Classmate Response 2, Week 9

Free Entry 1 (Week 9)

This is a rough first draft, critiques welcomed!

True Falsity

What makes someone love relentlessly?
Have them skirt past the reality of your actions
only believing the lies you told,
even though they know the hiding truth?
What makes someone hate relentlessly?
Focusing on the truth behind those actions,
those lies you told at the beginning,
even though they know the reasons why?

How do you get back there?
To that place where all was cliche,
sparkling red wine, deep maroon sunsets,
those images you were skirting like the plague?
How do you know those were there in the first place?
Did you make them up,
keeping yourself protected, fortressed in
by the fantasy of what could be?

 

My response to Taylor:

There are a couple of things I like here. I like the questions...in the beginning, you pair love with beleiving lies - an interesting way to uncover the theme of love. hdig truth seems odd, I would think about the wording there. You have a couple of recurrances, truth and skirting. The the hate comes in and the poem becomes kind of circular, a "what came first, the lie or the reason behind the lie?" this creatres interest and I think you can expand here if you wish. What was this lie that has formed a wedge between these characters? How do you get back there? I think this last stanza is the most powerful because the reader senses the speaker's urge to go back to the naivity of the new relationship, before she knew "the truth." May of us would claim that we are string and we would stand up for ourselves and run form anything toxic, but "truth" be told maybe what we want more is to just be ignorant again so we dont have to face the pain. The circularity of the piece keeps going around, because then the reader can think "was there ever a lie in the first place, or maybe it was the speaker lying to herself/himself?" Really good for a first draft, I hope you keep working on it!