FROM MICHAEL
"Body Bag"
Bloodstained, a tattered veil
Upon the battered face
Of the Fallen One
A wretched sleeve engulfs her carcass
Embers of her vitality
Extinguished by the tears
Of the Lost One
Whose love was gone
Whose feet stroked soil
Resonated throughout the night
Like bells in mourning
Residing in cathedral corridors
Their rhythm moaning solemnly
Chiming the hour of death
Through voices set ablaze
In crematoriums of mortuaries
In songs of vengeance
Lamenting the Fallen One
But alas!
Never shall she hear
Her symphony of sorrow
Inside her Body Bag
Her life’s shell charred
Cremated is her body
Ashes poured from urns
Remnants carried by wind
Away throughout the world
Leading the Lost One
To the prairie land
Seeds of memories sowed
Reaping of her flower
Their brilliant colors projected
Her spirit then immortalized
Illuminated by moonbeam rays
CRITIQUE
Ok…free verse. No rhyme, no rhythm, no structure. That means your language and meaning better be pristine, clear and cutting, an aces and kings full house, because it’s carrying the entire load of your art.
It isn’t.
To me, this reads like a gang of haikus – very clipped and fractured. It destroys any real meaning a reader might hope to glean. Here’s my best guess at the meaning, and I’m not at all sure. A woman dies. She is most likely a soldier and dies in a battle, because that is to whom the word “fallen” most commonly applies, but she could be a murder victim, or the victim of an accident – police and medical professionals use body bags as well. She is probably a farm girl. She’s cremated and her ashes are poured out into the wind and blown to the prairie lands, and the next crop somehow immortalizes her spirit as the moon shines upon the crop.
I think you had a good idea that was destroyed in the implementation.
First, you are not a good enough poet to dispense with punctuation. Not by far.
Second, you have antecedent problems. Take the word “resonated”. What resonated? Feet? Love? Tears? Embers? Not only is the antecedent unclear, but “resonated” does not really fit any of them given the context. Or “residing in cathedral corridors”, which refers to “bells”…they put bells in steeples or bell towers, not corridors, and in any case, bells don’t “reside”, and they don’t chime the hour of death, they toll. Or how about “their brilliant colors projected”…what does “their” refer to? It has to be “seeds”. So…the brilliant color of the seeds of memories is projected. Does that make any sense to you? It makes no sense to me.
Third, you could do with more transition and reason instead of machine-gunning the reader with half-baked thoughts that convey a fog of emotion. Take that “bells” simile that begins with “resonated” – over 25% of your poem spent on a comparison of bells to…what? Not a clue. You could remove those nine lines and not affect the meaning much. In fact, I think it would improve the poem quite a bit. Chiming bells and blazing, singing voices…the metaphors duel in those lines, and there is no victor, only confusion, because they have no mooring to reality.
I think you need a clearer idea of what it is you intend to accomplish with this poem and give it another crack. What ideas or emotions are you trying to convey and why? Right now, it reads like words strung together mostly for their emotional impact with little meaning. Take that “songs of vengeance” bit…is it a future vengeance or a vengeance already accomplished? Is it vengeance for this gal’s death or is it vengeance against what the gal represents? Who’s listening to these songs? Who knows? There’s no real meaning behind your words.
Listen...people like free verse because they think they don't have to conform to any rules, but that's an illusion. For every rule you eliminate in form and a structure, you increase the burden on the quality of language. In many ways, it's much more difficult to write a good free verse poem.
I don't want you to be discouraged. I think a farm girl dying as a soldier and her ashes getting blown in the wind to a farm field where a crop later grows is a great foundational idea for a poem - it's poetic, to say the least. At minimum, you have a poet's heart, IMHO. Now what you want to contemplate carefully is the meaning and emotion you want to inspire in the reader. You have three gigantic arenas from which to draw that meaning and emotion, and they overlap significantly, which is great for poetry. First, there's patriotism/bravery, then home/country, then family/relationships, possibly motherhood. I don't know about you, but those areas jerk tears from just about anyone. It's made to order for poetry.
Consider carefully what you would like the reader to think about, and as a consequence, feel after reading your poem. Do you want them to remember bedrock American patriotism, sort of Lee Greenwoodesque? Or maybe the cost of freedom? Or love of family? Or what? Choose one primary message and two or three secondary messages that spring naturally from the primary, and let them guide you in the portrait you paint. The best poetry is strongly purpose driven. I don't think your initial post had much purpose at all, but it sure does scream for one. Give it another crack.