Lion of Lions wrote:
I acknowledge that English is presumably not your first language, so well done for trying! The biggest problem you have to overcome is the lack of rhythm throughout the poem. Did you read it back before posting?
You presumed correctly and I would like you to consider the implications. I was born in Montreal and I live in Montreal but I only speak english. I think I speak english well but it is my second language. I see now the problem I had was also with the people who were trying to teach me. I learned a little bit about how I don't like being taught.
I greatly appreciate the effort you have put into helping me with this poetry business but want you to know that should you stick around how difficult the task might be, but even if you have no intention of sticking around I might as well say it for others who may. I like people helping me learn as long as they don't mind me telling them what is not helping.
This idea of second languages is interesting. I think I can easily write a decent story but I don't think I can easily write a decent poem. Sometimes people say that I write good poems but that is like people telling me that I speak good french. There are some things in french that I say very well like "Would you like something to drink?" or "Would you like something to drink?" I say it very well because it is my first language but when people say that I speak good french it sounds more to me like they are just speaking poor english and really meant that I give good french.
It all very complicated Lion but to help make it less so let me tell you what makes it hard to learn from you. All the things that you tell me about how the words sound to you is very helpful but then you have to go and throw in things that are so unnecessary and cause problems like for example saying that the poem is to my boyfriend. By doing that it makes me feel that by following your advice that it may lead in a direction that I have no interest in going with the poem and then that makes me want to explain myself and doing so can cause even more problems. I will try to show you how by explaining the poem to you.
my dog has her spot in the basement and one day she led me there by not wanting me to go there, she had a guilty look on her face when I moved toward the basement and so her look was saying that I am not her cup of tea, she doesn't want me to be going there but that is what is taking me there. When we get there I see what she didn't want me to see. She didn't want me to see that she had knocked over a bag of flour and had spread it out over the floor and feeling guilty she then went right into the middle of the arrangement and pissed a bit out of nervousness and being someone that gets pissed on because of other people's nervousness she was showing that the flour arrangement looked like me. I thought it would be funny to spell flour wrong.
but the problem with explaining is that I have a girlfriend who has seen me in a flower arrangement and now I become worried that if she sees this explanation and she doesn't even know that I have a dog she might be thinking that I am seeing her as a bitch. So then I will need to explain all the way to the end and tell of how one day before leaving for a meeting and being half awake I had barely noticed that when petting my dog before leaving she had turned her nose away from a certain part of my body but as I was clear across town the dogs message finally reached me and I had to drive all the way back to change my shirt. I thought that it was probably better that I didn't know what her nose told me and so when I arrived I yelled at her that her nose was too big but she was just glad to see me so soon and even as I was yelling kissed me right on the lips, the very lips that were scolding her.
One of the things that I like about her is that she is not shy to come and grab my hand as dogs sometimes do and guide it to where she wants to be rubbed and so that is why I used both grab and guide.
But now that I have explained the whole poem so as not to have a girl friend offended I realize that I have a boy friend that might be offended that maybe I have never gone to such lengths for him.
So do you the see the mess that gets created?
So if you take out the stuff that you don't know anything about and just leave what you do know something about you would make it much easier on me.
Also what use is it to make comments about my character when you see that I have not titled the poem yet? You have no way of knowing why so why not just leave it at that. Did you come here to help me with the poem or to say what you think of me as a person?
You do say that you think there is a fun story so why not say more about why you think there is a fun story. Say a little bit about yourself. What is fun for you? What did you find to be fun in my words? I like fun and if you can show me a direction that seems more fun than the direction I was headed, I'm easy, I'll change directions.
The fact is the poem is not titled because I don't have a clue what it is finally about. It certainly isn't a poem about a dog.