Dear Michael,
This is a significant poem. It is your best one yet; and it is excellent, in terms of rhythm, rhyme, diction, music, emotion, and meaning.
Like virtually any excellent poem, it offers multiple meanings and is capable of very different interpretatons.
I like how you used the words "outer limits" and "twilight zone" together. You have transformed the names of TV shows into meaningful and appropriate words for you poem. Also, you did this with the title of a book and a movie, with your phrase "green mile"--the meaning of which I know all too well: the last mile you walk before dying.
This is such a great poem. It stirs up all kinds of feelings in me. The language is delicious; I can taste it, it is so well-written.
Your rhyme scheme is complex--subtle in places--and euphonious (of beautiful sound). You also handle well allieration, assonance, and consonance, your skillful use of which adds to the euphony.
Music alone, no matter how beautiful, while it can make a very good and worthwhile powm, still does not alone make a great poem. This poem is great because you have melded the plesure of its music perfectly with rich, deep meanings--including some of the archetypes that stir and move in every human soul.
This poem is one of those wonderful surprises that I will print out and keep for frequent re-reading.
As I said before, it will have different meanings for different people; and even the same reader will find different meanings.
I have read a number of poems on Shine that were of high caliber. But this poem is especially well written. It is also especially meaninguful. Among its many possible interpretations, there are several that speak very personally to my heart, and stir my emotions both good and bad.
I see so much of my own life in this poem, including the end part of my life. Though it is too early, fate has placed me in that part of life's journey in which I am now "steady walking this green mile after all the miles I've flown."
And what a magnificent line precedes that line. I have never read (and believe me, I have read a LOT!) a better evocation of the paradox of experienced time--in which a few minutes can seem long, and yet many years can seem short--than your excellent expression: "In the minutes that took a while after while years were gone."
Now, Michael, let me tell you something that I say to many people who ask me what some poem I have written means. I tell them: "My opinion isn't very important. Your opinion is the one that counts. I am only the writer. You are the reader. You have to find the meaning that it has for you."
Then I might go on to say that I cannot tell anyone what my poem means. I can only tell them what I was TRYING to say. But, like you, I am a good poet--I'm not shy about that, certainly not in my current circumstances. And as I said, a good poet writes poems that say more--sometimes much more--than he or she intended to say.
And so it is with this poem of yours. If you think your poem here is only about a couple and how they match up and yet are kept apart, then you have forgotten that once you have handed your poem over to a reader, it is no longer just your poem (except copyright). Your rich spirit endowed this poem with much more than you consciously intended. This poem now belongs to my heart, and in my heart it is a large poem about life.
I could write a pamphlet or perhaps even a booklet or book about this poem, it speaks so meaningfully to me.
So, let me just discuss one other excellent rich line: "My reality wont condone what was written etched in stone."
What did you mean to say with this line? Is J. Montana guessing right, that this refers to a marriage contract or some other kind of contract that you want out of? Maybe, maybe not. Why don't you tell us what you intended to say?
But now let me tell you what you actually did say, whether you intended to or not. Let me tell you, that is, what your line says to me.
First of all, the word "condone" means "approve of" and often it means "morally approve of." To me, "my reality" means the person I am inside and all the values that I cherish, like life and love and honesty and courage and compassion.
But the world outside often does not respect or reflect my deep inner values. Whether it is people who are cruel, or nature that is cruel, I detest cruelty. I do not condone cruelty in people; and I do not condone earthquakes, quicksand bogs, and TseTse flies that bite people and give them the sleeping sickness. I do not condone a scheme of things in which large snakes swallow small mammels, whole and living, and slowly digest them to death.
But this rich line of yours has still another meaning for me. And that is, the idea that things may be fated or pre-determined, beyond our power to alter or escape. This idea is also expressed by the Rubaiyat in the line: "The first morning of creation wrote what the last dawn of reckoning shall read." This is saying (rightly or wrongly, I don't really know) that when the Cosmos began, all of our fates were contained already in that beginning, and have unfolded inexorably, just as they had to.
Back to your line and its meaning for me.
There are many things that my heart cannot condone. In my heart, "my reality won't condone" the terrible fates I have seen befall so mnay people. I certainly don't condone the fate that has befallen me! And my inner reality, my values, especially don't condone this fate, if it were written long before I was born, and set in stone as the fate that I must face.
Okay, like Spiderman would say: 'nuff said.
To finish: I sure hope you manage to get this poem published in a magazine or a book, or both. In the meantime, make copies and give them out. This poem could bring beauty and meaning to many people.
Congratulations, Michael. If you were not already there, then--with this poem--you now have entered into the pantheon of great poets.
Bye now.
--PoetWithCancer
aka Mr. Poet
