Sta.sh
BLOOD SKY DANCE
Hair,
Like threads of fate,
Tendrils of a black mist,
Dark against a cloud-grey sky,
Held on the fine currents of a
Vagabond wind.
It flows
Free,
Whips back,
Caught on fickle updrafts:
An ebony frame
For a soft
Pale canvas –
A Picture of Calm –
The focus:
Cold
Granite
Eyes.
Mirrors.
A picture
In a picture,
Watching specks descend from
Higher skies,
Wings unfolding:
CLACK
CLACK
CLACK!
Parabolas,
Arcs and chords,
Lines drafted across the clouds
Like tactical diagrams.
Reflected
And
Observed.
Muscles tense.
They shift beneath
Obsidian plates,
Matching breath
And poise.
He raises his arm.
The blade glimmers
In Silver light,
Rays like rain.
Then he steps forward
And
D
r
o
p
s
.
Black lines rushing
Upwards;
Turrets,
Balconies,
Buttresses:
A tangle of
Construction
Work In Progress
And
Aban-
-doned.
He falls
Through
Sky
Courtyards,
Past towers,
Between
Scaffold and
Crumbling
Spire.
The Chateau’s embrace, endlessly reaching out to him,
To save him from the City
Below.
The he flexes
His shoulders,
Feels the length of bone and feather,
Stretching out, filling the span – dragging the air.
He makes his own
Arc
And rides it out
From the shadow
Of the Chateau.
Towers
Bar
His
Exit -
The
City
Pierces
The
Sky
And a thousand
Black-haired
Angels
Leap
From their
Umbral retreats,
Blade
And Spear
And Wing.
A smile stretches
Across that pale canvas
As the
Enemy
Draws near:
The First Wave.
He raises his sword,
As if to swat them,
Then dodges
Backward
Sucking them up
In his
Wake,
Drawing them into the
Labyrinth of
Ruined stairways,
Collonades,
Watchtowers and
Gangways.
Each stone becomes a
Platform,
Each wall,
Defence and
Weapon.
He leaps between them,
Rebounding,
Spinning,
Gliding to the rhythm
Of the clashing
Steel,
Bursting flesh,
Gushing vessels.
He is a tornado of blood
And feathers, armour
And blade, pale
Skin and long,
Fine, black
Hair,
All in motion,
All graceful violence.
Molten
Granite
Eyes,
Avalanche
White
Smile,
Mist
Tendrils,
Threads of Fate,
Steel Edge-
In the shadow of the Chateau a girl knees by a grave. Hot rain falls on her shoulders and she looks up
And weeps.
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Ok, next: I'll get this out of the way--i don't really like the subject matter of the poem. Maybe because i have don't really like fantasy, maybe because i think it is intensely hard to have anything angelic in writing without being cliche, maybe because I don't like writing about fighting--not because I'm a pacifist or anything, justr because it gets repetitive, and is usually found in fantasy writing >_>, whatever it is, I just don't particularly enjoy this vein.
That being said, I think, poetically, this is very good. The first critic there, i believe, took the approach to critiquing that Penny Arcade poked fun at in one of their comics--"You know what suck about this cupcake? It isn't a brownie." They are criticizing the poem not for what it is, but what they want it to be. And May I add here, I believe the "cold" is necessary in "cold granit eyes", and, later, you use the same subject but change the adjective--to erase "cold" and "molten" would be to destroy the difference between the two, which you are obviously going for.
Furthermore, I agree with you that the imagery should not be explored more--the only-surface approach leaves much to the readers imagination, and more exploration, i think, would bog down the poem.
Next, I also explicitly disagree with "all in motion, all graceful motion"--this change from preposition to sentence fragment is striking, and adding the "in" seems repetitive. Grammar is not necessary in poetry, as long as it makes sense.
Also, before I even read anything, I really like the last three lines. I interpreted it as a fitting ending to a poem that seems to celebrate violence--this girl weeping in front of a grave. These people had lives. And how is "She weeps" telling, not showing? We don't have an explanation for why she is weeping, or anything like that--we are left to our own thoughts.
almost done: I think the effect you did with "Drops" seems...cheap. A little to literal with the formatting.
