This has some really nice moments--secret history, nomads and oases and sandalwood, etc.--but the imagery is a bit all over the place. Some nits too--thunder doesn't taste like anything, "within my specter"?, and "creneled" isn't a word (though crenelated is). Could do with some pruning and redirection, but you've made a good start.

I like the last tercet best. Nice image you build here.

Syllable counts aside, this is haiku, though you'll get the "this isn't 5-7-5" naysayers anyway. (Anyway, many poets write haikus that don't strictly conform to 5-7-5--there is much more to a haiku than the number of its syllables.)

Wistful--I love the playing with time, the nonlinear narrative, what was, might have been, would be, will be. The sporadic rhyming gives this a haunting music--very elegantly done.

You tell a good tale. Some minor snipping could make this even more immediate (small stuff--like in the first verse, "teams of chainsaws cope" makes "trying to deal" unnecessary; drop "unfortunately" (telling); stuff like that). I like the ending.

Masochistic or inordinantly fond of your teeth?

Indeede, a fine yarn in true 'rankerlecherous tradition.

Good sustained imagery and the repetition of phrases is effective. Overall, a well-done sonnet, worthy of a better title (says one who sucks at titles).

heh

Would she type with her tongue? Her toes? Her nose?

Clever. ;)

You set the mood here really well, but I want more! "Softly" seems like a weird adverb to use with grow, and I think maybe just "flagstone" rather than -stoned--you wouldn't say "marbled" hall, right? Minor quibbles and nits, though--this has your usual sorcery, even in short form.

"Did work the daedalus machine"? (I know daedalus built the maze, but seems an odd way to put it.) Keenly rendered, B.Z.B., but it seems more poem fragment than poem.

I love the contrast of old and new, and you pick some great details, Caducus. Seems a little jaggedy still and could use some honing, but you've got really a really good core to work with. I really enjoyed it.

Way too many extraneous details before getting to the meat of this. Why start in the car? Why all the workout details? In medias res.

Is "an 'ann summers'" a store? Distracting--why not just "here, where the windowfronts are blacked out in lingerie and leather"? This is good, though some of the diction is a little awkward. This has a nice poignancy.

Pretty. Why just a feral thorn? One small element of the whole is feral? Your simile has a metaphor--a life perennial as a rose with a thorn like an unloved child. That's a lot of weight for such a spare poem to bear.

The inversions really don't work for me ("who see not"; "they see not")--they just add an artificiality to an already overburdened poem. I do mostly like what I've read of yours, but it sometimes totters dangerously close to becoming a Neil Peart lyric. Nice images, but a little overwrought.

From one Italian girl to another: this really resonates with me. Some really fresh, striking language, but some of it is puzzling. Something other than eyes stitched in cotton, or am I just not getting what you mean? The last line--ill repute--kind of throws me too. Really like this, otherwise.

They're such oddly malevolent flowers--this works quite well. I like "twist a whimsied spiral," but "down and around" is redundant, and I am unreasonably biased against the word "abound"--it just strikes me as one of those "committing acts of poetry" words. The "watch we" inversion strikes a little artificially--does it have some purpose other than the rhyme? I'm usually turned off by archaic tones in modern poems, but the orchid has an odd, other-timely formality that makes it work here (it helps that you keep it light and reasonably subtle). Light and shadow, whimsy and floral murder--what's not to like?

Richa,

I don't discern any consistent meter here. You start with a headless iamb (shy), followed by what I think is a dactyl (sifting the), headless iamb? (pool), iamb (of leaves)/
dactyl (picking up), trochee (flowers), anapest (from the floor) . . . and so on.

Admittedly, I'm pretty rusty on scansion, but I wonder if you're hearing a forced meter in your head that I'm just not hearing? Try reading it aloud (as if it's prose--i.e., in a natural voice) and mark where the stressed/unstressed syllables fall--that will help you see the presence or lack of a metric rhythm better than anything. There's nothing that says that you need a particular meter for this--it hangs on imagery (though your imagery is pretty detached from anything, I think) more than anything. But if you want to play with meter, then you have to hear it as others would.

My point is that when people talk about "meter," they usually mean some sort of pattern or rhythm to the feet that make up each line--even if it's somewhat mixed throughout. I don't hear any pattern here. I'd call this free verse (i.e., very little in the way of uniform stress patterns).