Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.

SEVENTY-TWO

AT SEVENTY-TWO

The days are flashing by
like strikes of blinding sunlight.
The past comes to me in vignettes
of sixteen millimeterr
slow motion in black and white
surreal
ghosts frozen in time.
and I agonize
with the years passing.

Editing stage: 

Comments

Hi,

Twilight Zone fan? Either way, it's a good reference. Anyway, just on the minor: it's sixteen millimeter. With that aside, it's good you don't create your lines with just structured sentences, rather broken to highlight certain words. I usually try to stay away from using insignificant words at the beginning of my lines unless it's an anacrostic and I have no other options.

"surreal", I think, is right where it should be. It's like a definitive focal point of how you feel while you write this. Sometimes it's not just about what words you use or how you use them... where you position them is also important too.

"likes strikes of blinding sunlight", this would be a perfect opportunity to use a metaphor rather than a simile. They're more powerful and they don't come across cheesy if used in the wrong context.

I'd like to know more about these images that come to you, maybe personify some of them with texture and shade. Like, "the penetrating persistent clicking of the ominous oak grandfather clock inside my tortured soul."

Know how you feel, as I is 72, but we have the edge on the others, they cant say where they will be in another 10 years or so lol,
Maybe I can't say either but it's a fun idea not knowing.
Your writes are slowly moving away from the absolute problems of before, now you are moving faster and looking more at your surroundings the good ones.
Take care young traveller we have a way to go yet, if you catch the first train I shall probably be on the second.
If so be there with a good cup of tea,
Yours as always Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

well, I hope to see you on the other side,I take sugar and cream.

joe

author comment

since passed 3 years 11 months
I have observed how you have taught us
to fear of illness avert

thy sense of health/// ill-health!
reigns supreme
to become one like you
will for ever remain a dream
why only for me
any one can see
the blue eyes of poetry
that now makes us all
now feel wee

and
that
we all do see
tc.....

What an encouraging comment, dear friend !

author comment

humour and encourage only
poetry is secondary

Yes, but poetry is the soul and you see that.

author comment

That those we meet can only say good things about us is the fulfilment of a dream state.
Now we are older there are many things we need to judge ourselves for having done.
Still to fear the next stage of our journey, it is natural for us to do so, but with the friends I have on many plains I switch my lights on when going through a tunnel then the great light at the end is not so fearful, Yours Ian.T

.
There are a million reasons to believe in yourself,
So find more reasons to believe in others..

It is not courage or valor that pushes me on it is the sounds of living
that keep me bound to life..But I begin to think there are worse things than death, The horror of my disease and having to deal with myself alone make the days unbearable.. But I am here and here I stay until I am here no longer.

Christ have mercy.

author comment

THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR
ONCE YOU ENTER THE TUNNEL
the exit is quite clear
out you may come alive still my dear
else ride a bier
who can that say
ask the stars of heaven
when with a torchlight I am about
and the Thames calls without an iota of doubt

O bard where art thou
Shakespeare is missing thee
of that have no doubt
just be about

The moon may smile again
it may rain
but life can never be given ever again

so step out in the open
the end of the tunnel
we are about to reach
who about darkness and light
can us teach

you are one Ian
I am none

Yep it becomes ever accelerating flashes of days doesn't it? But better another flash that the end of light...........stan

The horses are out of the gate running wild. Nothing can stop them now.

Thanks,my friend.

Joe

author comment
(c) Neopoet.com. No copyright is claimed by Neopoet to original member content.