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Late Night Drinks with the Queen of the Universe.

A late night soiree with silence and sternness and silk-laced shoes
and me,
of course,
and you.

Pupils hold pixels thrown from silver screens;
that dance across the pine-wood floors.
We listen to whispered recipes
to turn clay back into gold.

Canned laughter, flood lights,
perpetually happy crowds.
But no-one's seething still.

Yet through it all, through all of it
this second-hand, second-rate youth
we'll continue to pause in moments and wonder
if not yet, when it'll all get good.

What else could we possibly do?

Last few words: 
I'm very tired. There are probably mistakes in this but it's the product of three days of work so it isn't something I just whipped up. Thanks for giving it a read, all feedback highly appreciated :).
Editing stage: 

Comments

I like your poem, although I don't really think I understand a lot of the logic. The idea of the title introduces us to a somewhat surreal setup. There is a HE, I assume some god who cloaks your apparently imaginary night companion with infinity- after he/it asked a question which we do not know... I'm missing the gist.
Then at the end the work becomes very real using very good repeats and cadences, and really poses a very strong poetic moment:

And through and through and through it all
this second-hand, second-rate youth,
I dream of having made perfect choices
and lived the perfect life.

'How boring."
HE says, sensing my shift in tone.
"Seriously, that's really the person you want to become?"

A decade on, and I'm still not quite sure.

(The line "and through..." is not a sentence and have a comma, not a period. And here I would cap HE. )

You clearly have a poetic object in mind, something I sense is there but not made cohesive enough for me in the logic of the first part of the poem. Three days is both a lot of time on a poem, and not so much time, and as you write and re-write it's like carving a stone and new ideas emerge. It takes a time to see which work and which need to be saved for another poem. I can sense the "suffering" you went through to get this down, scratching words and ideas with others. But the end part is so strong I would very much focus on that, and try to connect the other ideas with that very strong finish about your youth, your dreams, and the nice way you express the uncertainty of how you define your life at this time.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

This is actually the first draft, I had the final one ready to go last night and forgot to post it and now it's gone :(. I'm going to do some work on it today but I absolutely agree with the points and that's what I was trying to fix. Thanks for the feedback and giving it a read,

Nicholas.

author comment

You've painted a dark and decadent image here. I really love it. I want to pick out some of my favorite bits:

"scour pixels beamed from silver screens"
"canned laughter"
"multi-dimensional seance on Sunday"
"I dream of having made perfect choices
and lived the perfect life.
'How boring."

I just love hyphenated words and dialog in poetry and mixing really long lines with really short ones.

My one point of confusion occurs because the title refers to a Queen, but the only gendered person in the poem that we get is a "he". It seems like the narrator is talking to this "he", so does that mean the narrator is the Queen? If so, it seems almost like it is her who wishes she had a perfect life. Does the Queen of the Universe feel like she hasn't lived her best life? Or is it the narrator telling the Queen to talk to a separate "he" (the multi-dimensional seance?). I think it is just me mixing things up, so a little clarification would mean a lot.

Take care,
Kelsey

Critique, don't comment.

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I've updated the poem to the draft that was supposed to be the posted version. My titles are generally the weakest parts of my poetry, and this piece as a whole is still not done yet. But I can hopefully answer some of your questions. The Queen doesn't exist. It's an idea. An ideal. Just as I believed Queens were. These humans made magnificent. I personally still struggle with the absurdist worldview I hold, I believe we may be primed to find comfort in the belief of things that are larger than life. I'm barely on the cusp on what we refer to as "adult-hood" and I guess this is an expression of my cynicism towards it all. Thanks for the read,

Nicholas.

author comment

there are a billion folks about
how can ONE satisfy all
O poet just be happy
u have achieved
a great deal
all can see

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