Rainfall

"Here lies everything." ~Dr. Horrible

For those of you who critique, please be brutally honest. I love hearing everyone opinions, good and bad. Even a one word response is appreciated.

I may put up songs, but I don't want to advertise in any way. For anyone interested in that you can click my sig.


Content List
1. Diamond Daze
2. Discovery
3. The Arbitrator
4. The Selfish Act of the Altruistic
5. Nostalgia [updated]
6. Lux Lucius Perpetuus
7. Affectionate
8. Twist of Bliss
9. Light and Drowsy
10. Blood Moon
11. True American Glory

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

Rainfall

[A happier poem written about two years ago. I HATE cliches, but this WAS written for a specific person]


Illuminate my senses
With your diamond light;
Watch the colors sparkle
And taste the love a'light.

Stare the stars away until
They shine for only you.
Transcend and flare up to face
The everlasting skies of blue.

Whisper your gaze softly
So only I can hear.
When the diamond days are o'er,
They'll end in only tears.

What will happen to me,
When this feeling I can't sustain?
Confused and overtaken,
I'll stay home and watch the rain.

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

Rainfall

[This particular piece was written for a song (written on guitar), but it's not recorded, and I don't know if it ever will be. I'm not much of a singer...]


My thoughts drift away
Serenity is here
A gracing presence near

Quiet simplicity
It reigns over me
The feeling of being free


Gone awhile,
Not sure when
I’ll make it back again.

It’s just been…
So long since I’ve seen
The water and the trees.

It’s quite the discovery.

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

Rainfall

[When I wrote this, it had a Sublime feel to it, but I don't care for Sublime in any way. It was basically for a school assignment.]

Everyone complains about what they see,
So I took away the sun, grass, and trees.
Now everyone mopes around, sighing all the time,
So I flooded their drink with narcotics and wine.

No one respects education anymore,
So I did it away, and now everyone’s poor.
No houses, jobs or money, no food or water, too,
Everyone is downtrodden, brainwashed without a clue.

To entertain now-simple minds, television worked just fine;
In the light of dark, they’re laughing all the time.
Now everyone is happy, I’ll now be on my way,
Just hope these creatures live to see another day.

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

Rainfall

[Another written for a school assignment, but I never liked the title, so I changed it from Tennessee.]


She was more than what we realized, but why honor her now?
She was of bliss, and of more love than any of us ever knew,
All our violence is so much to allow.
How much longer until we run ourselves through?

I was once blinded, and so beyond my fate.
But I can see past it now, and I know what to look for.
This sardonic world is so hard to relate
To someone who never wanted more, more, more.

I know tears are of love and fists are of hate.
I know hands can craft a masterpiece, and destroy it too.
I'll mock those who don't make mistakes.
These special instances are only meant for so few.

For one so special, your exit was farce.
You left this world as fast as you came.
Friends and family can sometimes be harsh,
But remember, your ploy was all, too, a game.

You tricked us first, and stole our lives.
You lead down the road to be hypnotized.
You lead us to believe you meant only good.
I suppose that's our mistake; we do less that we should.

But all that's changed now.
Only liquid memories.
Forgotten like rain falling down.
Still why can't I see past things like these?

No matter what you've done, no matter what I've lost.
The beginning of it all made it so worth the cost.
How can I still be on your side
When all you told me were lies, lies, lies?

Killing someone may be worth the cause,
But by someone so sweet, I wonder “Where was the flaw?
And where during all this time did I go wrong?
Was this her plan all along;

To kill my closest friend?
Cut a wound that would never mend?"
So out of the blue, out of the ordinary,
By someone that's so, so extraordinary.

You told me you want to live
Take life to the fullest, love life to give.
So were all these deflections, intended lies...
... to solidify your suicide?

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

Rainfall

[When I was younger, I often pondered in the past, revisiting memories that had long since been gone. Sometimes I would do this to the point of being unhealthy, but I have changed since. But every so often I find myself doing the same thing...
I don't mind this piece, but I dislike the last line and the turn of direction it goes, but it fits in with the 'life flashing before your eyes' sort of deal... I dunno. Opinions?]

-Updated-

I've been lost
In my past of deep memories.
How long has there been a wall
Between me and my history?

I happened here a few days ago
The dark has been all I’ve known since
If you share some knowledge,
I'll give you my ignorance.

