Category: Writers Block
I'm sorry about the misspellings and grammar, but I don't have office on this laptop to fix it, so we'll pretend I spelled everything right and used correct punctuation.
Shifting Sands
12-3-09
I am laying in the golden arms of sunkissed sand on a foreign beach. Sultry rays spill down from an endlessly empty blue sky, and I am alone here. The cool blue-gray salt sting of the ocean laps teasing tongues around my toes and receeds again. There is no sound but gentle white noise.
The smothering blanket of heat lies heavy on my face, heavy on my chest where a frantic heart races. I clench my fists in silent anguish, squeezing broken shell and brown reeds between my fingers. My back is warm and damp, coated with a sticky layer of sand and I feel like I could fall off the edge of the world. In my mind everything is spinning, everything is loose and tumbeling into a whirl of blinding color. There are sounds and touches and sensations of tripping feet and flailing limbs. And while my lifeless eyes stare up at that unbroken mask of calm blue, everything else is serene.
I am like a common gravel rock nestled in a bed of scarlet velvet. Amber hair spills down over sallow shoulders while a stick figure sinks slowly into the sand. Massive dunes rise high into the air and there is no hint of green anywhere.
I am a dull quartz set beside a gleaming drop of diamond ice. In my mind there is winter song and summer art, there is brilliant innocence and fresh joy wrapped snug around her bright jewel. And the quartz is in the attic, someone left it forgotten in an old pine trunk. there are shadows there.
All around is wet cloying heat, and I am unable to catch my sobbing breath. I can not raise myself from the shoreline for once I do; my head will spin into oblivion. And there is no plain waiting to lift me home, I am lost here, unsure how it came to be and ever fearful.
Sticky now, a film of sweat dampens my hair. I shall fall to sleep here where the waves meet the land, here where the sand is golden and the water drops are sapphire. It will be, a welcome sleep.
You have some nice assonance and alliteration in some of these lines. I also like the metaphors here, and how you snuck in some almost unnoticeable personification.
Imagery is nice in a poem sometimes, but I think you overstuffed this poem with it.
I wouldn't call this a poem, more a 1-shot thing. it's meant, at least for the most part, to be taken as someone lying on a beach. sometimes sand is just sand and the ocean is just an ocean.
GOod stuff. I agree with excentricity overall, but I also liked the excess of description. The stuff about the jewel in the attic threw me off a bit, but that might just be me. Try limiting linking two ideas in one sentense. Sometimes it works, other times both ideas serve you better as single (and sometimes short) sentenses. Shorter sentenses give specific ideas more punch. The languid dreamy quality of this piece does lend itself rather well to longer sentenses as you have now, so I think it's your choice. Either way it's a vivid and imaginative piece.
Sorry about the disjointed and brisk manner in which this post was written. I said everything nicer before, but I messed up when sending it and don't have enough time right now to rewrite everything. Good job.
Guardian