2021-07-19
I like your imagery here. In a few short lines you give us not only picture of Shanghai but a "vibe" or feel as well. I will message you some other observations on the chance you might find them of interest.

2021-07-18
A strong and stark poem, and a well-written one. If you are open to suggestion, I have one small suggestion, so please message or email me if you are.

2021-07-16
Another good poem in your unique style. My favorites were lines 6-8, which I thought were superb.

2021-07-15
I like your poem's compression, imagery and energy. You have a unique style that works very well for you, I think.

2021-07-14
Good questions and an Occam's Razor answer.

2021-07-14
Nice imagery and use of language, and you have an interesting way of imbuing your poems with energy. If I am reading the poem correctly it would be "its" with no apostrophe.

2021-07-12
I like the gentle spirit of your poem. I'm sure the person you wrote if for loves and values it. In an interesting synchronicity, my first villanelle was titled "Ordinary Love" and it explores the idea that ordinary love is actually far from ordinary. Mature love can be deeper and wider than the youthful flames of passion. In any case, I do like your poem.

2021-07-10
This is fine writing, and moving writing. There are two lines where I would normally offer suggestions, but I don't want to intrude unless you want to hear them. If you do, please let me know and I'll share my thoughts. But I think this poem is very good indeed. I had your thought that your poem provided the solemnity and gravitas that would have been missing otherwise.

2021-07-09
Nice imagery and I like the way you don't waste any words. You might consider "save the wet top rail" to avoiding parsing confusion at "it's" (which caused this reader to back up to sort things out).

2021-07-05
Very nice. I like the imagery and the poem has a gentle spirit -- one might call it a serenity.

2021-07-05
I'm glad to see such a fine poem by Thomas Moore, a poet who deserves to be better known than he is today. My favorite poem of his is "The Light of Other Days" (which might be a good poem for another day).

2021-07-03
Very nice, I think. The writing is excellent and I like the poem's gentle spirit. It feels a bit like a lullaby, which is very good in my book.

2021-07-03
Great imagery and the poem brings the scene to life. Very good, I think.

2021-06-29
I like the poem, the shape and the message, which reminds me of Eckhart Tolle and "The Power of Now." I have only one "concrete" or "shape" poem and was rather impressed with myself for create a poem, "Bubble," in the shape of a bubble!

Very well done, I think.

2021-06-28
A fine poem by a neglected poet, and thus an excellent one to share. Many poets have voiced similar qualms, but few so eloquently, clearly and rarely.

2021-06-27
Mark Twain is one of my favorite writers. In addition to being a candidate for America's greatest novelist and humorist, he may well have been its best Bible critic as well.

I often paraphrase Twain, giving him credit, when I say it's not the Bible verses I don't understand that trouble me, but the ones I understood all too when I read the "holy book" from cover to cover at age eleven.

2021-06-24
I like your poem. In interesting synchronicities:

"Charlotte's Web" was the first book that made me cry.

I have a poem titled "Safe Harbor" that I wrote for my friend the poet Kevin N. Roberts. It was about finding a safe harbor from the "real world" in the imagination.

Just tonight I shared a poem with FT about seeking out and living in the Not.

I once lived in my grandfather's house in England for two years while my father was serving on an American air base in Thule, Greenland, where dependents were not allowed. I had an Uncle Colin and my grandmother would make wine out of exotic things like elderberries, although I was too young to drink.

2021-06-23
This poem reminds my of poet-mystics like Rumi, Hafez and Whitman. That's good company to be in, with the great and gentle spirits.

2021-06-21
This poem reminds me of my favorite Ezra Pound poem, the one about meeting an overly genteel gentlewoman in Kensington Garden. For me that poem is a masterpiece, and I think Pound captured something similar here.

2021-06-20
This is very nice writing that captures not only what happened but also the mood, the emotion and sense of loss. However, without punctuation or a stanza break, the last two lines seemed a bit awkward to me. Perhaps consider something like:

as listless nights lead and lend ...
Now I meet you by the ferry
and you ask what if things had been different

2021-06-19
This is a very well-written poem that communicates emotion and has a sort of "presence" if that makes sense. My only complaint, and a mild one, is that the life/strife rhyme has been done so many times and seems a bit forced. If the poem were mine, I might consider some word other than strife: grief, etc. But in any case, really do like the poem.

2021-06-19
I think your poem has a stately tone, which I mean in a good way. It has a momentous feel. Perhaps consider a hyphen in "bat-derived" to make that line easier to parse on a first reading. I had to back up to read the line correctly.

2021-06-16
If you haven't read it, you might enjoy W. H. Davies's "Autobiography of a Super-Tramp."

If I remember correctly, Davies was a tramp-poet who was discovered by George Bernard Shaw.

Also, I believe Langston Hughes was something of a gypsy or tramp who was discovered by Vachel Lindsay, who went around singing for his supper, so to speak, if memory serves.

So right there we have three excellent tramp or gypsy poets:

W. H. Davies
Vachel Lindsay
Langston Hughes

2021-06-16
I think many of us have felt this way in the year of the pandemic. As if life wasn't difficult enough before. This line in your poem reminds me of one of my favorite poems by A. E. Housman: This life's nothing to want

2021-06-15
I agree with the accolades. In fact, I would like to discuss the possibility of publishing this poem, and others of similar quality, via my literary journal. You would be in very good company with some of the best poets writing today. Please let me know if you're interested.

Mike

2021-06-14
Another interesting poem in your unique style.

One point: I'm surprised that someone with Dyslexia can spell Dyslexic. Should the nom de plume be something like Dsylexci?

2021-06-14
You have very nice imagery here, and a unique take on the moon, which is not always that impressive, really.

2021-06-14
In addition to being an undervalued poet, if I remember correctly it was Vachel Lindsay who discovered Langston Hughes and helped him became a known, rather than unknown, poet.

2021-06-13
This one reminds me a bit of one of my favorite poets, ee cummings. He might have said:

as you were in your was

2021-06-09
I especially like the line "That be the reaeds."

Some poets fall into both categories. I have had poems come to me whole, out of blue nothing, or in dreams. Other poems have taken decades to complete and some still seem to need of more "fine tuning."

2021-06-07
I'm a newbie, so if these poems have been discussed in the past, I apologize in advance. These are some of my favorite shorter poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley:

Music When Soft Voices Die (To —)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

***

To the Moon
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

***

The Fitful Alternations Of The Rain
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.

2021-06-05
This is a nicely written poem with a good spirit, a pleasure to read. My family has had up to seven canine members, now down to two thanks to Father Time.

Mike

2021-06-04
I like your poem, dyslexia and all.

One wonders what magic Dylan Thomas and other poets who died young would have wrought: Keats, Shelley, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, Thomas Chatterton, Hart Crane ...

2021-05-31
This is a very vivid poem.

But the last line is a bit confusing. If you mean that the church bells sound the knell of the recon mission and/or its hell, there would be no apostrophe in "its."

If you mean anything else, I cannot parse the line:

Church bells sound it is knell

Since with an apostrophe "it's" always means "it is" or "it has."

Mike

2021-05-31
Your poem is a very nice tribute to your grandfather. My father was a 20-year man in the Air Force and I grew up a military brat on air bases in England, Germany, Nebraska, California, North Carolina and Tennessee. Kids lose a lot of friends when their parents serve in the military, so they sacrifice as well.

I have a Hymn for Fallen Soldiers posted, if you have time to read it.

2021-05-30
I think the form works well for this poem. Should it be:

Sail along sail [a]long

in L3?

2021-05-30
A good message in an economical style.