How long will I crawl in this world
Stuck in an unending dream?
I once thought reminiscing as a pearl
Now I can’t escape, it seems.

I stumbled here some time ago
My stark demeanor now all I show.
If you lend me a little light,
I'll sell you my shadow.

I am lost
In a cell of sensory lore.
I was wrong to wander from
Everything I held before.

I look upon this with resentment,
But the only notion in my head
Is if I can’t be found, then
Is my presence dead?

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

Rainfall

[I was experimenting by not rhyming one day, though I ended up rhyming part of it anyway. Interestingly, I like the freeform stanzas better.]


What am I and what am I to become?
Staring through the wood grain on the back of my guitar
Questions flow thoroughly and throughout me.
Like tangerine nectar to bees in the spring,
The spathe like answers stick on the inside of my mind:

The sharpest metal will turn to rust,
In no time to save one’s self.
Even diamond turns to dust,
Just like everything else.

Truth be told,
We’re laid out like everyone else.
Lies often behold
Else what innocent ears hold cold.

Just like the light, nothing lasts forever.


Tonight holds no special surprises;
Through glass I see that
Turnstones float on frosty air
While a fire falls behind them.
Steam rises from a cup of English tea
Which rests in my hand.
A warm brush of whiskers and a soft mew
Is all there is to remind me of this reality.
What is this, and what is it to become?
An inward reflection stares back at me;
The answer in his eyes.
It takes a thudding heartbeat and
A breathless atmosphere
To release what secrets there are.

The warmest heart can be turned cold
With promises and wealth.
One hopes he’ll learn when he turns old,
But he’s just like everyone else.

What was said is truth:
Everything is like everything else.
What lies before you
Steals innocence and leaves nothing to prove.

Just like this moment, something can last forever.

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.

VeggieLover

Diamond Daze, The Selfish Act, and Discovery are...mediocre simply because they do fall victim to cliches and lack a more concrete story or visual to bring them home. Some of the best songs, the ones that really target your emotions and experiances rely heavily on lines that, while they may not be genius in themselves, speak to the listener at the basic level of humanity. One of the songs that comes to mind (for no particular reason) is Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. "If i lay here, if i just lay here, would you lie with me, and just forget the world" While this theme isn't in any of your songs, it gives a specific image combined with a specific emotion to avoid sounding cliche. Of course, that isn't the best example, im sure you can find them all over the place if you try, but the images are what seperates classic teen angst from real art.
I like the Arbitrator, even if it has been done, at some level, before. It would really depend on the accompianment etc. to make it something special.
Nostalgia is the same as the others, I can relate to it, I know that emotion, i've been there, but even with that very specific connection to the subject, i just don't feel it. Give us something to latch onto, a specific memory, the way the light was falling in the room at the time, something that really stands out in a way that has never been done before.

This is what I'm talking about. You are combining the inner more personal emotions with the outward things of everyday to present a powerful image that we are going to remember. Good job.

__________________
"Not remotely! Because iocaine comes from Australia, as everyone knows. And Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."

VEGANGELICA

Hi, Rainfall,

Your poems are often very introspective and I appreciate that you are trying to show feelings and situations in novel ways. I'll go through your poems one by one and make a few comments about most of them.

Above, I would recommend you keep the typical grammatical structure of the sentence (subject verb object) even if this means the end word does not rhyme with the end word of another line, because contorting the grammatical structure makes the poem sound as if it were written in the 1800s (when people more frequently achieved rhymes by switching around the placement of words). So, for example, I would recommend you write: "What will happen to me/ When I can't sustain this feeling?/Confused and overtaken,/I'll stay home and watch the rain." Or, perhaps you could write something such as, "What will happen to me/When this feeling I can't sustain/Melts into confusion/Like snow melts into rain," to link together the ideas of something sparkly (diamonds, new love) altering.

About "Discovery"--I feel the simplicity of the song structure reflects the topic: the feeling of peace that overcomes one as one feels how wonderful it is to simply be/exist. I prefer the song without the final line (which I put in bold), because I see this line as simply repeating what you already desdribe in the final stanza ("It's just been.../So long since I've seen/The water and the trees").

I listened to your three instrumental songs, by the way, and enjoyed the variety of sounds and feelings you have in them. I encourage you to sing even if you don't feel you are much of a singer! Some of my favorite songs are sung by people whose voices have a lot of individuality and personality. Also, the more you sing the more practice you'll get and probably the better you'll like your singing.

