Hello, James,
This is quite an ambitious, teeming with striking images and surreal movement. The shifting, almost dreamlike flow creates a fascinating but sometimes disorienting experience for the reader. The title "Hallucinations of the Knife" is fitting, as the poem itself mirrors the knife’s erratic, unpredictable journey.
That said, the piece may benefit from some strategic tightening or anchoring to give the reader a clearer sense of progression. Right now, it's easy to get lost in the whirlwind of imagery without a solid throughline. Some thoughts:
- The opening is strong, with the knife leaping from the hand, but from "the twilight a tendon thicket" onward, the poem takes a heavily associative, cascading turn. While these sections brim with beautiful phrasing, they could be pruned a bit for clarity.
Consider: Could some of these images be arranged in a way that enhances the sense of movement rather than dispersing it into separate, competing threads?
- The sequence of questions ("were they dead where the blade pierced the heart it found out, made? Were they dead before?") is a compelling moment, but it's somewhat obscured by the preceding shifts. If this is a central tension of the poem, it might benefit from being more emphasized in the structure.
- The closing is intriguing, especially the line: "I must only change direction, it didn't think, focus just a little harder, couldn't." This near-personification of the knife is thought-provoking, but it might land even more powerfully if the preceding stanza was slightly condensed.
Overall, I admire the boldness of this poem. It's atmospheric, lyrical, and full of striking language. My main suggestion would be to guide the reader a bit more deliberately through its arc, ensuring the surrealism doesn’t entirely untether it from a sense of internal momentum.
Good luck with this, James!
Cheers,
...Alex