Poem: Prerequisites

[lettered]

What: A Jossverse poem, free verse, very very short.
Why: for stultiloquentia, because she always rocks my world.
A/N: I suck at poetry. But it's fun to try.

Prerequisites

You must understand her wrists, her pulse-point wrists, murderous wrists.
Broken, they'd scent the air like cinnamon sticks.
You must taste her kisses, her messianic kisses, Life-Savers red cherry kisses.
Fucked, they blossom and she pops, like waiting champagne fizz.
You must see her sleep, after-sex sleep, picture perfect, surrender sleep.
Sketched, she'll be drawn and pale as paper.
You must fathom her forgiveness, her "you're a man" forgiveness, your treacherous, hated love, tousled in the sheets.
You must love this girl
To kill her.

Comments

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

OMGSQUEE! You do not suck at poetry. I like it. I don't know why everybody's afraid to judge the stuff, when we all have more opinions than God about each other's prose. (Which begs the question: How many opinions does God have?)

My favourite line is, "Broken, they'd scent the air like cinnamon sticks." That's perfect and strange. And "messianic kisses," whew. And I love how he loses hold of his established pattern on the 3rd-to-last line. "Her" to "your." Yeah.

You rock my world. *rocks* Look at me, I'm all pink and happy. (My masterlist is now up to seven.)

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I don't know why everybody's afraid to judge the stuff,

I am because I don't understand it. Every bit of prose I have ever read, I can break down and tell you WHY I like it and WHY I think it works. But I can't do that with the poems I love the most; they hit me on a gut level that my brain can't work out. That's also why I feel like I can't write it--if I beat myself hard enough against prose I can eventually hammer out something I'm pleased with. Not so with poetry. A line or a word *comes* to me, and it really really works, like the "cinnamon sticks" line, but it's often months until another such line comes. I got impatient with this and gave up, which is how most of my poetry gets finished.

But! I'm so glad you liked it! And I'm so glad you're keeping track of the poetry. I loved the "Rhymes With Luck" one...and I haven't read Mer's yet.

[canadiangirl-86.livejournal.com]

Dude. That was awesome.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Ha, glad you liked it.

[femmenerd.livejournal.com]

If that's "sucking at poetry," then um, BLOW ME.

You have too much fun with words to be bad at writing poetry. Also, I think that this is an incredibly good example of fan-poetry because it weaves right into canon, yet is clearly yours as well.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Haha, thanks. The fun in words seems to all drain away when it's poetry, not prose. The thing about prose is it's okay to have a word or two that isn't brilliant in prose, and I really feel it's not in poetry.

[chrisleeoctaves.livejournal.com]

Yeah...clearly this is all kinds of suck.
Silly, silly girl.

Poetry is about word choice and rhythm. About twisting images and tweaking phrases and this is brilliant...

murderous wrists.
Broken, they'd scent the air like cinnamon sticks.
and
Life-Savers red cherry kisses.
Fucked, they blossom and she pops, like waiting champagne fizz.


And then those last two lines.

Pow!

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad you think it doesn't suck. I actually didn't think it sucked either, but I sucked at writing it...picking words always feels like pulling teeth! But thanks...it means a lot to me that you liked it.

[43100.livejournal.com]

Apparently there's a writer con in atlanta ga where I happen to have lived once and still live near...? [/random]

LOVED this. I enjoyed:

'Her pulse-point wrists.' Little descriptions like that rock my socks and roll around my tongue for days like a wicked good liquor. I don't know why exactly, but it totally does.

'Fucked, they blossom and she pops, like waiting champagne fizz.' And sometimes they turn me on. o.O

'You must fathom her forgiveness, her "you're a man" forgiveness, your treacherous, hated love, tousled in the sheets.' To this I must say: yes!

No sucking here, doll.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

So are you going to writercon? You should go. You should go vicariously for me. Gah I wish I could!

'Her pulse-point wrists.' Little descriptions like that

Glad you liked that. I wasn't sure it worked! And thanks.

[spuffyduds.livejournal.com]

I love the jumbled swirl of adoration and sex and humpity lust all mixed up together--it's all the 'verse in a few lines.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Ha, thanks, that's exactly what I was going for!

