Goldfish Tooth

The sterile grey lit room has no décor,

His face is symbiotic with the floor,

All grey, that’s barrenness has overgrown

The stranded isle our hero knows alone.

 

An onlooker may sense that he would weep

But no emotion is allowed a creep,

His eyes are cold and twitching, void of glee

Yet disciplined to withhold agony.

 

The plastic clock is ticking overhead,

A fly is buzzing then it drops down dead.

Coincidentally the clock then fails

And fireworks proclaim the time it hails.

 

The festival’s reflected in his eyes

That almost seem to shed their grey disguise

To be ignited by the redding flames

Of company and its forgotten games.

 

He waxes now nostalgic in the gloom

Reconjuring a maiden in full bloom-

Hair black as night, eyes blue as ice,

Voice soft as silk, mouth hot as spice.

 

Her treacheries are planted in his back,

A blade that’s unremoved since the attack

For even this remembers her to he

And he’ll not cherry pick her memory.

 

His manakin smooth face cracks then a sneer,

The closest to a smile he’s had all year,

Full devilish in bearing all his teeth

Then leaning forward reaches underneath

 

The bed, withdrawing from the drawer a gun

And gazing thereupon has now begun

To bleed into his pallid cheeks some rage

That hatches ready for his final stage.

 

He’s laid to rest his only chance for joy,

Steadfast to die a man and not a boy

He focuses his long aslumber ire,

Unleashing his revengeful dark desire-

 

A world so callous and unjust, so fake,

So filled with hypocrites, deserves to break.

Illusions both are sanctity and sin,

Veraciously salvation lies within

 

But not without what he has been denied

And then reminded every time he tried.

A soul bankrupted of illusions dies

And hopelessness has never harboured lies.

 

The feeble of the Earth are most disdained,

Debased, pathetic, worthless, and ashamed,

Yet cruelly all pretend their sympathy

Admiring still the strong in secrecy.

 

If evildoing’s factored in the facts

More glorious become the awesome acts

That captivate the hearts of fickle mobs

Who then compete to dramatize their sobs.

 

‘Goodbye cruel world, I’ll join you in the last.’

Deciding thus he exits left and fast,

Emerging into streets adrift in snow

That beautifies what all outsiders know.

 

Dull architectural erections where

Blue televisions noise pollute the air

Are his surroundings, adverts by the bus

Defaced by idleness or anger’s fuss

 

Smile toothily and truly are the same

As pamphlets bearing Christ or Yahweh’s name,

The righteous and ambitious samewise lie

And trampled by disdain their visions die.

 

All passers-by are ants who bustle round,

In hating them he finds himself profound;

The unique snowflakes fall upon the street

And crush together underneath his feet.

 

His wasted life’s abandoned now

And wiping dry his furrowed brow

He reaches in his coat and snatches

Out the gun and from it hatches

Eager lustful bullets shrieking

Into soft decaying matter reeking

Havoc in internal organs gushing

Blood amid the screaming people rushing

From the God of death and glory

Climaxing in this tragic story.

 

*

 

Once empty was the weapon as the street

He knew that he would never be complete

Until his body joined his broken heart

And he regretted what he’d torn apart.

 

Thereafter was the barrel on his tongue,

A bullet chased away a brain too young,

Too spent to apprehend how time unfolds

And that the broken might outgrow their moulds.

 

So lying on their backs afloat in slush

(The snow was melted in the great stampede)

Lie three unknowns who in an awestruck hush

Gaze equal up for you and all to read.

 

Perhaps a dreamless sleep awaits us all

But I’d not be surprised if we recall

The transcendental to this worldly plane

And maybe she possesses him again.

Reviews

[JayG]

In your work you’re focusing on rhyming, as if that’s the purpose of the poem. But the rhyme is no more than an embellishment to the thought being expressed, an accent that provides the same kind of beat that prosody does. we should never bend the line to the needs of the rhyme. But it too often seems that’s what you’re doing.

Look at this, not as the author, who has both intent and context, but as a reader who just arrived, and who has only the context you provide, plus, the meaning the words suggest, based on their life, not your intent.

• The sterile grey lit room has no décor, His face is symbiotic with the floor,

Dim I understand. Gray walled room I would understand. But I’ve yet to see a grey light. And since your intent for the meaning didn’t make it to the page…

“His face?” You refer to an unknown “he,” and never clarify. So whay would there be a reaction other then, “Uh-huh?” Someone unknown is talking about someone not introduced.

“Symbiotic with the floor?” Seriously? Have you, in your entire life, met someone whose face has a symbiotic relationship with anything but their body? You may have intent for the meaning, but intent doesn’t reach the reader. It appears that you needed a rhyme for décor, and chose floor, then dug up a way to include it.

• The bed, withdrawing from the drawer a gun

Here, to maintain the rhyme you’re reduced to yoda-talk. Worse yet, you have the bed pulling a gun.

My point? Tell the story, clearly. Make the rhymes seem almost accidental—the perfect word to complete the thought, not the purpose of it.

Minor points:

Rhymed couplets can sometimes give a rocking-horse feel, especially with an AABB stanza structure. Add in a rigid 5 feet per line construction, and your attention to prosody may work against you, as does continuous angst, poem-to-poem. Remember, the reader cares not at all how the poet feels. It’s what the poem moves in them that matters. We, and everything about us become irrelevant the moment we release our work.

I certainly can’t speak for anyone but myself, but finding yet another Dismal Damsel, or Murderous Marvin poem, given how many the site has uploaded each day, is not all that exciting. I’m beginning to suspect that happy people don’t, as a rule, write poetry.

You’ve mastered the technical aspects of poetry, so you might want to focus on ways that can better induce emotion in the reader’s mind. The Shmoop site’s poetry section can be a big help, because they analyze lots of successful poems in depth.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[Ocean Doubtfire]

Many thanks, this is a rather old poem that I dug out recently, probably could use a rewrite. I will go over it with this in mind.