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Ive given you this becos its partly based on my childhood love of myths, the rest is my adult side lamenting lost love. Please tell me what you really think and give me pointer to improve the wording. Please tell me if there any parts that become murky for you.





The Dark Forest


I feel the shade rest on my shoulders.
A heavy calming mantel.
I can smell the leaves becoming dirt.

With distant eyes I search
beyond sight for that hidden dell.
Searching always
for some mystery I can touch.
Hold in my hand.
Where motes like gold dust float
and through the hazy mists
I find some place untouched.
Freedom from maps,
measurements, guides,
labels and designs.
A dark forest.

There I will sleep.
I will dream of fairies, satyrs,
dragons and love.
Dreams of violence
with meaning,
unspoiled by ethics.
Dreams,
with sweeping vistas
and simple tragedies, simple lies.
I will dream of things I understand.

I run my cold hand through the forget-me-nots
and prod at the sticky sap.
Sap seeping from dark pines,
they give little but pity.
I stop for a while.
I stop my thinking and pining.
I can feel Worry behind me,
I left her with my life,
back in the open.
Left under the judging skies.

With closed eyes I can see myself
running, fast and forever.
Dodging and weaving,
jumping over fern feathered logs.
Forever trying to catch the wind.
No matter how far I go,
I’m never there.

The dandelion,
my oracle of arcadia,
pulls grassy glades from memories trappings.
Amongst the devious foxgloves
and oh so cruel nettle.
A place to huddle and whisper.
Safe from the future
and the past.
Strephon waits for me there.
Under the green ceiling,
with eyes warm blue.
Sun burst eyes.
The holly, berries sanguine,
sees nothing further.

The Black Mulberry means
I shall not survive you.




There is a beautiful thing called “The Language of Flowers”. It’s mostly dead now, but the sweetness of it has always charmed me. Forget-me-nots mean true love.
Arcadia is the place where in ancient times Dionysus (Bacchus, Pan) was said to dwell.
Strephon is a stock name for a rustic lover, like jack for nursery rhymes.
This is partly a reflection of nostalgia, partly the longing for escape, partly the memory of love. There are some clumsy repetitions, they are meant to be there. Just because I wax poetical, don’t mean I lost my sense of humor. The forest is almost a real place, I grew up near a pine forest, and our garden always had fairies. Dionysus is my favorite Greek god and I loved Fauns (nicer satyrs) since I read Narnia as a child. This is about a world that can’t be, but is. An ideal that never dies and never lives.

Nice opening. Although it's spelled "mantle."


I would end the verse here and start a new one. Although for that matter, I think you could stand to cut these lines or change them substantially. It's not terribly strong, either visually or in terms of sentiment - it's something that a great many poets would say, so it seems too generic.


And through the hazy mists? I'd remove the "and" - it'll flow better.
I like the gold dust image, though.
There's a little disconnect between the "place untouched" and the "Freedom." Are you wanting to say that the place is free from maps, labels, and all? If so, I'd use "free" rather than "freedom."



These last too lines caught me up. The rhythm was just setting in, and then I read "violence with meaning," and I can't tell whether you're trying to justify the violence in these myths or not. And "unspoiled by ethics" directly contradicts the idea that the violence has meaning, because if there's no ethics, there's no meaning. And I think that a good deal of mythology is directly composed of ethics.

I would suggest saying "modern ethics," which makes more sense, and either cutting the "with meaning" or qualifying it as "primal meaning" or something similar.


This is excellent.


I would delete the bolded "sap," combine the sentences, and either start a new sentence with "they" or change it to "that" and ditch the comma.
Otherwise, powerful image.


I like the adjective "judging" to describe "skies."
But I'd delete the bolded "left," combine the sentences, and start a new sentence with "I left her" or at least use some punctuation more suitable than a comma - a dash will work nicely.


Lovely. Excellent alliteration. I especially like the sound of "fast and forever."
Three minor points to improve flow - I would write "fern feathered" "fern-feathered," delete the second "forever" so it doesn't sound repetitive after the first, and combine that sentence with the one ending "fern-feathered logs."


It gets confusing here. I like the sound of it, and the personification of the flowers, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
And two minor style points - "memories trappings" should be "memory's trappings," and the bolded sentence is a fragment and should be combines with either the sentence before it or the sentence after it.


Nice lines, nice description.
"Sun burst" should be one word. And if you're going to use both "holly" and "berries" in the same line, you should add "its" to "berries" so that it doesn't seem like "sees" refers to "berries." I hope that made sense.


I love this line.
But I have no idea what you're talking about.

Let me read your blurb...





Oh, I've heard of that. That makes sense now. I would make that your title - it fits, it's pretty, and it connects the poem to that tradition.


How does that connect with "oracle of Arcadia"?


Bad idea. If the poem isn't humorous, and the tone isn't joking, the clumsy repetitions seem like just that - clumsy and out of place. They make the otherwise smooth flow of the poem jarring.


Mmm...

Glad I could help. 3nodding