I like that icon.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Wow! I don't think I've ever read a Jossverse poem, and boy am I happy to be cutting my teeth on this one. I love the imagery and repeated list structure, not to mention the emotional punch of the last two lines. This *is* Angelus. Great work.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I can only write poems in list structure for some reason. I'm glad it worked for you!

I kinda hate poetry most of the time, but stultiloquentia has a list of Jossverse poems she started recently and it's been fun to read (I highly recommend germaine_pet's play and sobsister's short poem, and Stulti herself wrote a fabulous sestina by Illyria, which is the best fandom poem I've ever read (well, unless you count germaine_pet's but hers is a play so I don't). /rather long advert

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh, brilliant! Thank you for the links. *gobbles them up*

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Pleased to be of service!

*pats you on the back and burps you*

[semby.livejournal.com]

I'm normally one who just doesn't get poetry, but the imagery in this stands out and is wonderful. Very intense, and very pretty word choices.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I'm glad! I'm the same way about poetry...even when I like it I still feel like I don't get it. And thank you!

[violaclaire.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. I loved this: You must see her sleep, after-sex sleep, picture perfect, surrender sleep. / Sketched, she'll be drawn and pale as paper. The combination of tenderness and hatred there is incredible. This is one of the only Angelus POV's I've ever read that I really believe.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like those lines...I wasn't sure they made sense.

And yeah, Angelus POV! I find I rarely believe it as well...so I'm glad I made a believer of you here! Thanks!

[my_daroga]

Disclaimer: I only read this cause it's you. Poetry and me are not mixy things, unless there is a STORY like Coleridge or Poe. I such at English majoring.

But this is great. I love the "cinnamon sticks" line, and the way Buffy, when reduced to food items and such, is a nummy treat and therefore killable.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm the same way about poetry. Well, I do like poems that don't necessarily have stories, but I have trouble understanding them, or why I like them.

Food is way too easy to use as a metaphor for Buffy when I'm writing Angel(us). That and religious imagery. I need to stop! I thank you so much for reading even though it's generally not your thing! As always, thanks.

[my_daroga]

I'll read anything of yours, you know that. I only put the disclaimer on so you'd know not to expect actual crit. I'm at a loss, in these waters.

[cordelianne.livejournal.com]

I love this! You have marvelous imagery, it's very evocative.

I adore the use of pulse-point because it emphasizes her blood, and its rhythm is like a pulse. Describing Buffy's wrists as murderous is great juxtaposition to the next line, which makes it have more impact.

I like that her kisses are described as messianic and Life-Savers red cherry because they have similar meanings (saving) yet simultaneously very different meanings (something transcendent vs candy you buy in a store).

You must see her sleep, after-sex sleep, picture perfect, surrender sleep. I like how you disrupt the alliteration in the line with a different alliteration which recalls pulse-point from the first line.

The use of drawn in the next line is excellent. It feels like the sentence is saying two things at once because of drawn's double meaning (considering the murderous thoughts in this, there's also the "drawn and quartered" meaning as well).

The final two lines are excellent! I like how the second last line has no punctuation, unlike all the previous lines, because it causes a pause and briefly separates You must love this girl from the final line. It gives that line emphasis on its own, yet it is never entirely divorced from the last line because it is all one sentence, so the two lines ultimately connect.

So I don't think you suck at poetry! This is a really wonderfully layered and beautiful poem to read. Every time I re-read it I catch something I didn't previously. :)

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Day-um but your fb rocks, girl! You caught all the things I was trying to do and some of the things I didn't even mean to...for instance, I didn't even intend for the picture perfect alliteration to recall pulse-point, but it does and that's a cool way of looking at it. I also hadn't considered the "drawn and quartered" meaning of "drawn"...I was just going for the most basic wordplay there. It's not often someone can show me things I didn't purposely insert into something I've written, so thanks so much for doing so and for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

This is great, silly nush.

Poetry, for me, is all about the visceral and making me link things and see things that I hadn't thought about and this does that in spades.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I do rather like this but it didn't come easily at all!

[behrbemine.livejournal.com]

I am so in love with that -- those words, they're more than words, they're a truth that I can see like a picture. Oh, if only I could describe...

I'd better stop trying. Just, reading this was an excellent way to spend a moment.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks! My favorite kinda poetry is the kind I can't quite explain how I feel about it, so that means a lot to me.

[yourlibrarian]

Hmm, interesting read. Popped over from a rec at buffyversetop5

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Thanks!