A gravity of aches has drawn us gaunt
A not-so-Newton pull unto the ground
Like airy orbs we ring our smoky haunts
But, comet-like, we're always falling down.
The arms of earth will rock our sleepy heads
Where tender flesh gives way to tender shoots
What rest awaits within those mossy beds
For those of us with heavy heavy boots.
Above the ground the sun sears bare our skin
And mocks our hurried antheap lives below
The bitter swill of sea rolls out and in
We reap in swathes the misery we sow.
The tears we do not shed will crystallize
And build up walls behind our weary eyes.
It's a sonnet, 14 lines and all, decent rhyme scheme and decent metre. It does however read as if the rhyme is leading the sense by the nose.
Don't get me wrong. I applaud your genuine attempt to use the poetics of the sonnet. A good poem also has a good message or emotional stimulus is addition to the poetics. Most poems I read on this site are just an emotional message with no poetics at all. Yours is much much better than these, but I don't feel a genuine message or emotive content coming through.
I love the lines "Like airy orbs we ring our smoky haunts/But, comet-like, we're always falling down." That, plus the mention of being un-Newtonian, creates a strange and delightful symetry in those lines. The ending two lines are absolutely stunning in bleak imagery. Now, the rhythm does bug me in some cases, and the "heavy heavy" bit in line 8 strikes me as a bit juvenile for some reason, but other than that, I love the imagery and some of these lines are perfectly quotable.
Submission Name: Bitter Sonnet
