the libertine's suicide note

[heslopian]

flowers can be beautiful when you don't believe in god.
stripped of intelligent design, trees & sky
compel the eye like dumb adonises,
wandering with perfect limbs, exquisite genitalia,
through the back garden. i have drunk from all these founts,
trees & sky & sex, worn roses as spec-
tacles. studied grecian art & loved
a thousand football teams. been caesar both in love & hate,
betrayed by everyone, but death. when you don't believe in god
flowers can be beautiful, though after sampling each shade,
every tree & sky, & the latter still emits no divinity,
then is the time to leave beauty, & study eternity.

[billy]

why the ampersands?
i want to re write it and i don't.

love the first line. like the idea that a libertine would want to see what eternity was
because they'd tried everything else. after a few reads, what doesn't work for me are the &'s and the caps.
if you use grammar i think you should use it properly (of course that.s just me, but if you use a period why not use a cap after it, what's the reason behind such a thing?
other than that, i like it a lot. jmo

thanks for the read.

[addy]

Wow. That first line already has so much charisma, and from then on it's gold "wandering with perfect limbs, exquisite genitalia, through the back garden" was genius, I swear . I, too, had reservations about the ampersand, but enjoyed imagining why the libertine narrator would prefer them (maybe he just likes writing the little curls?). My main nit was "football teams", which dropped me out of the mood a little bit... maybe "gladiators"? Just a thought though; there's really not much wrong as it is.

[heslopian]

Thanks for the feedback, Bilbo and Addy I used ampersands simply because I like how they look. The informality mixed with classical terms like "Grecian art" and "Adonises" amuses me. I like the rawness of it. I still used commas and full stops in order to indicate pauses. It was about stripping the grammar down to its most basic elements, using only what I felt was absolutely necessary. If it's a problem I'll think about changing it.
As for the football teams, that was inspired by a story I heard about the American actor Rock Hudson, in which he supposedly shagged an entire football team I guess I must have forgotten the tangent I'd intended as I was writing. I'll see if I can replace it with something more suited to the other imagery. Thanks again guys

[Jack of Hearts]

Hey, alright man! This seems to be about how perceiving the world without intelligent design is more prone to reveal its beauty- it also talks about how the narrator does this. That's a pretty good statement that this reader can get behind. Not really sure what a 'libertine' is, but being both 'the caesar of love and hate' is a striking line. The single nitpick to offer is the use of the word 'founts'- seems a little old hat for a poem who's subject matter is the world sans god (a relatively new idea in human history).






J

[grannyjill]

I thought the ampersands were a bit distracting, not enough to do any damage though.

I have only one quibble and it may be you did this deliberately to make us pause....

trees & sky & sex, worn roses as spec-
tacles. studied grecian art & loved

no problem with enjambment (I thought it clever and I like the echoing rhyme it achieved) no, my reading of 'worn roses' was the problem.....I read it as 'worn' as in 'second-hand/threadbare' as it seemed part of the previous listed things - so got a hiccup when it turned out to be 'worn' as in past tense of 'wear'...or were you being super-duper and getting both meanings in one?

On further reading I wonder if the order of the first lines need some attention...the trees bit interrupts the continuation of the flowers
'wandering'....(not sure of this word, too...as flowers are stationary)...I wonder if 'flowing' would be better, since viewed on a windy day flowers do appear to ripple?

[heslopian]

Thank you both for your feedback and kind words