Spirals

[meadzbabyy]

I kept running up
or was I falling through?
The stairs turned to vapor,
yet the chasm never grew.

I buried my joy
in a well that breathed dust.
It coughed once at midnight,
then sealed itself shut.

I’m tethered to sky,
yet stitched through the floor—
the clouds feed me silence,
and the dirt wanted more.

I swam through mirrors,
each ripple a wound.
I drowned in the silver
yet wasn’t consumed.

I never asked for a crown,
but it bloomed from my skin.
Thorns curled like questions
and anointed me within.

I was meant to be motion,
but they pinned me with names.
Hung words on my shoulders
and called them my shame.

I long to be adjective
a color, a phase.
But I live as a noun,
stagnant beneath days.

They dressed me in gold,
then laughed in brown.
As if rust was a joke
and not a burial gown

What is a spiral,
but a mere circle breaking down?

[brynmawr1]

I kept running up
or was I falling through?
The stairs turned to vapor,
yet the chasm never grew.

I buried my joy
in a well that breathed dust.
It coughed once at midnight,
then sealed itself shut.

I’m tethered to sky,
yet stitched through the floor—
the clouds feed me silence,
and the dirt wanted more.   yet or but

I swam through mirrors,
each ripple a wound.
I drowned in the silver
yet wasn’t consumed.

I never asked for a crown,
but it bloomed from my skin.
Thorns curled like questions
and anointed me within.    very biblical allusions, but not sure how it ties in. 'I became anointed within'

I was meant to be motion,
but they pinned me with names.
Hung words on my shoulders
and called them my shame.    then

I long to be adjective
a color, a phase.    phrase? but then all are different things, then the narrator comes back to grammar.  maybe keep it intellectually consistent.
But I live as a noun,
stagnant beneath days.   good slant rhyme

They dressed me in gold,
then laughed in brown.
As if rust was a joke
and not a burial gown   one of my favorite stanzas,  it's really good IMO.

What is a spiral,
but a mere circle breaking down?  Sorry, but this ending is meaningless to me.  could say 'but a broken circle'  fewer words.

There is some good imagery here and some of the stanzas really stand out.  But the poem reads like a riddle I have no chance to solve.  Just one person's opinion.
take care,
bryn

[RiverNotch]

I kept running up
or was I falling through?
The stairs turned to vapor,
yet the chasm never grew.

First stanza: trying to achieve something but always nothing happens. The image is nice, but the problem is how sharp its metrical difference is from the rest of the poem. The rest of the poem seems to be iambic trimeter, or at least accentual verse of three stresses each, but lines two and four have extra stresse. My suggestion:

I kept running up---
I kept falling through.
The stairs turned to vapor
yet the hole never grew.


I buried my joy
in a well that breathed dust.
It coughed once at midnight,
then sealed itself shut.

Second stanza establishes the meter better than the first. These lines seem very familiar to me, but I can't quite pinpoint from which pop songs I've heard "I buried my joy" or "It coughed once at midnight". Is this familiarity good? Does it make the stanza cliche? I don't know.


I’m tethered to sky,
yet stitched through the floor—
the clouds feed me silence,
and the dirt wanted more.

The third stanza, the specific way by which things are put feels less uncannily familiar to me, but the choice of imagery---a person divided between Ouranos and Gaia---is definitely cliche. Cliche isn't always a bad thing, of course, but for a piece with as conventional a style as this....Smaller revisions suggested:

I'm tied to the sky
yet stitched to the floor.
The clouds feed me silence---
the dirt hungers more.


I swam through mirrors,
each ripple a wound.
I drowned in the silver
yet wasn’t consumed.

Why the past tense? I suppose this refers to an event in the speaker's past, one that led to their present, but because both the past event and the present state are so cloaked in metaphor, and because neither metaphor directly connects with each other, it just reads as obscure. Also obscure is that last line, which even in the present tense means the same---"yet am not consumed"---and yet, clearly, the emotional state of the speaker as that they are, in fact, consumed.


I never asked for a crown,
but it bloomed from my skin.
Thorns curled like questions
and anointed me within.

The "strangeness" of the poem gets exhausting at precisely line two of this stanza, when just one too many mixed metaphors comes up: "silver" and "crown" connect, but not quite a metal tiara and "bloom", much less such things erupting "from my skin". Then there's line three---to curl like questions means absolutely nothing---and line four, as "anointing" isn't some abstract action related to a crown, but is literally putting oil or fragrance on something, hence "You anoint mine head with oil". Also, the meter of the first and last lines are again wrong: without changing the images,

I asked for no crown
but it bloomed from my skin.
Thorns curled like questions
and pierced me within.


I was meant to be motion,
but they pinned me with names.
Hung words on my shoulders
and called them my shame.

Same problems as the last stanza, though there's a chance at redemption starting from line two, as that line onwards reads like a gesture to what the speaker is actually experiencing. Suggestions:

I meant to be moving
but they pinned me with names,
hanging words on my neck
that they called my shame.


I long to be adjective
a color, a phase.
But I live as a noun,
stagnant beneath days.

