My husband always tell me "If you're going to write strong, write strong at the end. That's what the reader will remember." I try not to take offense at the word "If."
I love the 2nd two-thirds of your poem. They're perfect.
Strong imagery, clear purpose etc.
The first 3 1/2 lines are--to me--problematic. You have two pieces of imagery that work on their own, but when combined, muddle the scene.
Looking at dig sites before they lay the foundation for a building, it DOES look like a cauldron and that implies something is being created here. And that something is probably not good, what with it being all witchy and whatnot, which works with your theme...But then you add in machines resembling dinosoars and that sense is lost. I'm kind of stuck on the word machines, but i can't think of anything better. Unless it's replaced with a specific piece of equipment like a back hoe (which does resemble a cubist-ish sculpture of a brontosaurus). So maybe it's just the second sentence that I'm stuck on, and maybe it's just me. But I think a very slight rewording would make the image stronger and work better with the rest of your poem.
Overall a great piece of imagery, and a sweet simple poem. I had only 2 issues.
The first is the word "hide." Calling a human's skin a hide just grosses me out. It seems like something a serial killer would say. It's detached and morbid.
The second is "the final last bit." It's redundant and either final or last can be removed.
The repitition of eyes in the 2nd and 3rd lines is iffy, but that's your call.
And I just noticed in the description you spelled "speech" incorrectly.
But again, beautiful imagery with a few very minor changes.
When trying to maintain a certain rhythm and rhyme scheme it's easy to fall into certain traps. In this case, your poem is full of what I have termed "Yoda-speak." When you reverse the subject-object and subject-action for the sole purpose of creating a rhyme it breaks the flow of your words. Ostensibly doing the opposite of what you want.
There were also a few lines that were confusing. "He is a barn of black mares." "His tears become a lake, yet his sobbing drowns not sighs," "no mending could solve." These are just worded awkwardly and didn't make a lot of sense to me.
Halfway through you mentioned his mask was a crown and then you refered to his people. Is he a king of some sort? This isn't clear.
All-in-all I found the poem muddled. Your theme may work better if you tried writing without the rhyme scheme, where your wording would be free from those constraints. I get the overall feeling and what you were going for, the writing itself just didn't work for me.
It is soooo tempting to leave a gushy huggy review for this! But I've had too much coffee to be cruel.
I just wanted to let you know I agree with all of these sentiments. After becoming involved with the local poetry society, my husband and I started our own writing group. We meet bi-weekly to read and review eachother's work. Some of the poetry I write is about our marriage or about my husband and would make the meeting unbearably awkward and embarrass us all. So I'll put the poem on here, looking for feedback on how to improve it. I'll get gushers about how strong or powerful the poem is with no actual critique. Usually I just take down the poem and hope if I repost another time I'll catch a reviewer who will tear it apart so I have something to rebuild.
I recommend finding a reviewer (or reviewers) you like and asking them to review specific items. Send them extra GPS for their work, and in turn, review their items as well.
This is certainly a poem we can all relate to. Poems about break-ups can very easily lean towards melodrama but you kept it simple and honest and it's much more powerful that way.
I had a couple of very small issues.
First, in the last line of the first stanza "halting to a stop." Halt means to stop, so one does not halt to a stop, or stop to a halt. I see you're looking for a way to show that it was a sudden end and not use use something cliche like "screeched to a halt," but maybe that line can be re-worded.
And second, the repetition of the word "bruise." it's in the 5th line of the first stanza and again in the last line of the second stanza. I think it is much stronger the first time, and maybe another word can be used the second?
I grew up in on the coast of Maine where there are a number of decommissioned lighthouses and it always made me a little sad. Most are now tourist attractions; a huge step down from their former importance, no? So I love the them of this poem, there are some minor grammatical errors: The first word in the third line should be "its" with no apostrophe, I would remove the comma after "covets" as well as the comma after "clouds." I like the line "It stands to kiss the stars" but I think the following line "It longs to hug the clouds" weakens it. The lighthouse doesn't actually long to hug the clouds, as your following lines show. The lighthouse is longing for a purpose. So that one line muddles the true meaning of your poem.
A few small tweaks and this will be an excellent poem, and I look forward to reading your other work!
-Tarabites
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