Poetry / Candyland

i likes youve changed teh cliche into something more descriptive. the unanswered questions like “Life is this? ” makes teh reader think about society and how its changing.

This has a killer flow. Go slam this somewhere if you already haven’t.

“That certain
   cheap thrill
      with the frill
of cherry nougat and caramel.”- This is the only stanza I had any issues with, only because it sounds forced, like you were struggling to find another rhyme and settled on the first word you could think of.

Other than that, no real criticisms. Nice work

I found this piece somewhat confusing but nonetheless good.  I think it is all in the perception and how each individual perceives life.  I think you took a cliche and expanded on it very well, life is a box of chocolates, isn’t it ?
Good work, keep writing, would love to read more !

This was well written. Very consistent. True to the word.

For me that was pretty darn good. I saw the connections between your words and life. The images you created in mind helped me dance through you poem. We run, drip, and slip while looking for that cherry nougat and caramel. Very well said and stated. I liked how you posted the poem because it seemed like I was outside skipping along. Nice write.

Nice!  I love the jaunty quality of the rhyme—very Harlem Renaissance!

I especially like how the poem always seems just a bit saucy, almost naughty, yet it’s really about our most innocent and infantile desires.

With these lines:

Yet you outfox yourself,
     and blind yourself

I’m kind of wondering whether you need “yourself” 2x. What if you removed the first one? It wouldn’t hurt the rhythm and it would make the line leaner.

The only other issue I have is with the last lines:

To return the sweets
        with a receipt,
         that cost a dollar sixty nine.

The final line seems to be referring to the receipt, not the sweets. Is there a way to swap lines one and two of this stanza?

I like this one—very cool!

I loved this—I’m going to have to go back and read this a few times, but I love this. There’s an urban quality here, and I’m not exactly certain whether the reference is to sex or drugs or actual candy.

I loved the physical play, the formatting of the words, the way everything seems to do what you’re telling us: “Trickling all the way down…to your lips…” Two questions:

1. Did you mean for “It’s scribed on the box…” to have ‘scribed’ mean and spelled as written, or is the intention ‘inscribed’? This is just for clarity and doesn’t really distract me.

2. And for this line, “All the while going about business backwards…”—you’re having a good time with the formatting, but have you thought about making backwards really ‘sdrawkcab’? You may have tried and it didn’t work.

At any rate, this is really good work.

Cheers,

Byron

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May 03, 2008

by initial_v

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Well thanks for your input! The reference is to life mainly, The first stanza simplifying it in such a way that it becomes cheap. The second one complicates it to the point of giving it up. However, this concept can be applied to pretty much anything that affects people greatly. I kind of wanted to make it a written slam poem, to show how it would be said aloud.
1. I meant ‘scribed’ to express an old fashioned scribe writing everyone’s fate already laid out for them. Predestination set in motion I suppose.
2. I actually considered writing backwards backwards, but it seemed too distracting and would interrupt the flow. If ony there was a font that just reversed every letter, like looking in a mirror.

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Life is like…
a box of chocolates you say?

Cliché!

Good start. It definitely caught my attention.

Life is this?
You know what you get.

It’s scribed on the box,

Yet you outfox yourself,
     and blind yourself
        with empty excuses
          and deformed smiles.

Striking lines… These somehow added points to the poem and made it quite impressive.

It made me, one of the readers, think about life… and agree to what was said.

Bravo!

To start off: I liked it a lot. It has a doctor Seuss feeling to it, though it kinda fades away “with deformed smiles” which as a line sounds nice, but doesnt seem to fit. The ending is brilliant, really the price really brings it from absurdity to the nearest walmart, makes it real somehow. If it hadnt been inclined before hand that it is about life, i think i wouldve missed the point, but enojyed the word play and the images. The poem is structered visually, both with the layout as the lines. The tootlhes man, the deformed smile, lips, hips, thighs, all make it visual rather than abstract, but the tempo of the visuals changing and how they dont seem to be combined makes it abtrack, dream like as a whole. The first verse isnt strong enough to carry out the meaning, i myself forgot when reaching the beginning of the fourth verse. So really nice lines and flow, but needs to be less of a parade of ideas to make a point.

Nice. I like reading different style than my own. Keep it up.