what does the primal clawing have to do with the street lamp's light? can you please make a nice neat package out of this one?

freshly said, but feels unfinished

Than please don't waste my time by commenting on something above you...Maybe take another class and let a professor tell you how to think.

L1 &L2--you don't need both 'by myself' and 'solitary'. L4: change to 'as days fluttered past' i believe that's what p&k and h8 are suggesting, and i agree.

give me something i can hold on to

i would like to see more basketball argot in this poem. i want you to name sports stuff, and with each slamdunk, or 3pointshot, or whatever--you erase a little bit more of the weight of the anger. balance the scales of action and reaction. you dig?

I feel battered and bruised. My left lip is swollen from your harness. Do you have a boner? "gunna" is the obvious mispelling of "going to..." which means whatever you yourself as a qualified reader understand it to mean. An inability to bend words is an inability for morphology. If you need to know what that word means, reply back, and I'll allow you to know.

this is a phenomenal image: And what was control would fall Like mercury to the ground but, i hate this line: I am a simple gal bringing on a testy madness it's out of character with the rest of the poem, i think. there are a couple of other places where the unevenness shows as well. you create magnificent visuals, and then throw in some homespun, and it loses its magic. see what i mean, mrs.g?

so, very, many, commas, interrupt, the, flow, of, this, and, make, it feel, like, a, list, poem. and it is not. it's a nicely concocted metaphor for pain--although the maggots are a bit of a stretch: freshly spurting blood does not maggots produce--they imple a length of time has passed, which it clearly has not, because the action of this poem happens in an instant. also, i take issue with her 'spitting' out the words. wouldn't she be treacly-sweet, just to twist the blade a little deeper? with some minor refinements, this could be superb.

First of all, have I sent you for a loop? Are you questioning if I am actually a different person than Horus8. I am. Is your mind not allowing you to sleep at night due to something so trivial (something besides your poetry that is)as that? Do you have a poster of Robert Frost on your wall...Or is it Jose Cansaco? Your identity crisis scares me...Your becoming psychotic, if so your amongst a history of poets. The only difference is, we can write and are also published. But that doesn't matter...you have poemranker.

Damn. Just damn. I have decided that you and z should be lovers. Are you available? And when you inspire each other I shall come watch just for the sake of voyeurism. The East must be miserable this time of year, because you guys are kicking out the jams. Again, I will read later and think, think, think.

I read this last, you make reading these easy and enjoyable. There are some small things that might do better if they were changed, But the telling, the telling is almost flawless. I like your poems.

I watched my aunt's apartment complex burn to the ground at Christmastime when I was six. My step-grandfather knocked a candle into a trashcan in the bathroom. That is what started the whole shebang. Some say he did it on purpose. He was an outsider in the family. I think it went on behind backs for years. But he is dead now. I remember sitting on the swings at the little playground there watching the whirl of the fire truck lights and the flames wild twist and turns and families running all over the place and my family and my aunt all crying and hugging each other and praising the lord, which I thought was odd considering the situation, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Unlike this poem.

Interesting but awkward grammar, but as hurus8 says: that does not really matter. And you dislike the academic side of things. But is is awkward and staggers the flow of things from the get go I guess you are in the erotic business now. The Secret Life of Catherine M.. The belly as a plain of wheat is just down right funny. Does that mean hairy. Then you switch context. From direct to third. Do you start to talk directly to the pecker? There are some nice lines here and the idea is sound, but some of the images border on comical. Bur your bud thinks it is the best poem you have ever written, so that is all that matters. If I was your writing teacher I would ask you if you think about your words. Really think about them? Is this supposed to be funny?

Oh my god, there are two of them. This is much less comic and again has some nice lines. Unprententiously - wow I cannot say have ever read this in a poem. And I suppose there is a reason for that. Creating a following of one - I like this. And the frist line. Good stuff.

Put the Pete Singer down and step away from the poem. I feel like I am reading a generic mantra read before a march of protest to Ted Nugent's United Sportsmen of America Headquarters in Michigan during the opening days of hunting season. You know, there is good fiction out there on this movement. Read "My Year of Meats" by Ruth, shit I cannot find the book anywhere in all these piles. Fuck. Well anyway, look it up. It tackles the subject with a bit of originality, whereas this falls into sap.

Your images are wonderful. Just wonderful. The first stanza..wow. Let me think on this one a bit, read it a few more times and send along some thoughts.

Make it active rather than passive for staters. "nothing" to anything.

This is beyond bad. "gunna"? What the hell is "gunna"?

My editor, oh yes, yes My publishing dreams have come true!