Flayed, alive.
#2
(07-22-2025, 06:51 AM)JamesG Wrote:  With a surgeon’s bluff precision
you cut me with your scalpel,
parting my dermis, as
Moses parts the sea,
revealing the glistening,
hidden creatures,  
that flap forlornly,
on the newly naked floor.  first stanza, metaphor containing a simile.  Graphic... too graphic?  Vivisection rather than autopsy.

We lay upon your wood bound  change of pace, slight grin after "wood"
bed, a gurney, moulded to your needs.
Beneath, an ancient gore  need a connection to make "gore" specific - pile of, well of,  that sort of thing
collected, of those that had gone before.
Your wrist I grasped in my   is the inversion (instead of "I grasped your wrist")  necessary?  Perhaps.
slippered fingers,  one pictures hands in carpet slippers rather than gloved fingers here.
and pulled your blade still deeper,  suggest "drew" rather than "pulled"
to cut the bad seeds out.  Aha!  Significant, there is a purpose here, not random of sadistic torture.  Good turn.

You hung, you drew, you quartered me,  having a little trouble with "drew" - the drawing was with the four horses, wasn't it?
and left me out to dry.  an improvement on "hung" in the usual cliche (used in previous line anyway) but could be more striking - left to bleed out?
Flensed, flayed, and floundering,  nice alliteration, of course.  My detail hobgoblin insists that the whale must remain afloat to be flensed.*
acquiescing to my fate.  Another well-placed significant line.  Combined with the previous stanza's last line, one notes the victim/narrator does not take responsibility for the evil - it's seeds or fate.

Later, we walked to  this last stanza is at a higher level of allusion/delusion/symbolism.  The cutter is no longer impersonal?
the hidden market,
atop the distant hill, just for variety, could one of these "the" be "that?"
I dragged my skin behind
me, soil clinging to its pores. clogging its pores?
There, I sold it to the highest
bidder, who waltzed my
hide unshackled, away again, might this work as well or better without the inversion - "my/unshackled hide away?"  Also, though the beat is neat, perhaps the integument could be unbound rather than unshackled - chains were not mentioned previously
to distant shores. an unfortunate cliche.  Pardon the suggestion, but perhaps to more appreciative shores, or ports not yet infected with his evil.
*Or, if small enough, drawn up into the factory ship.

In moderate critique, this contains a story and progression, with effective supporting images.   The theme of being skinned alive by an acquaintance (or friend)  comes back in at the last stanza after a detour into possible (actual) cancer surgery.  To me, the interpretation is not very clear:  is the narrator selling his outward, false nature, the friendly skinner having obligingly removed it for him?  Which, in the entertainment biz, would make the scalpel-wielder a  tough critic or, more likely, his agent.

This is an engaging poem on a theme (this author) has touched on before - the pains inflicted by... art, or attraction, or just living.  This time, not so much smitten as partnered by the other character.  Better than being just smitten and left for dead:  the flenser cares.

(In the above, in moderate critique, don't take the criticism too much to heart - and especially not my idiosyncratic interpretations.  Hope some suggestions are useful.)
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Messages In This Thread
Flayed, alive. - by JamesG - 07-22-2025, 06:51 AM
RE: Flayed, alive. - by dukealien - 07-22-2025, 11:04 AM
RE: Flayed, alive. - by JamesG - 07-22-2025, 06:31 PM
RE: Flayed, alive. - by dukealien - 07-22-2025, 09:46 PM
RE: Flayed, alive. - by MrMitchieMooMoo - 07-31-2025, 01:34 PM
RE: Flayed, alive. - by JamesG - 08-03-2025, 11:23 PM
RE: Flayed, alive. - by tun - 09-11-2025, 01:45 PM



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