I like the twist in the concept behind this poem: the loving, giving person (who you felt was so loving and giving) deceived you and others by being unloving toward herself and taking her own life. Sometimes I wasn't quite sure what was meant by a few lines. For example, you wrote: "I was once blinded, and so beyond my fate." What does it mean to be beyond one's fate?

In the final stanza, where you rhyme live/give and then rhyme the vowel sounds of lies/suicide, I wish there were a way to alter the 3rd line (such that it ends in "lied") to rhyme perfectly with suicide, since so many of the other stanzas have perfect rhyming schemes ("aabb," for example). I notice the lack of perfect rhyming of the last 2 lines especially because those two lines, like the final two lines of a sonnet, summarize the whole poem and thus seem to me to be most important such that their lack of a perfect rhyme stands out in my mind more.

About the above: I don't really mind the "died" but wonder if you could alter the line somehow so that it starts to feel as if, when one wallows in the past, the *present* rather than oneself has died? The risk of spending too much time in the past is that it can prevent one from enjoying living in the present. In a sense, rehashing old memories in too much depth can "kill" the present.

I like the "tangarine nectar" simile for how these existential questions can draw one's mind toward them. You solidify an idea as a delicious taste.

What do you mean by "spathe?" I looked it up and it appears to be a technical term for part of a flower?

Like VeggieLover writes, I like the concreteness of the descriptions in your stanza that ponders and reflects on the feeling of reality by describing the cat and the sensations of the tea. I also feel the stanza describing how all will die/all is ephemeral ("the sharpest metal will turn to rust") does a good job describing this concept with physical examples rather than just words that express the concept. One point of confusion for me: much of the poem is about the fact that nothing lasts forever, yet the final line says something will. What is it that you see as lasting forever?

I hope this helps!

--Erica

__________________

Rainfall

Yes, I went over this poem with a friend of mine (who is a genius in more ways than one) and we had quite a long discussion on just this line. I wasn't trying to switch the words around (because, even iolden English didn't switch words like in this situation) but more as an incomplete sentence, though I know that it still doesn't make sense in this light. The original piece was written as follows:

What will happen to me
When all this I can't explain?
Confused and overtaken,
I'll stay home and watch the rain.

It's funny, because my genius friend said Diamond Daze was her favorite, and veggielover poses it mediocre. But I love conflicting opinions, and enjoy hearing both sides.

I do agree, but in my mind (how I had the song all planned out), the last line would be whispered or very quiet and reverbed or something like that, making it hardly discernable. If I ever get the courage I may show you exactly what I mean :p

Thank you for the input. I'll see if I can put something together with some vocals, perhaps even Discovery (it has a simple vocal part).

In the writing process I often fixate myself not on the meaning of each line, but how they sound, and then clean it up after going back over it. In this particular case I liked how I had this line more than my fix-up ideas, dispite not fitting in with the other, clearer lines.

Hm, as I mentioned before, I don't much focus on such things, and sometimes don't even realize if a set of words are 'perfect rhymes' or not, because when sung, many phoenetic parts of words aren't even pronounced. I'll fix this poem up a little more.

I agree, though I do like how it could be a twist, and the reminisce was really a 'flashing before one's eyes' moment kind of deal. But I may work on this one a little more, I never really put much effort into it.

This piece, which was for a project in school, was my last, and I sometimes do a little 'spicing' up with adjectives and such, though I don't like to do it generally for the reason that the adjectives may not fit in because they weren't written in the 'spur of the moment.' When I am writting down a new poem I usually focus on a particular feeling or event, which can't always be retreived later on. In this case I looked up spathe, and against my better judgement I put it hastily in, perhaps mistaken that it isn't the sticky-sweet part of the flower (and even if it is, it doesn't exactly fit, so it was a lose-lose situation).

Throughout the whole poem there was supposed to be a gradual understanding developing in the character: ex., 'the sharpest metal turns to rust', ect. So, contradictory to what "he" originally though, some things CAN (seem) to last forever, like the moment he experienced.



Thank you for the in-depth critique; it was more than I could've hoped for. I hope to hear your input in poems, or songs, to come!

__________________
Rule #7 – Trust only when trusted.