Lucid, though "stagnant beneath days" again means nothing, and the overall metaphor is tough enough to regularize with the rest of the poem's meter that, while the error is obvious---line one is too long, line two too short---I can't make a correction right now.


They dressed me in gold,
then laughed in brown.
As if rust was a joke
and not a burial gown.

The poem could have ended in the previous stanza, as this one is absolutely dreadful. There's another meaningless line here---"laughed in brown"---made to read worse by how the next two lines derive their meaning from it, a meaning that, with "burial shroud" (burial gown is unidiomatic) is also terribly common, terribly cliche.


What is a spiral,
but a mere circle breaking down?

Literally none of the poem relates to the image of "spirals" except for how that word is proverbially or idiomatically used to describe mental breakdowns. An extra two lines that should be entirely excised, plus the title too should probably be changed.


Meter, or coming close to meter, is a start, and there are a few moments of pleasurable familiarity or clarity throughout, but for this to be leaps and bounds better, I'd suggest a thorough distillation, reducing it to just two or three stanzas.

[meadzbabyy]

I kept running up
or was I falling through?
The stairs turned to vapor,
yet the chasm never grew.

First stanza: trying to achieve something but always nothing happens. The image is nice, but the problem is how sharp its metrical difference is from the rest of the poem. The rest of the poem seems to be iambic trimeter, or at least accentual verse of three stresses each, but lines two and four have extra stresse. My suggestion:

I kept running up---
I kept falling through.
The stairs turned to vapor
yet the hole never grew.


I buried my joy
in a well that breathed dust.
It coughed once at midnight,
then sealed itself shut.

Second stanza establishes the meter better than the first. These lines seem very familiar to me, but I can't quite pinpoint from which pop songs I've heard "I buried my joy" or "It coughed once at midnight". Is this familiarity good? Does it make the stanza cliche? I don't know.


I’m tethered to sky,
yet stitched through the floor—
the clouds feed me silence,
and the dirt wanted more.

The third stanza, the specific way by which things are put feels less uncannily familiar to me, but the choice of imagery---a person divided between Ouranos and Gaia---is definitely cliche. Cliche isn't always a bad thing, of course, but for a piece with as conventional a style as this....Smaller revisions suggested:

I'm tied to the sky
yet stitched to the floor.
The clouds feed me silence---
the dirt hungers more.


I swam through mirrors,
each ripple a wound.
I drowned in the silver
yet wasn’t consumed.

Why the past tense? I suppose this refers to an event in the speaker's past, one that led to their present, but because both the past event and the present state are so cloaked in metaphor, and because neither metaphor directly connects with each other, it just reads as obscure. Also obscure is that last line, which even in the present tense means the same---"yet am not consumed"---and yet, clearly, the emotional state of the speaker as that they are, in fact, consumed.


I never asked for a crown,
but it bloomed from my skin.
Thorns curled like questions
and anointed me within.

The "strangeness" of the poem gets exhausting at precisely line two of this stanza, when just one too many mixed metaphors comes up: "silver" and "crown" connect, but not quite a metal tiara and "bloom", much less such things erupting "from my skin". Then there's line three---to curl like questions means absolutely nothing---and line four, as "anointing" isn't some abstract action related to a crown, but is literally putting oil or fragrance on something, hence "You anoint mine head with oil". Also, the meter of the first and last lines are again wrong: without changing the images,

I asked for no crown
but it bloomed from my skin.
Thorns curled like questions
and pierced me within.


I was meant to be motion,
but they pinned me with names.
Hung words on my shoulders
and called them my shame.

Same problems as the last stanza, though there's a chance at redemption starting from line two, as that line onwards reads like a gesture to what the speaker is actually experiencing. Suggestions:

I meant to be moving
but they pinned me with names,
hanging words on my neck
that they called my shame.


I long to be adjective
a color, a phase.
But I live as a noun,
stagnant beneath days.

Lucid, though "stagnant beneath days" again means nothing, and the overall metaphor is tough enough to regularize with the rest of the poem's meter that, while the error is obvious---line one is too long, line two too short---I can't make a correction right now.


They dressed me in gold,
then laughed in brown.
As if rust was a joke
and not a burial gown.

The poem could have ended in the previous stanza, as this one is absolutely dreadful. There's another meaningless line here---"laughed in brown"---made to read worse by how the next two lines derive their meaning from it, a meaning that, with "burial shroud" (burial gown is unidiomatic) is also terribly common, terribly cliche.


What is a spiral,
but a mere circle breaking down?

Literally none of the poem relates to the image of "spirals" except for how that word is proverbially or idiomatically used to describe mental breakdowns. An extra two lines that should be entirely excised, plus the title too should probably be changed.


Meter, or coming close to meter, is a start, and there are a few moments of pleasurable familiarity or clarity throughout, but for this to be leaps and bounds better, I'd suggest a thorough distillation, reducing it to just two or three stanzas.

THANK YOU so much for this. Feedback such as this has really helped to expand the current poetry I'm writing. I often struggle with being concise, so I will definitely take that into account. I am aware I often veer into "nothing metaphors" where my own dream logic takes away from other readers' ability to enjoy the poem. The past tense in this poem was a grammatical error by yours truly. Hopefully you give my future work a chance like you did this one