromones is far less visceral than any other word in the poem. I can't smell it. Perhaps: I lowest growl of hot flesh on your cool.

Excellent. This is one of the best poems to be posted on this website in a very long time. Damn your eyes, sah, and damn your pan-fried foie gras!

someone's dame. ;) a bit weak in the end; I think I needed more syntactic sugar (only imagine "that"), and then... the that before "she'd leave" confuses me. bad sentence. no biscuit. ;) honestly you could drop the last stanza entirely and I think it would be stronger for it. 15/20. Hmm.

hilarious. :) 9.

flow suggestions: "and doin' the rounds" (drop "the")? [[why not 13, 15, 18, or thirteen, fifteen, eighteen?]] (gearing down / keeping control) -> "gearing down for control" "despite the laws driving drunk is on the rise"? [nah, not quite] :/ "a means to an end" feels clunky. "and ontime delivery of the oxygen keeping grandma alive" (still not quite) "still delivering a smile" -> "but delivering a smile" (less of a pause, somehow) 8 hoping for more flow, or more pointed stop-and-go (as the <~>-meister states)

Cute poem! I kinda like how Shmuel shortened it, I think you could still incorporate a part about God though, since that is important to you, just maybe do it from an angle that fits with the poem better

So why does this poem have loads of lines all offset? (I asked <~> the same question and was given, I think, a reasonable reply, but I can't see the reason here.) Are you trying to express yourself through use of the spacebar? Justify yourself now.

I really enjoyed reading this poem!!!

pleasantly fun. a couple points where I'm not sure if you meant what you say or not (manor or manner? both make sense... "a wisp of wanting breath?" waning? or... I can kinda see wanting, but not quite a wisp of it. leaning towards wanting "separated by our thoughts" to be "separated by our thought" ... "die" into the depths, or "dive" into the depths? cna see both, but it's not entirely clear that it's not a typo. 7.5, leaning towards 7 for now.

I think I can relate. 10.

Lovely. Reminds me of 'the Grey Selkie' (one of my favourites) for some reason. I've this wonderful internal conflict with S4. The imagery implies almost still freshwater (wavelets and dragonflies). One part of me says, "doesn't fit the ocean theme". Another more subtle part says, "true but it does represent a calm serenity that an ocean metaphor couldn't provide (and is necessary for this stanza) and it also represents the interface between the two worlds (oak and ocean). May the muses sing at your wedding