Shall I Say IT Again? by Ari Leukos

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Submission Name: Shall I Say IT Again? dots

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Author:	Ari Leukos
ASL Info:	17/Male/CA
Elite Ratio:	4.92 - 92/129/44
Words:	239

Class/Type:	Poetry/Misc
Total Views:	62
Average Vote:	No vote yet.
Bytes:	1480

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Shall I Say IT Again? dots

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WHY must I tell him
A hundred thousand
Thousand times,
Until my breath is worn down to ashy traces through the flue
Or I am forced to stumble down to the sidewalk
And pretend like I am hunting for lost dimes?
Even then he will not hear.

OR if he hears, he will not listen
Though a hundred thousand
Thousand times
I’ve wrestled him with words and pleas,
Sometimes wondering if he was worth my energy
And my words that drone on for lines and lines and lines,
Only repeating myself.

Some days I wonder to myself
(If I am in a pessimistic humor)
DO we even speak the same tongue?
Or when I talk, he hears the same,
But understands the opposite?

Other days
(If I am in an optimistic humor)
IT IS: I wonder what he sees in eyes
And souls and flights of flitting fancy,
Or if he even sees at all with eyes
Like mine or yours or hers? I know—

MAYBE if I ask another way
Or pose the quest anew
(Shall I stand upon the moon as it flies on by the earth?
or the edge of a turning, churning tide?)
His eyes will light with comprehension
And I won’t feel such a fool.

IF that won’t work, I’ll tell again
A hundred thousand
Thousand times. Perhaps—

NOT.
Maybe I’ll just draw a picture instead.

Submitted on 2007-11-13 23:24:00 Terms of Service / Copyright Rules
Submissions: [ Previous ] [ Next ]

1: >_<
2: I dunno...
3: meh!
4: Pretty cool
5: Wow!

||| Comments |||
Okay. Here's my opinion. You have some good ideas here, but the way you shape your poetry is quite rough. First of all, I don't understand why some words are capitalized. It makes the reader put emphasis on them, but reading it out loud it usually sounds off.

I thought the repetition of 'thousand' in the stanzas was ineffective. "A hundred thousand thousand" isn't a real number, so it kind of loses focus of the real point to this poem.

So let's focus on the stanzas themselves.

WHY must I tell him
A hundred thousand
Thousand times,
Until my breath is worn down to ashy traces through the flue
Or I am forced to stumble down to the sidewalk
And pretend like I am hunting for lost dimes?
Even then he will not hear.

Okay. First of all, this stanza is an incomplete sentence. Usually poetry is, but you start out asking why you should tell him... but you don't say what you're telling him and jump right into 'or am i forced' which sounds jumpy and unfinished. Tell him what? Anything? My suggestion is that you add some reference into what you're trying to get across to him that he's ignoring. I like the phrase about the dimes - you have several phrases in here which are pretty and contain good word choice.

OR if he hears, he will not listen
Though a hundred thousand
Thousand times
I’ve wrestled him with words and pleas,
Sometimes wondering if he was worth my energy
And my words that drone on for lines and lines and lines,
Only repeating myself.

This itself seems kind of repetitious. Here's why: everyone's experienced not being listened to in some way. What they don't know is how you dealt with it, or how they should have or whatever. So instead of spending so much time explaining how he's wronged you, explain your reaction instead. That's what will make your poem uniwue.

Also, the last couple lines in this stanza jump to another incomplete sentence like in the first stanza, that doesn't make grammatical sense.

Some days I wonder to myself
(If I am in a pessimistic humor)
DO we even speak the same tongue?
Or when I talk, he hears the same,
But understands the opposite?

Other days
(If I am in an optimistic humor)
IT IS: I wonder what he sees in eyes
And souls and flights of flitting fancy,
Or if he even sees at all with eyes
Like mine or yours or hers? I know—

I mixed these two stanzas because they are addressing the same sort of pattern of thinking. My first suggestion is to change 'some days' and 'other days' to using stronger words instead of just some and other. Start off your stanzas with a bang, maybe?

In your optimistic stanza, it doesn't even really seem like optimism? I don't know if it's sarcasm, but it lost me there. That may just be a personal thing, and I don't really know how to alter that so you get the point across more effectively.

MAYBE if I ask another way
Or pose the quest anew
(Shall I stand upon the moon as it flies on by the earth?
or the edge of a turning, churning tide?)
His eyes will light with comprehension
And I won’t feel such a fool.

I love the part about the moon. Very pretty. Especially since it's so true... can we act in new ways to get the reactions we want? It will probably never work, but we don't lose the idea that it might someday. It keeps us coming back, even when we're being ignored and abused.

IF that won’t work, I’ll tell again
A hundred thousand
Thousand times. Perhaps—

NOT.
Maybe I’ll just draw a picture instead.

I thought the ending was kind of weak. A picture doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of your poem. Maybe you'll draw a pretty picture (of what? cows? happy people?) instead of confronting this problem? If the idea here is to ignore the problem with this person, include a hint to the reader that the narrator is going to push it away and deal with it later. If not, include why the picture is being drawn. A picture of feeling? Another way to get the point across besides using spoken language in hopes he'll understand it better?

All in all, you have a theme here that's definitely real and true, and I think you can convey it with your nice vocabulary. I just think it needs to be restructured and revised a bit. Nice work :)
| Posted on 2007-11-15 00:00:00 | by awastedsky | [ Reply to This ]

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