Black Sand Beach

[tectak]

Cement blocks underneath torn sneakers.I see immediately that there is deliberately(?) no meter in this piece. That is fine but then you must take as much care to avoid meter as you would to create it. So, L1 is largely statemental and requires no reason but its clarity to exist....and here I take issue simply because you do not "create" a narrator. As a result, L2 and L3 cry out for that "I" in L3. OK. This is first person. Why hide? " Cement blocks beneath MY torn sneakers. I breathe air thicker than dust; stumbling as I rust." This is, in essence, what stanza 1 says to the reader. Is the image correct? We shall see.
Breathing air thicker than dust.
I stumble as I rust.

Decaying into a withering sidewalk elm, Hmmm. Well, that did  not last long. I am very unsure of the metamorphosis due to decay. YOU decay in to an Elm? OK. Let's go with the talking Elm hypothesis. You, the Elm, are alive above ground, but withering. The death below (beneath is to much like underneath) may or may not be YOUR dead bits. Is this clearly stated? No. I do not think so. Now I hope that I am not being unfair....I am not embarrased to be confused....but conceptually the piece is wandering before my eyes. You must clarify otherwise interpretation will exceed expectation and the piece will run out of interest.
alive on the top
with death beneath.

Rubble between my eyes
strolling through deaths
gaze I realize. "Death's" you already know...but this error is symptomatic of muddled thinking. As the last line is a massive and open-ended forced rhyme (why bother at this late stage?) the inconclusive "...I realize" is just hopelessly uninformative. What DO you mean and are you still a tree?. Help

Dreams are only as they seem.
Meaning is deaths shadow
in the meadow of failure.
Your delusion, a snare. Well...er...quite. To be honest, only those who admired the King's new clothes will get anything from this faux-poetic stanza. If  anyone knows who YOU are, and what your delusion is, then please advise. If you are an Oak tree then I would be interested in your comments...or your acorns.

OK. All is opinion. Content is not the business of the crit except to pursue clarity or to admire deliberate and clever obscurity. You may say that this is about Dutch Elm disease and I believe you...but as one Elm to another, this sure beats the shit outta me.
You write with an enviable freedom but without discipline the concept is lost. There may be an equation here. Clarity ©=discipline(d)/freedom(f).
To put this right for me, should that be of any concern, you would need reduce the (f).
Best,
tectak[/b]