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What Lies Beyond
Bright. Bold and blinding light has set the sky aflame.
Strange. How these lands can change while all here stays the same.
Hooked. Last I dared and looked through gateway's tiny crack
This world beyond both queens' domain stood silent, shy, and black.
Glee. I caress a tree beyond my mushroom ring.
Old. Feels like tales untold. I listen, then I sing.
Wrong. Nothing joins my song. Such apathetic lack
Of cheer turns bliss to loneliness. Perhaps I'd best head back.
Strange. How these lands can change while all here stays the same.
Hooked. Last I dared and looked through gateway's tiny crack
This world beyond both queens' domain stood silent, shy, and black.
Glee. I caress a tree beyond my mushroom ring.
Old. Feels like tales untold. I listen, then I sing.
Wrong. Nothing joins my song. Such apathetic lack
Of cheer turns bliss to loneliness. Perhaps I'd best head back.
This has a more complex structure that it initially appears. Most lines are 12 syllables that start with a detached word, then seem to use alternating stressed and unstressed syllables, though it's forced in a few places and I can't tell if it's intended to have a rhythm at all. The final line of each stanza is 14 syllables and does appear to be iambic.
What caught me by surprise was the internal rhyme of each 12-syllable line, where the first word rhymes with another about halfway through. In fact, the final line has enough of a slant rhyme in the same manner (bliss/loneliness) that I thought you might be doing it there as well, but the first stanza has nothing close in its finishing line.
As to meaning, it goes a bit over my head. It sounds like a person going through a gate to a faraway place (or alternate reality), seeking some kind of affinity for nature, and finding none, gets disappointed. Which is kind of anticlimactic and seems like the opposite of the prompt. Some of the first lines hint that it may be the person returning to a once-familiar place and finding it's still suffering from what made it alien in the past. It feels like it's probing toward setting up a coll situation, but I never quite connected to what it was.
What caught me by surprise was the internal rhyme of each 12-syllable line, where the first word rhymes with another about halfway through. In fact, the final line has enough of a slant rhyme in the same manner (bliss/loneliness) that I thought you might be doing it there as well, but the first stanza has nothing close in its finishing line.
As to meaning, it goes a bit over my head. It sounds like a person going through a gate to a faraway place (or alternate reality), seeking some kind of affinity for nature, and finding none, gets disappointed. Which is kind of anticlimactic and seems like the opposite of the prompt. Some of the first lines hint that it may be the person returning to a once-familiar place and finding it's still suffering from what made it alien in the past. It feels like it's probing toward setting up a coll situation, but I never quite connected to what it was.
>>Pascoite
I generally enjoy strange and non-human perspectives, and thought a narrator from a different reality fit the prompt in a quite literal sense. Was fun, but sure makes relating to their experience hard.
The situation in my head was "a fairy dipping their toes into exploring our normal world".
Structure-wise I'm thinking of these 12-syllable lines as each having three parts: the detached word (/), a 5 syllable part (xx/x/), and a 6 syllable one (x/x/x/) - well, that's the intended ryhthm at least. When read out loud I very much like their flow and how it contrasts with the more uniform final line, but my writing alone doesn't really do a good job of capturing that. And not just cause I'm entirely inconsistent on the second syllable.
Maybe I should've split each line into three.
I reused the structure from a poem I once wrote where the rule of three was a big thing, so there was supposed to be a third stanza but I didn't really find enough to say to fill it. Not without it feeling like filler material. Adding more lines anyway might've been similar to what's already there, also might've helped communicate my idea though.
Thank you so much for always sharing your impression and analysis!
I generally enjoy strange and non-human perspectives, and thought a narrator from a different reality fit the prompt in a quite literal sense. Was fun, but sure makes relating to their experience hard.
The situation in my head was "a fairy dipping their toes into exploring our normal world".
Structure-wise I'm thinking of these 12-syllable lines as each having three parts: the detached word (/), a 5 syllable part (xx/x/), and a 6 syllable one (x/x/x/) - well, that's the intended ryhthm at least. When read out loud I very much like their flow and how it contrasts with the more uniform final line, but my writing alone doesn't really do a good job of capturing that. And not just cause I'm entirely inconsistent on the second syllable.
Maybe I should've split each line into three.
I reused the structure from a poem I once wrote where the rule of three was a big thing, so there was supposed to be a third stanza but I didn't really find enough to say to fill it. Not without it feeling like filler material. Adding more lines anyway might've been similar to what's already there, also might've helped communicate my idea though.
Thank you so much for always sharing your impression and analysis!