No, come on are you seriously telling us you don't realize it works the other way!!!!!!!!!!!!. As you learn how to use language properly, your thoughts become more "congealed" and concrete. And more fluid, more detailed, richer, more congruent, etc. Read Mark Twain, he has somewhat to say on this subject.

I'm betting you don't punctuate pomes because you don't know how.

It doesn't matter to you if you say something already said, but it certainly matters to us, your readers. Why the fuck do you think it's ok to waste our time with bullshit we've already seen/thought/heard a bazillion times!!!!!! Do you think I come here to be reminded of the Hallmark card I got in 1977?

Holy Jesus Christ on a stick, you're right! Lenore IS committing heresy in his statement, and zodiac in his laudable zeal to tromp down heresy whereever he sees it is inadvertently committing a subtle Error of Doctrine. This is how the Satan of Poetry deceives us! He i not an enemy to be taken lightly.

Drumrgirl30, step outside of yourself and consider: When a child whines, why does it whine? Because it feels an emotion or desire or hurt that is extremely important to it, and it feels a strong urge to communicate that emotion to others. And how do people respond to whining children? Do they ever respond positively? Do you?

Why is this? -- it's because learning more constructive responses to pain than whining is an important part of development. As true in poetry, whatever level you're at, as life.

Whining won't ever get you a positive response from fellow poetry writers, any more than whining works in life. It may garner you accolades from your fellow angst-ridden teenagers, but your better off communicating with them in a blog, not here. Here you will just be mocked. Why? again, consider life. What's the best way to quickly train a child not to whine? Mockery and derision. Perhaps cruel, but it works.

This does not mean it is forbidden to express personal pain in poetry. Au contraire. We're all gluttons for creatively expressed deep down trauma hound pain. We simply have more sophisticated tastes in our consumption of angst than the sound of a whining child. This isn't snobbery, but the built-in instinctive human reaction to whining.

this pome was really intended as a joke, it's all clichés. I put a little effort into the anapestic trimeter, but no effort into the content or imagery. Isn't that what a lyric is, lol?

i decided you were right about the stanza break.

ooh, can I fix war and make it clear it's one person with one simple edit??

...I have left over/from our last great struggle...
or
...I have left over/from the last time we had this war

and then, I might as well use we'll.

re. dream: you might be right. In my original conception, it isn't really about a dream, but referring to an experience of lucidity when your past life seems like a dream that you're waking up from, but I realize I didn't actually develop this idea in text so it's just in my head. I must decide either to ditch that idea or figure out how to bring it out in the pome.

similarly, the you/I mismatch was because it's all one person. But I realize I don't make that clear either. Damn.

you are correct, small d and &'s serve no purpose, and are just laziness. The pouch and daddy belong together, part of the idea is that daddy did come up with a diamond ring at one point, but it is long gone, lost or sold or gambled away.

hmmm, my repetitions were definitely deliberate, but perhaps they don't do what I want them to.

Yeah, I'm going to work on the war thing. As ajt discerned, it refers to an internal war, but I want that to remain an incidental detail, not a feature of the pome. It's character background.

how does "...from the last great struggle" sound? nah, silly. I mean last as in previous.

"...from my private wars"
"...from the last time I fought this"

sorry, but jackson pollock went to art school. He knew the rules before he broke them.

there has never been an iconoclastic artist who didn't first go through an intense period of learning and absorption, whether in school or self-imposed. van gogh, for example, spent thousands of hours studying paintings, sitting in galleries sometimes looking at one painting for an entire day.

You can't break rules you don't thoroughly know. You can't defy tradtions with which you are not intimately familiar.

That doesn't mean you are required to devote yourself to studying poetry to play around with writing, or that you shouldn't play with breaking "the rules." By all means, go for it! But it does mean that name dropping famous iconoclasts to excuse the inaccessibility of your efforts, as though you were somehow their peer, when you quite obviously haven't gone through the rigorous and intensive learning and training they typically do is inexcusable and will simply result in people dismissing you out of hand.

You see, when you don't actually KNOW the rules, you inevitably break them accidentally, and this shows plain as day, as opposed to when you break the rules for some intent or effect. At least read and absorb Strunk, it's like 30 pages long. Christ.

If we include you, does that count?

If we include you, does that count?

If we include you, does that count?

Nooo...slender, tentative girl-fingers.

hell, then just say used up! but say your

your used up colors standing out so lonely

that gives you everything, an alliteration, a molossus for continued syncoptatic goodness, and the implication you desire. lol.

rained out

I'm canadian.

Nooo, colonic massage.

hmmm, doesn't work for me.
hit'n'miss colours??
stray bullet colours??

No problem, please return the favour and hack the hell out of some of my stuff. (Goad, middenHeap, lastobelus)