Tempered

[Ros]

Consider the shape
of the broken thing;
time was when it laboured
like an engineer, forged
a lightness that even
the clock hands loved
and slowed for.

Now look at the miniscule
gears fallen, the heavy drops
of iron ripped from the furnace
and cooled to displaced angles.
Your foot brushes
the debris, its abstract
geometry marking out
the boundary
of your broken home.

[gpierre]

Ros,

I think I'm getting this one but why - 'of your broken home'?

I like this and I enjoyed the internal rhyming, it gave a good structure.

Gaz

[ray miller]

Not sure if the things to be considered in each section are the same. However, I loved the last 5 lines, great rhyme and rhythm. Are we talking broken watch and broken manufacturing industry? Probably not.

[Wabznasm]

I really love some of the writing in this ros - it's got an amazing delicacy in places - but feel that the poem would be more effective if it didn't have the 'guess the object' motive hanging behind it. I want the ending to have the impact it should have, but don't want to have the object spelled out, so I think you're going to need to try and manoeuvre this somehow.

Dave

[Sharra]

Hi Ros
You have some beautiful lines here Ros – I especially liked

forged
a lightness that even
the clock hands loved
and slowed for.

I wonder if you could tighten it a little – for instance: ‘Consider its broken shape’ at the beginning.

For me as well there was a jarring between ‘miniscule’ and ‘heavy drops of iron’ – it felt like the iron was talking about the gears and the 2 didn’t fit.

It does feel very concrete until those last 5 lines where I feel it changes direction. I don’t have a problem with not knowing what ‘it’ is, but those last lines leave me feeling left up in the air.

I’m trying to pin down why they aren’t working for me – I think it is to do with you have the lovely description which is concrete, then it gets a bit fuzzy and abstract, then we come down to earth with a thump with ‘broken home’. Those last 5 lines just don’t gel quite right for me.

I’ve been very cheeky and rejigged S2 (line breaks still haphazard) – feel free to ignore

Your foot brushes
the debris, miniscule gears
fallen, heavy drops of iron
ripped from the furnace,
and cooled to displaced angles.
its abstract geometry marks
out the boundary
of home

Sharra
xx

[David]

I wondered whether the "home" had anything to do with housing in an engineering sense?

[Ros]

Thanks for spending the time on this, all - I think you're right, the last verse needs re-jigging. I'll work on it and let you know.

[gpierre]

Ok my reading is-

S1 supernovae creating the elements/Big Bang creation:

S2 look what we're making of it

Close?

I have seen the cloud it came from, yet still, it is as beautiful as it is nebulous.

Thanks,

Gaz

[Terreson]

Consider the shape
of the broken thing;
time was when it laboured
like an engineer, forged
a lightness that even
the clock hands loved
and slowed for.

Now look at the miniscule
gears fallen, the heavy drops
of iron ripped from the furnace
and cooled to displaced angles.
Your foot brushes
the debris, its abstract
geometry marking out
the boundary
of your broken home.

Good poem. A poem lyrical and with a bite. My ear hears the line meted out rise and fall and metrical stress and pause mostly maintained. I say mostly only because, for the sake of metrics, misplaced works better than displaced - I think. I also notice how the poem ties itself off with internal rhymes. Debris, geometry, boundary.

Tere

[Lovely]

It's a beautiful write Ros and i enjoyed the rhyming. It flowed well.

I must admit it is quite abstract in places and slightly hard to follow
what you inwardly mean..but perhaps just me though.

You sing your poetry well though. I really enjoyed the lines:-


"Now look at the miniscule gears fallen,
the heavy drops of iron ripped from the furnace
and cooled to displaced angles"

thanks

[brianedwards]

Fantastic Ros! Wonderfully ambiguous and a real delight to read aloud.
One teeny nit: ending the first S on a prep. . . . consider rewording that sentence.

Thanks for a good read.

B.

~

[Ros]

Gaz - it's a bit closer to home than a nebulae! Thanks for the comments.

Terreson - thanks for the read, you are right, misplaced is much better.

Lovely, thanks, glad you got something from it.

Brian, thanks for taking the time to read. You don't think the last verse works as it is, do you?

[BenJohnson]

Was this a cloud of words thing? Some of the words look familar. As I said before this has a certain wow factor to it. At the end of reading I had no idea what was being described, but I didn't really care the words, their order and the elusive meaning of the piece just felt so right.

[brianedwards]

Brian, thanks for taking the time to read. You don't think the last verse works as it is, do you?

The only thing I'd consider changing, if mine, would be "broken home". Sonically, it's a little flat and it also borders on cliche.

[Ros]

Thanks, Brian.

[Sandbanx]

This is cool. I especially love the lyric in first two lines:

"Consider the shape
of the broken thing;"

Musical!


I was not sure of the word "geometry" which I don't find to be poetic at all. Usually. But with the workmanlike words "engineer", "gears". "furnace" et al.... it works!

[Ros]

Thanks, sandbanx. I think any word can be poetic in the right context!