(01-09-2013, 01:39 PM)Arriedo Wrote: untouchable but able to be spoken to perhaps "conversable" in place of the "able...to" phrase (but out of character, but not the inner character)
teasingly stroking me without laying a hand on me "stroking" as in praising. Perhaps a better phrase or word for the cliche "laying a hand"
how to handle it
love? lust?
or just infatuation.... makes the important distinction between lust and infatuation: lust is real, infatuation is self-deception. And love?
(inserting a break here - no need for punctuation. Unless narrator wants to suggest a connection between own feelings and what "the boys" think. Which would be OK, but the style changes, too.)
around the boys i claim its fabrication
throw that 5 up claim the mac for every flag and nation
tell em my hearts crap its kind of useless
but if you slow the bar down you'll see i really said substantial modern slang in these four lines - I needed a native guide! See below
my heart's crap it's kind of used less
it's a confused mess interesting use of translation (which was needed earlier in this strophe!)
i think about her and the heart breaks as if it would be too personal to say "my" - good
but she's the method to my madness quoting Polonius about Hamlet's false madness, which was also real, and about a woman... partly
the reason for me breathing again resisting "my" as if about someone else, or a generalized person
the love i'll never have again these last two lines form an interesting duo: loss --
even though i never had her once..... but loss of a fantasy, a visible but imagined relationship.
First off, the poem divides more or less equally into three parts (supported by the final strophe ending with ellipsis as after "infatuation."
Tentatively identifying the narrator as male, though who knows these days? Maybe girls hang out with guys and make claims now. On other girls, yeah.
The first four lines after the first ellipsis (starting at "around the boys") are thick (or rich, if you will) with contemporary slang/argot/cant: "throw up 5" for appearing to be an accomplished fashionable/trendy/lover-pimp, "claim the mac" much the same, "slow the bar down" for putting a drag-finger on the spinning record or just reducing the speed of repartee. I'm an old fudd, so I had to look them up. Their significance is not in themselves, or what they mean, but that the narrator only uses them when he's talking with/about "the boys." Elsewhere, though punctuation is absent, the vocabulary is conventional - even ("fabrication") educated.
Taken as a whole, this is a confession, not so much of love but of emptiness so severe its only recourse/compensation is fantasy. Fantasy about a real woman the narrator only claims, but ("method of my madness") uses to maintain his status. He is honest only when confessing to the only person he can talk to... himself.
How can this poem be improved? Oddly enough, the title is wrong. The narrator doesn't feel pain (or anything else), he's too separated from real life (and real love). Maybe a bread crumb also to Hamlet - "Not to Be" perhaps. You can do better.
The style is recognizable and consistent: phone text, where capitalization and shifting to punctuation (other than periods - ellipsis is easy) is a chore and breaks up the flow. I'd suggest that, though "i" for "I" emphasizes the narrator's insecurity, a dang phone will always change it to "I" if you leave an "i" in your text and it's a battle to make it stay lower-case. A battle you often lose just as you hit "Send." Not sure I'd suggest you change this, just a thought.
Aside from that and the suggested line break, I haven't got much. It really does express anomie, and the hep-cat (dating myself!) jargon rolled out only when talking about "the boys" is effective. It's also hard to figure out from context (I gave up and duckducked it) if it's not the reader's culture.
Sorry I don't have more for intensive. Just take the above interpretation for what it's worth, and consider changes to make me understand what you *really* meant!