Ok, well, theres my two cents. Or five dollars...
a note to ~Negated: I may sound belligerent in this, but i really don't try to.
Thanks for your opinions. I've been thinking about the eyes bits, and I concluded that although it's fairly obvious that granite should be cold, it the sound of the word cold i really wanted there, so I'm going to keep it, although I had toyed with granite eyes and the beginning and molten eyes at the end to keep the contrast.
About the subject matter, not a defense but an explanation: It's all really KHII's fault. I wanted to capture in writing the beauty of that kind of action, and it's taken me ages to really give it a good attempt. it had to be in Darksyde because it's my base for all the things I want to do stylistically as well as a place where things I say can mean something (although they don't always have to). In it I have the taraphim, which are my army of black angels and this is because, whether it's cliché or not, I am fascinated by the angel concept, but as a believer in something connected, do enjoy subverting the popular culture version. Tie it all together and I have this word painting I wanted to write and this is the best attempt so far...
I dunno where I stand with the weeps bit. I actually like negated's idea of cutting it out, but instead of adding something else just ending on '-' I'll see when i get to it.
Anyway, it's nice to see a bit of debate about a piece I've written, it helps delude me that it me might be important, lol. Also having a few people offer their opinions both tells me where I have gone wrong and also helps reinforce my own opinions about the piece (even if they might still be wrong, lol), so thanks again.
Don't worry, I'm not one of the faboys who writes endless pages of dreadful fanfiction like so many other DA addicts.
And, speaking as a formal poet to a free one, THIS IS WHAT METRE IS FOR! You can use it to emphasise words without introducing random capitals and line breaks!
Cold
Granite
Eyes. Cut the cold. 'granite' does the job itself; use a different word there if the size of the stanza is imperative. ie: granite / eyes / erroded.
Mirrors.
A picture
In a picture,
Watching specks descend from
Higher skies,
Wings unfolding:
CLACK
CLACK
CLACK!
go into the bird imagery more! the sounds are right, but we have nothing else--what is this picture like, are the specks the birds in the big picture or the picture in the picture? etc.
Parabolas,
Arcs and chords,
Lines drafted across the clouds
Like tactical diagrams. mm. I like this. alot, actually.
Then he steps forward
And
D
r
o
p
s
.
perhaps:
Then he steps forward
And
D
_r
o
_p
s
_.
He makes his own
Arc
And rides it out
From the shadow
Of the Chateau. You're doing too much with the formatting. Its not working: you're emphasizing everything, which means nothing actually stands out. Figure out whats the most important and just mess with that.
Then dodges
Backward
Sucking them up
In his
Wake,
Drawing them into the
Labyrinth of
Ruined stairways,
Collonades,
Watchtowers and
Gangways. aahhh! there is SO MUCH potential here for imagery, for description, and you're only scratching the surface! This is good, do more!
Molten
Granite
Eyes, same as what I said before.
All in motion,
All in graceful violence.
I would get rid of the last line. There's already a lot of telling instead of showing; this would be more powerful with an anticlimatic ending. (also, kneels, not knees)
how I might do it:
In the shadow of the Chateau a girl kneels by a grave. Hot rain capes her shoulders and she looks up--
(maybe add something like 'searching for the gaze of granite eyes', dunno if that'd be overdoing it.)
-----
This poem is simply shining with potential
hope the crit was helpful (: and I do look foward to reading more of your work!
Oh and I only capitalise things I think should be capitalised, mainly Darksyde stories and that's because the title's supposed to be in Century Gothic and that's the way things are written in Darksyde. It makes sense in the font, I assure you.
Incidentally, the stanza you crit about the formatting is one of the ones that stretches across the page, it actually arcs down away from the rest of the text - I dunno if that makes it better mind you.
dA formatting does botch things up :/ Pity! And best of luck with this :}