Source
r/OCPoetry•
bobbness

To melt one's own

Feedback Received!

To melt one's own

To take a melatonin pill and tic
my metronome to life - that's all I want,
so I may tune into some mellow tone,
lie on my lodestone mattress, and allow
my bones to turn in perfect time with Earth,

led by her iron core and molten seas
that warp and reach, then heave to breach and wrap
black hands of steaming glass around my feet
to ragdoll-drag me off my sheets, through yards,
to briars, reeds, and willow trees, where a stream

will be my Will-o-wisp and bear my flesh
to somewhere deep and damp, but cold enough
to keep it whole for one millennium,
or two, until I choose to leave my tomb,
unswallow sleep, and reap the sun again.

  1. https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/61bc1d/her/

  2. https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/61ashc/thump/

(I love run-on sentences)

Note: a 'lodestone' is a kind of naturally magnetic rock, historically used as compass

Posted Mar 24, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC · edited

213
dogtim•

This is ace. The word choice and imagery is what I want to do with everything I write and I'm jealous. I like the rhymes in the middle of stanzas, and I think there could be a few more. The poem feels dense when I read it aloud, which works with the imagery of molten earth, of millenia of passing time.

2
bobbnessOP•

I wrote this all in one day, so I didn't really get a chance to step back and come at it fresh on my own, and I'm really glad you like the way it turned out!

I do try to keep my poems dense and use mostly internal rhymes. Thanks for noticing!

Also I was a little worried that I stuffed too much into this one run-on sentence (shooting between personal and global scales/images) but I feel like it works with the sort of stream-of-consciousness theme.

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

1
Seanctk10001•

This is amazing, honestly. It took me a a few turns through to find its meter, but once I did I really found your choice of movement from word to word and line to line and stanza to stanza to be incredibly interesting and dynamic. Great job, my friend. :)

2
bobbnessOP•

Yeah I'm a fan of blank verse because it helps give me some structure while writing without being too in-your-face for the reader. I feel like critiques about meter are uncommon on this sub, so thanks for noticing and taking the time to comment on it!

1
Vegardina•

I'm living for the imagery and the playfulness you seem to possess when it comes to words. It's very dense, which is perfect for the images you conjured up, and if anything, I feel it should be even longer. From the very strong first line, up to the very end; it's pretty ducking great.

2
bobbnessOP•

Very kind words :) thanks!

1
CaLaHa717•

This is incredible. I love the rhymes and the run-on sentence. The amount of imagery packed into such a small poem is also amazing. I honestly wouldn't change anything about it.

1
bobbnessOP•

Thanks :)

1
CaLaHa717•

Can I ask what your creative process is? Do you tend to just sit down and write whatever comes to mind? Or do you carefully plan what you'll write before putting pen to paper? I'm really interested in knowing how you came up with this.

1
bobbnessOP•

It's always a little different. The usual pattern is something like this:

I'll start with a few words that sound nice together, sit down with a notebook, and start jotting down fragments that have some sort of attachment to the first word/phrase and/or each other - rhyme, color, texture, etc. The key is to just keep writing. (I study environmental science, so I end up with a lot of nature-y stuff). Those initial jottings tend to be free verse, then I rearrange into something generally iambic as I revise.

I tend to have an idea for a theme early on, but I always stay open to ones that emerge. Learning how to let a poem write itself is very helpful. I often find ideas for new poems while writing, and use online dictionaries/thesauruses and Wikipedia to find the right* word(s) for what I'm trying to say.

*right by definition, double meanings, connotations, syllables, stresses, etc.

When something comes up or I lose my flow, I put it away until next time.

For this piece, the first stanza was written as above, but the rest was more carefully put down line by line with little revision, and I wrote it all in one day.

As a New Years resolution, I've been writing a poem every week, and that has helped me stay motivated to post whether or not I think it's perfect. Also this one began by picking a few phrases from a "poetry junkyard" note on my phone where I've recently started keeping "poetic" phrases/words I see, hear, or come up with in passing - I strongly recommend this.

1
sepulchralsam•

I enjoy the melatonin motif, especially in the "unswallowing".

1
bobbnessOP•

Thank you!

1
CaLaHa717•

Whoa, I just caught that! This really is a masterpiece.

1