Can someone finish this for me

sachinc

Battered face and old grey eyes
No muscle left on withered thighs
With white limp hair, and tortured palms
The lost remains of long lost arms

Even when I knew you
I was seen but never known
I never seemed to care and
Slipped away, you stayed unknown

I need someone's help to finish this

Jeanie

sachinc wrote:

I need someone's help to finish this

What else do you have to say?


Explain why maybe? Why is she withered?

Grasshopper

The first part is really good, its like you had a short burst of inspiration and then you were kind of reaching on the second part...(happens to me almost everytime I write).. Put it away for a rainy day and then out of nowhere it will come to you just like the original Idea. Don't push it...if your not feeling it.

grooveamatic

This is your poem, in it's entirety:

Battered face and old grey eyes,
No muscle left on withered thighs
With white limp hair, and tortured palms
The lost remains of long lost arms.

justam

grooveamatic wrote:

This is your poem, in it's entirety:

Battered face and old grey eyes,
No muscle left on withered thighs
With white limp hair, and tortured palms
The lost remains of long lost arms.

sachinc, I think grooveamatic has good advice. This sounds better without the other part.

Grasshopper

I agree that it sounds better like that....but if it feels incomplete to the writer I feel that there's more that needs to be said...but then again the biggest knock on me is that I talk too much

writersu

I ache for all my heart has missed
My dreams have colored you so
You are not lacking anything there
Where my eyes are closed and yet so clear.

beebalmdancer

sachinc wrote:

Battered face and old grey eyes
No muscle left on withered thighs
With white limp hair, and tortured palms
The lost remains of long lost arms

Even when I knew you
I was seen but never known
I never seemed to care and
Slipped away, you stayed unknown

I need someone's help to finish this

The lost remains of long lost arms
Forgotten heart, fadded charms
you stayed unknown, but I pray
not unloved, I long for you til this day

beebalmdancer

Battered face and old grey eyes
No muscle left on withered thighs
With white limp hair, tortured palms
The lost remains of long lost arms

Just as I knew you long ago
I was seen but never known
I never seemed to care and
Slipped away, you stayed unknown

The lost remains of long lost arms
Forgotten heart, faded charms
You stayed unknown, but I pray
You felt my love everyday

beebalmdancer

Each line is either 8 or 7 syllables with the last line of the poem being both (everyday is both 8 and 7 syllables -- say it both ways at the end) to make 87|78.) The first stanza is captured in the last stanza through both the rhyming pattern and the repetition of the "arms" line. The 2nd stanza is captured in the last stanza by the pattern of the 8,7,7,8 syllable line pattern and the "stayed unknown" line. In doing so it represents the fact that life carries on but remains the same and intertwines.

The "arms" lines are surrounding the present -- guarding (arms as weaponry keeping the narrator and the subject apart) yet embracing (arms as body parts) it. The first stanza is the present. The middle stanza is the past intertwining and separating from the past, and the last stanza circles back to the present but captures the past in the last line, which is the line that brings the entire poem and meaning together.

I felt this was a poem about someone who loved someone else and never got to be with that person, and who has come back to find that person old. The narrator still loves this person but feels the arms that long ago should have been an embrace have always been guards keeping him away. Now these embracing arms will never surround the narrator and the subject of the poem and the narrator will part again as had happened in the past. The love will never be in the open; but, hopefully, always known to both the subject as well as to the narrator.

I wasn't sure if 87|78 should be the year they met or the age of the subject or both -- met in 87 and the subject is 78 or met in 78 and the subject is 87.

Hope this didn't kill the poem for anyone or make anyone think, wow, that chick is crazy

beebalmdancer wrote:

Battered face and old grey eyes
No muscle left on withered thighs
With white limp hair, tortured palms
The lost remains of long lost arms

Just as I knew you long ago
I was seen but never known
I never seemed to care and
Slipped away, you stayed unknown

The lost remains of long lost arms
Forgotten heart, faded charms
You stayed unknown, but I pray
You felt my love everyday

beebalmdancer

sachinc, I probably overdid it I think I highjacked your poem a little What did you mean with your poem? BTW -- I liked it a lot the way you wrote it -- so much so that I kept thinking about -- a little too much I'm afraid to say.