< 8 flower tales >

[RiverNotch]

(These are NOT intended as haiku, they're just poems with 2 stanzas of 3 lines.)

Well, I'm growing to hate blank space. Scrolling's such a bother without a proper keyboard!
   

                                                < 8 flower tales >
                                               

                                                1 -    
                                                   
                                                all winter  
                                                the spring  
                                                grew inside us   And I just finished rewatching "Frost & Fire", plus a few other episodes of Adventure Time. I'm gonna comment at all this again with those in mind.
                                                   
                                                now    
                                                our mouths open    
                                                and flowers tumble out   As before, I don't exactly see why "tumble" instead of "fall". The more varied meanings of fall makes for a more novel read, methinks: vomiting rainbows (funny), fluttering moths (horrific), both--
                                               
 
                                                   
                                                   
                                                2 -  
                                                   
                                                the rush of sprouting  
                                                of shoots    A bit thrown by the lack of a comma here. But not enough for a change of styles.
                                                pushing aside old leaves  
                                                   
                                                of stems ascending  
                                                as the buds    
                                                inflate to airy flowers   "Airy" speaks "farts and balloons" to me; with "inflate", those silly thoughts could easily overpower "flowers".
                                               
 
                                                   
                                                   
                                                3 -  
                                                   
                                                the bees warn us   Breezy!
Second run: I love this line so much now. Vivid, strong, and loaded perfectly: oh! Not unique on its own, sure, but the perfectest little cog in the machine!
                                                as the mouths of flowers  
                                                open wide to swallow us  
                                                   
                                                but since it's spring  
                                                we jump    
                                                right in   And so the turn. Second run: or, the beginning of it. Smooth like nectar.
                                               
 
                                                   
                                                   
                                                4 -  
                                                   
                                                wheels
                                                their axles    
                                                through the ground  
                                                   
                                                swerve over us  
                                                with the curve    
                                                of the sky   Segment I don't entirely understand yet. I'll return some other time with hopefully better understanding. For now, "their axles / through the ground" makes me see actual axles running piercing mother earth (oohlala), and "swerve over us" feels like an aborted image (oh my dearest).

And so, that was quick. I still don't, to the fullest, but enough I think to continue on. My earlier points still stand, though I can now understand how they could be deliberate (or at least the second one could) -- but ah, the stars!
                                               

                                                 
                                                 
                                                5 -  
                                                   
                                                as the afternoon    
                                                advances  
                                                the petals add  
                                                   
                                                determining    
                                                if you are loved    
                                                or not   Here we go, deeper into the thing! I must add that "advances" and "determining" feel ever so slightly superfluous; they add crucial movements, but only movements, and one that could be mixed with their neighboring lines. Still.
                                               
 
                                                   
                                                   
                                                6 -  
                                                   
                                                the waste basket  
                                                holds    
                                                these yellow flowers   Back to the flowers, now duly described. Here, we get to the height of the last two segments: now, the stars, the flowers, and the lovers are one. But now, it is past afternoon, and there shall be no nights in white satin for these sweets (haha!) -- it passed not to joy, but to sadness, to sorrow, to stains on the sheets and bits on the bedpan, to sleep.... 

The repetition of styles here from the fifth part's first strophe feels funky, though, in a bad way. "Holds" could be a fuller word, and it could perhaps be expanded into its neighbors; and does it have to be waste basket? That image feels somewhat too strong for the rest of it, especially with the very explicit next stanza.

Second run: question more for editorial purposes, really. What in Glob's name is the difference between a stanza and strophe, exactly?
                                                   
                                                tears    
                                                you're not sure  
                                                who they're for   See? This is the most, well, obvious, direct bit of the whole piece, and this is very good in hammering the last nail upon, but "the waste basket" sort of waters down the salt. As much as soft movements are nice, at least in this case, the sudden surprise just feels more natural, or at least more poetical.
                                               
 
                                                   
                                                   
                                                7 -  
                                                   
                                                the roundness    Here's where I would expect a break in format: now leaning into that other poet I've read a lot of (though not yet nearly as much as he has released), I think this stanza would be better fused with the earlier one. The numerical break feels too far a distance, and the earlier part too ungraceful alone.
                                                of a face    
                                                above us    
                                                   
                                                the pleasant sense  
                                                of color    
                                                that continues   I can see red being swallowed by blue -- I can see the surroundings being muted. Not too pleasant at this point for me, but I'm reading "pleasant" as irony.
                                               
 
                                                   
                                                   
                                                8 -  
                                                   
                                                after the steady    
                                                flowing    
                                                of years   Ah. Nice one. 
Second run: I will always love the word "steady", especially at the end of a line.
                                                   
                                                the grace  
                                                of our hands  
                                                turns to flowers   "turns to" could just as well be "becomes", but of course "becomes" has fewer meanings than "turns to". Now here, I'm not sure what on that point you're exactly stating, so a bit of enlightenment's welcome. Beautiful ending: reminds me of, again, Breezy (oh flower), and this, sort of:


And the picture is perfect.
                                               
 
                                                        - - -



Obviously I loved all of it. Except the bloody blank space, haha.