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Flood
The orange heaven far beyond my vision
I wonder what these gentle waves hold
Take me to the center cold will you?
Where the sun blue melts through
As I look around
All the corners glaring in daylight
Every videotape replayed and refound
If they were real, would I deny?
Conversations, time seems to leave behind
Flowing
Bless this meatsack of a ship
Splashing
Still too far but there we go
Raining
Someone something, the distant shore will carry us
No worries, you can't make it either.
No worries, deep down there's an anchor.
No worries, it's just clean water.
Alrighty, thanks.
About This Poem
Style/Type: Free verse
Review Request Direction:
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Review Request Intensity: I appreciate moderate constructive criticism
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
2 months ago
Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem moves through a watery, dreamlike space with a confident sense of atmosphere, and its strongest moments come when the imagery turns unexpected. "The sun blue melts through" is a striking line precisely because it withholds easy sense; the inversion of "sun blue" forces a second reading, and the synesthetic blur of color and temperature does real work. Similarly, "Bless this meatsack of a ship" lands hard in a good way: the crude, bodily word "meatsack" cuts against the otherwise elevated register of waves and orange heaven, and that collision gives the line its life. The poem seems most alive when it lets the vocabulary clash like this.
The structural choice in the third stanza is worth noting as a success. Alternating the single present-participle words "Flowing," "Splashing," "Raining" with longer lines creates a tidal rhythm, a push and pull that enacts the water the poem describes. That formal mirroring of content is handled with a light touch.
Where the poem is less sure is in its abstractions. The second stanza leans on words that gesture toward meaning without grounding it: "corners glaring in daylight" is vivid, but "Conversations, time seems to leave behind" dissolves into statement, and "Every videotape replayed and refound" introduces a metaphor the rest of the poem does not develop. The videotape image suggests memory, surveillance, or regret, yet it appears once and vanishes. One actionable path would be to let that image recur or pay off later, so it reads as a deliberate thread rather than a passing comparison.
The closing stanza's repetition of "No worries" is doing tonal work, and the flatness of "Alrighty, thanks" is clearly an intended deflation. The risk is that the irony reads as a shrug that releases the poem's tension rather than complicating it. The three "No worries" lines each carry genuine unease beneath the reassurance, especially "deep down there's an anchor," which quietly reverses the comfort the phrase pretends to offer. The final "Alrighty, thanks" may undercut that hard-won ambivalence rather than sharpen it. Testing an ending that holds the discomfort a beat longer, rather than dismissing it, might let the anchor image resonate more.
One small clarity issue: "Take me to the center cold" is ambiguous in a way that may not be intentional, since "center cold" could be read as a compound or as "center" modified by a misplaced "cold." Adjusting the word order, or punctuating, would let the reader feel the strangeness as a choice rather than a stumble.
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winter
1 month 3 weeks ago
What a lovely piece!!🥰 btw…
What a lovely piece!!🥰 btw The ending feels like that moment you swallow your pain and just tell the world 'alrighty, thanks' because you're too exhausted to explain anymore- am I right?
kellustzall
1 month 3 weeks ago
Thank you!!
Id love to feel how you interpret the ending as "too exhausted to explain anymore", Id only imagine that would be a thrilling experience!! For me, though, it was a simple catchphrase my ex boyfriend said to me, and also, before he left for good. In fact, the last stanza was hazy fragments of his nonchalant sayings i somehow was able to assemble together into this weird water theme. Lovely to hear your perspective!!
winter
1 month 3 weeks ago
thanks for sharing the heart…
thanks for sharing the heart behind the piece. Its incredibly moving to know these were real fragments of speech and memory you brought together.
W. Barrett Munn
1 month 2 weeks ago
Flood of Thoughts
The first stanza is engaging and interesting. Unique ways of saying things.
"orange heaven beyond my vision"
"Take me to the center cold"
"the sun blue melts through"
These are all excellent and create curiosity as to where are we going.
That kind of abruptly ends with a tiny word: "In"
All the corners glaring in daylight
Matching the first stanza, isn't it better to say, "corners glaring daylight"?
Sometimes, though, you need to follow logic: First find, then replay.
The poet/critic Ezra Pound once told Eliot that there is no such thing as maybe. (not in poetry). I'd cut words like "seems". Better to boldly say, Conversations, time leaves behind.
Only when you are conversing with yourself, thinking in the poem as Shakespeare often wrote, do words like maybe, and seems, and possibly then apply.
The weakest part of the poem is the close. There is an interesting build up with curious things going on but the end is rather flat. I'd suggest trying to find a better final couple of lines. Maybe look at how Wallace Stevens ends The Snow Man or how James Wright ends "Lying on a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota".
Really a good start and interesting first 9/10ths.
Hope this is of value to you.
kellustzall
1 month 2 weeks ago
Wow, one couldn't ask for a…
Wow, one couldn't ask for a more proper review! I will swallow every single word you said! I love you already!
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