i like what this poem expresses about the issues involved(especially at the end). my only criticism is that if you're going for the free-verse, not-rhyming thing, you might want to restructure it so that you don't have three lines in a row that rhyme("right/hindsight/fight"); it's like the poem slipped back into conventional structure before you caught it and went back to free verse.

it sounds like this poem is trying to deal with some heavy personal events &/or issues, but the way it's executed somehow trivializes everything. it is possible to be "poetic" without being hopelessly vague. & it may be "a little complicated to understand", but if you're not making an effort to be understood, what's the point of a.)writing it & b.)posting it for critique?

pretty sweet take on the old waking-up-to-the-find-everyone-else-dead device. i think it might work better if there was just a little more build-up to the surprise. you could add a little more detail(i.e., fragmented memories of last night, flesh out the girlfriend & his relationship w/ her) and still have a compact flash fiction piece. the sentrence that begins "a slight bit more clearly" needs some work. i think you meant to say "thinking a bit more clearly" or "a bit more clear". with a li...

i'm not sure i totally got this, tho it seems to be a sort of sci-fi fever- dream mixing various world marriage rituals into one strange festivity. i'd love to attemd a wedding like this one! lots of inventive wordpaly & nice imagery. i'm not very learned on the technical aspects of poetry-writing, so i can't comment in that regard. i did enjoy reading it.

the constant reference to "The Reality" seems kind of clunky & obvious to me. i would try & find a more subtle or metaphorical way to address it. there's some really nice atmospheric descriptive lines in here regarding the lake, the night sky, etc. but there are also some lines that scan awkwardly: "we were so nervous & perspiring"; "we stared & gazed")(seems a bit redundant); "genuineness of brightness"; "he had gone off the fire of the rifle"(??) i think this could be a mysterious and effec...

something about the term "the poetic flower" seems kind of obvious & corny to me. is this a lazy way of describing an actual flower, or does it refer to a/the poem? whatever it represents, i think you could come up with a better way to phrase it. in the 4th stanza: what is it that's basking in the soft breeze? is it the sun, or its light? poetic license aside, either one seems kind of a stretch(or not enough of one).

the story grabbed me right away, as a good story ought to. the Homer Simpson tie is a nice touch; unfortunately, you refer to it as a Bart Simpson tie a few paragraphs later. oops! "two loud 'ouch' sounds from a random orifice"--isn't there really only one orifice which could emit this particular sound? on page 6, hugo rule #6 should probably read "...stern words ARE used" rather than "AND used". "the waxen candelabra of her nakedness" ?!?! not sure what this means, but it SOUNDS great. page ...

i haven't read the preceding chapters of this tale, so i will just address my impressions based on this brief excerpt. the writing is clean and unadorned. some of the dialogue seems a little stiff, sounds more like something scripted than the way people talk(i'm thinking in particular of arlyn's dialogue during the cafeteria confontation). it sounds like a pretty interesting premise. is this some kind of commentary on (or extrapolation of) contemporary terrorism, i wonder? one nitpicky techni...

This is a good premise for a novel; I think you could do a lot with this. You seem to do a pretty good job setting scenes and delineating characters in a brief & efficient manner. I felt that there was a little too much blatant exposition going on in the professor's monologue--I understand that this was your method of laying out the premise for the novel, but I would hope when & if you actually write it you would spread this information out in more natural-sounding dialogue. I also would have...

I have a problem with the concept of tattooing as rape of the "virgin skin" when the person being tattoed is so enthusiastic and compliant a client. I realize the idea of it being rape is in the tattoo artist's mind and is in fact the thing that turns him on so much. But I think the rape analogy would be more appriorpiate if he did it to an unconscious, unwilling victim. Come to think of it, I don't recall having ever read a story in which someone indulges a fetish for forced body mod, but th...