[Ed Shacklee]

When your silly goddess, Love, spends an hour
rubbing your eyes with magic ointment,
your parched emotions flower,
opening like a box of crayons.

At midnight, when her crumpled dress
turns to rags, and her silken touch
becomes the horn-hard caress
of that plump, cheeky waitress

whose face never launched a single ship
to sack immortal Troy, but yours;
while she struggles with her slip
you will miss the smirk of Cupid.

Who could wish back the exuberant sprawl,
the errant path of the rainbow?
The innocent childish scrawl
of your heart, the foolish spendthrift.



Revisions:
L4: deleted the comma after "opening"
L11: changed "when she grunts into" to "while she struggles with"

[Tony Barnstone]

Hi Ed,

How about dropping "Love" from line 1 (better meter that way), changing "her" to "Love" in line 5, and removing comma in line 3 and changing "opening," to "opens" in line 4?

I'm with you in this poem until it becomes too broad in its irony, with the slip-grunting.

Also, I find the final stanza to be an awful lot of commentary and characterizing, very adjectival as well:

exuberant sprawl,
errant path
innocent childish scrawl
foolish spendthrift.

I prefer the leaner lines that came before.

Something here, though--worth working up!

Best, Tony

[Jim Burrows]

Ed,

I like the meter of the first two lines. With so many substitutions and not much stress on the first two syllables, it has a feeling like you're trying to catch up, metrically, and you don't until the third line. This is a compliment, though, not a criticism. It gets the reader's attention immediately.

L1-L3 I like. L4 not as much. Why the comma after "opening"? Except that "openinglike" is a mouthful. The "box of crayons"/"parched emotions" metaphor is a little different, but it works. Emotions being half the palette, at least. And you need it for later, the last stanza. The sense is there, but the sound of that line is a little boxy and clunky.
L4 I like, too, especially that enjambment (L1 is good too in that respect).

In the last stanza, "foolish spendthrift" almost reads like a redundancy, as does "innocent childish" Neither one are, really, but they're pretty uninspired adj.-noun combinations. Coming so late in the poem, one or other of those words needs to change, I think. Probably the last one.

You're on thin ice here, of course. Or thin icing. The poem is saying "better to have loved and lost", isn't it? And doing it with crayons and rainbows. It never gets too saccharine, though, and has enough wit to leaven that, for this reader anyway.

Good luck with it.

Jim

[Ed Shacklee]

Tony: Thank you for the suggestion about L11, which I may not be done with but should have been revised before this. It looks like the last stanza made is in need of a complete makeover, also.

Jim: Thanks. "Thin icing" is a nice way to put it! This is such a slight piece; it hangs from the title like a sheer scarf. 'Opening' does present difficulties in the 1st stanza, and in hindsight, the last stanza ends things without really advancing them. It's good to have these things pointed out.

When I came up with this I thought: crayons and rainbows, oh my.

Best,

Ed

[Lance Levens]

Ed,

Launched a single ship is sufficient for me, but are you sure you want to plug into that too often quoted text?

S4: Doesn't "could" imply ability? "Would" seems more appropriate for the will. N would not will to have missed the tryst with the waitress. Also, "path" and "rainbow"seem incompatible. Wouldn't "arc" be more precise? Also, "innocent" and "childish" overlap, somewhat. You can be innocent without being childish.

My own feeling is that Greek mythological references work best when only hinted at or suggested, not so much because I see poetry as a guess who's smarter game, but because such references may deepen an idea or a relationship; or they may reveal hidden fears or hopes. In your piece the idea of a woman fascinating a man at first and then when his emotions are clearer he realizes he has been tricked points more towards The Faerie Queene. Spenser's theme, like yours, is fascination and deception. Again and again he contrives characters who appear good but are in fact evil.

Also: you might want to freshen up the title.

Interesting piece.

Lance

[Birthe Myers]

Ed.
I like the poem, I think it is in the process of revision?
I like the rainbow and the crayons and the comparison to Helen - the poor waitress is not evil, she and every other woman like her can be Helen for a few moments in the dark when men's eyes are blurred and minds are befuddled. It certainly is an old story, very old, but new still.

[Ed Shacklee]

Lance: If I could realize the idea behind this, the ointment that N had rubbed in his eyes by the goddess would have an ambiguous purpose; it might be a deluding love potion, or it might be an ointment of true seeing, or both at once. Revising this, however, is like steering a car made out of balsa wood; if I turn too hard I'm afraid it will break up. Thank you especially for your kindly put advice about the title, of which I had been inordinately fond.

Birthe: Thank you. The waitress could be Helen, you know? I have work to do on this piece.

Thanks to all of you for giving me a chance to step back from this and take another, harder look. I'll be working on revising this with your comments in mind.

Best,

Ed

[Amber Rose]

I hope once again I'm not misinterpretting. It was an intoxicated one night stand? If so, well handled. No comma after "opening" or, unless I'm reading this wrong, after "rags".

My attempt to shorten this:

"At midnight, when her crumpled dress
turns to rags, and her silken touch
becomes the horn-hard caress
of that plump, cheeky waitress

whose face never launched a single ship
to sack immortal Troy, but yours;
while she struggles with her slip
you will miss the smirk of Cupid."

may be wrong but- At midnight, when her crumpled dress turns to rags (etc.)...you will miss the smirk of cupid...maybe I'm just getting lost in that part but at midnight you will miss cupid's smirk. Then, to me, it seems some of the punctuation is misplaced or not the correct ones. I'm new however, so I may be wrong. The way you wrote the scenario was well done.

[Ed Shacklee]

Amber,

Thanks for commenting, and welcome to the Sphere.

I'm going to let this thread sink: you've all helped me by identifying the piece's problems, but I haven't come up with viable solutions just yet. The last stanza just sits there. Perhaps, in a while, it will come clear(er).

Best,

Ed