All Comments on 'a walk on the path'

What I like:

How you have used rhyme selectively: it's there but without a set pattern

The careful use of color throughout the poem - echoing the image of fading graffiti

the use of "that" at the end of the last two stanzas to tie them together and keep the rhythm.

Two questions/ issues:

1) when we were /the young dipshits of summer: why THE young dipshits? It sounds like a rock band. Unless that was your intent - I don't know how old you are but I vaguely remember an 80s song about the some group of summer.

2) fucking pink fucking pink : I don't think you need this line. It comes across as something done just for the shock factor. I read it without and it's just as good. But you may have a reason. Maybe even related to the young dipshit thing :) In any case - very well done.

but end up in different destinations, TK U MLJ LV NV

overall I think you have done an excellent job of telling an evocative story with some very challenging wordplay.

I do not like "turnt burnt." I'd be inclined to slip the "orange" between them instead of after. Why am I pausing over that bit of awkwardness? I'm not sure.

Ditto on the "where" in S4L2. I want it to be "were." Maybe it's just a typo because I don't see the point of the semantic shift if I read it as written

What you've done beautifully though is to weave the narrative--it's just a walk past some graffiti on a bridge, but it's also a window into a past that conveys a lot with very few well-chosen words. And it has some dialogue and frame of reference stuff (like Krylon, for example) that give it a distinctive voice.

Mostly though I want to know what was your system for writing it? Did you just write it or was there a plan, even if one you just exercised in the edit stage.

An easy 5, anyway. :-)

I usually don't put a title to my comments, but Damn! if this didn't remind of my nasty Jersey boy alter ego. The first stanza's outstanding, and grabs your attention. My teenage daughter who'd notice the insidious spider would have shrieked.

I would have capitalized billy, and I like punctuation apparently more than you do. I also would have written "coming back pink/fucking pink fucking pink. It made me think of the sarcastic macho males I grew up with, and it has a cadence for me similar to the rest of the poem, which is fast before the cops come.

"white clouds tinted with gray" brings me back to nature. The contrast with graffiti, essentially urban, isn't lost on me.

However, LY escaped me at first. Wait! It's what's left of BILLY. Poetry's the joy of discovery, the poet once said.

In spite of the quibbles, it's an "E" in my book.

a walk on the path

first off, the title leads in the 'path less traveled' direction; by the time you've walked us back down it into memory rather than towards the future, in my head it feels like a mirror across the path, reflecting... so this becomes a title about a poem about reflections.

the goldenrod have turnt burnt orange

choke cherries crowd the tiny path

rent by misspent webs spun

by spiders of intent

personally, i enjoyed the 'turnt burnt' as it speaks with character and reflects something of where the narrator's coming from. you crowd colour, form, and texture into this strophe, and the alliteration/assonance lends itself so well - the harsh 'ch' of 'choke cherries' is a sound that blends well with the 't's, creating a residue of 'tch' that is further softened by the sibilance of 'goldenrod/miss/webs/spun' - but you create a sound trail so neatly with those inner rhymes of 'urn', the soft 'o's in 'rod' and 'orange', the 'r's running throughout and, of course, the 'rent/spent/tent', that the whole is as neatly wrapped as a terry's chocolate orange.

on the bridge the boards are now rotten

but graffiti artists have not forgotten

this forsaken place

sprayed a face of mickey mouse

again, your use of sound is refined, but the visuals here add the surprise we weren't expecting - a time-slip where the past and not-so-distant past overlap, exist in the same physical space if not the same time-frame. i appreciate how the soft 'o's are carried on, the hard 't's are mostly replaced by the softened 'tt's, but the brightness of the newer mickey face is underlined using the in-your-face louder 'A's.

ah so billy how have you been

the mouse face covers half your name

ah the fleetingness of fame

the 'ah so' here makes me think of kids, or teenagers, back in the 70's and that thing about making your eyes go slitty by pulling either side with a finger and thinking you sounded oriental but with no conscious racism implied. so, again, for me this feels as if you are playing with time-frames, staring into the mirror back down the path - being that lad again - and then commenting from the present/adult viewpoint with 'ah the fleetingness of fame'. it's a cynical, maybe even jaded, expression that measures the gap between youth and adulthood, and allows us to wonder about the changes experience and the passing years have made to the narrator.

the visual of the face half-covering the name is absolutely sharp, and you link us to the previous strophe with the 'b' of billy, the continuation of the bright A's and 'f's, whilst introducing the drawn-out double 'e's.

do you remember

when we where the young

dipshits of summer

artistes of white trash

krylon cans in our hands

hmmmn... it might be a typo; i see it as akin to the 'turnt burnt', so it's a spelling of how the N-character pronounced it... NOT sounding as we'd pronounce 'where' but like 'were' but with the addition of a (countryboy/kansas?) 'h' ... sort of a 'w-her' if that makes any sense other than in my head.

'dipshits of summer' feels almost a fondness which contrasts nicely with the hard 't' in 'white' - a hard sound for a more judgemental label, 'artistes' a very honest look into the ego, a teenaged pose, a strut, a belief ... again with the sibilance, the internal rhyming, whilst 'krylon' reinforces the time-period.

you were an asshole

even back then

taking the money

coming back with pink

fucking pink fucking pink

now how fucking cool was that

the reps work for me. absolutely. i can hear, no - more than just hear - i can SEE the exchange, and i can hear as well as see the smile on the N's face now, reflecting back.

such a beautiful day today

white clouds tinted with gray

and larger than your life

in four foot letters on the old railroad bridge

LY

in decrepit albino flesh

so nice to remember

you like that

now here is where i get myself confused: ok, the sounds are wonderful, again - you neatly tie up all the major sound work of this write in this last S, the hard t's, bright A's,the l's, r's, f's, drawn-out ee's and the s's. where i'm getting a bit confused is the message. what i want to take from this is the N's remembering (with a certain fondness) someone they hung out with as kids and being glad about that. what i am not sure about, and perhaps it'll clarify itself as i reread, is whether this person from their past died young (4' not being that tall, and the use of 'fleeting' eariner) or that they grew up but became such an 'asshole' as an adult that their existence now is judged small by the N, who prefers to think of them in better times. the 'decrepit albino flesh' seems to speak of substance abuse, but also makes me think of death. so perhaps none of that matters at all, the journey is what matters, and where our thoughts take us. we all end up dead.

overall, first glance this might appear fairly simplistic language, nuttin' fancy there, but it is the 100 percent correct way of writing this piece, as it speaks of who they were whilst employing considerable skill soundwise to relate the tale. but that doesn't allow itself to get in the way, forming, instead, the entire structure on which the tale is hung. you might not appreciate me saying what i am about to say, but this whole write reminds me of how stephen king fleshes out his characters, by colouring them with sound, allowing them to express themselves as themselves.

oh, by the way - i kinda liked this.

I missed your poem in the rush to splatter my own over the pages of Lit

BEAUTIFUL ...glad my comments are hidden here in antiquity and the bowels of the Porcelain Altar... here are my own humble suggestions that will remove all rhyme from the work but not diminish it

..

but graffiti artists will not forsake

this forgotten place

.....

such a beautiful day this

white clouds tinted with gray

You definitely hit the mark with this one, "armed with a spray can soul"!

:)

reinvested... not the right word according to bing