The first day
Some stood like axes on the wall,
Others more like guillotines
I have so much to learn
I stood, the only clean blade in a cutlery
until responsibility forced me to draw blood.
This is not new to you, is it? You expected more.
By day’s end, soaked in red,
I questioned myself.
I am not a soldier,
was never a fighter,
how did I end
up in the midst of a war?
This eighty year old brick building
is a fortress that only contains
the confusion of the street corners;
lives that carry the names of the fallen like their ink-
stained backpacks: those are forgotten too,
left at home.
Aware of their place, they are huddled, looking
like freshly washed swine in a mosque,
and I am a bayonet named Moira.
1 comment:
This poem starts with a lot of potential. The imagery is very powerful, but one thing that is confusing is the use of the italics in the first verse. It's reads as one voice, but I think it would be more powerfully read if the second set of italics was and out side voice. I would actually take the first italics and move it here (i dont do html, so you know may have to kinda figure it out):
Some stood like axes on the wall,
Others more like quillotines
I stood, the only clean blade in the cutlery
until responsibilty forced me to draw blood.
This is not new to you, is it? You expected more?
By day's end, scarlet stained,
I questioned myself.
I have so much to learn.
-That also adds the element of you answering your own question.
The next vers is good. I'd only tweak it slightly:
I am not a soldier.
I was never a fighter.
Yet I am in the midst of a war.
How?
- Now these last two verses are kinda jumbled. I think the easiest thing would be to extract the main idea and just say it. I think these verse suffer from something that I know you do often...in being the "snob" that you are you try to either dumb down how you really want to say something or over explain it when you think the subject it too good to dumb down. Give the reader a chance...people read poetry because they want to dig. Keep that "huh?" factor in the workshop phase and just see if it works...
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