the duress of caress

It's a shame this isn't getting more attention, this poem is absolutely incredible. I'll give a more detailed review when I have more time.

need to be released by the gravity of my own forgiveness

Forgive less!

Slightly fleshless, i like that.

Gobs of auditory angles / strategic alliteration in your structure. There is nothing "numb" about your sentiment here. Uniquely challenging, personally. Kicked my butt, if I'm honest.

Absolutely brilliant.

It seems like alliteration is your specialty my friend.

rapture in rancor

glee in glare

These are great uses of alliteration that highlight the power of the metaphors they entail. Rapture in rancor is my personal favorite of the two; it captures that sort of quasi-masochistic relationship some people have with being angry rather expertly. This is not alliteration just for the sake of alliteration, I think there is a real reason why you chose to use it here, and it works.

Yoru metaphors, hnnnng, your metaphors are top caliber. Pupils coiling into cobras (venomous snakes: perfect metaphor for an icy gaze, also conjures the image of one's eyes turning snake-like into slits, and is also anotehr alliteration), and glacier irises are just breathtaking. The later is particularly sohpisticated since it functions expertly as a brilliant extended metaphor. "The ship of my soul" is particularly compelling, as is icy fangs (an image prefigured by the cobras, by the way).

Shattering the stony silence

is another great subtle use of alliteration, and it flows right into the next line, the woman telling the narrator

"You're just like your father.

I love the next image of the clock ticking away the sting of her words, it's far more original than saying that, say, time was the one easing this wound. It's also a great use of personification.

What follows is anotehr top caliber extended metaphor, which eases itself right into a paradox: the airplane. Not only is this metaphor novel, it's engaging. The narrator is trapped in, presumably, his own mind still roiling at his partner's insults, and what he wants is to be bound back to the real world. Interestingly, gravity here is shown as the liberator, implying that people are better off keeping touch with the real world than living inside their own heads. This fits in splendidly with the themes of forgiveness, insult, and rumination that make up the backbone of this piece. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how brilliant the metaphors in this poem are, how everything ties together in a neat little poetic bow.

The poem comes to a close with three separate apologies:

"I'm sorry"
"I'm sorry"
"I'm sorry"

We don't know who is speaking for each of these apologies, it's instead left entirely up to the reader to decide. Some more nitpicky, purist critics might complain about the ambiguity, but I love it. Is it the narrator apologizing to his partner? His partner apologizing to him anew? A flashback of his partner apologizing, with the narrator repeating the apology in his head because it's all he can think about? Or is it a dialogue, with the speaker shifting from the narrator to his partner, or vice versa? These delicious questions get the reader's gears turning on full throttle and make him/her dive back into the poem for clues, again and again. That is the mark of a good artist: making his/her audience want more even when they have finished.

There's also the point that the narrator being compared to his father serves as a really strong point of conflict in this poem, and brigngs up the question of what characteristics of his father the narrator dislikes. Maybe it's this tendency to ruminate that the two men have in common, and that is their weakness. Who knows.

I can't praise this poem enough. I absolutely love it and I am about to put it in my personal anthology. This is easily your best piece to date, and I'm looking forward to more from you. Great job friend.

This poem actually hit close to home. I'm guessing that what I read in this piece is somewhere along the road of somewhat common experience. Though that said I can't entirely figure out the emotional aspect enitrely out at all.

The first part reminded me of the Odyssey in some way. But only the part with the sirens. That's the image that came to my mind, feel free to disregard it though :)

The feeling I got from this was like an emotional numbing. Almost like the narrator is speaking about someone who they disdain/have contempt for and find some sort of odd comraderie with at the same time.

Anyway I'm not good with poem mechanics or critiquing in any way so excuse my poor attempt at feedback :^)