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Jul 07, 2026
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NIGHTS OF MY YOUTH.
Ah! Those nights, those summer nights.
Beaches were warm, gibbous moon shone bright
My friends and I with girls we knew
Spent nights ‘neath stars till morning’s dew.
Sweet girls they were, soft to the touch,
Kisses to make the heart sing, to clutch
Skin, satin smooth that glistened through the night,
Salt sweat on tongue made love seem right.
Bodies that writhed and lifted and thrust
Seeking to find, as all creatures must,
Pure ecstasy as the wind on waves
Then sank to the sand, loves sated slaves.
Oh Yes!, I remember those summer nights
Love offered, accepted, till morning light.
No body was hurt, no demands were made,
Close friendships grew; some would never fade.
— Alex Tanner, Jul 07, 2026
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About This Poem
Review Request Intensity: I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing Stage: Polished draft
Critiques
neopoet
1 week 2 days ago
Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The poem works most convincingly when it grounds nostalgia in physical detail. Phrases like "Salt sweat on tongue" and "sank to the sand" carry the sensory specificity that memory poems depend on; the salt in particular does double duty, evoking sea, sweat, and tears at once without straining. The recurring frame of night giving way to "morning's dew" and "morning light" gives the four stanzas a coherent arc, moving from arrival through consummation to reflection, and the final stanza's turn toward friendship rather than mere sensation offers a gentler landing than the opening might predict.
The chief obstacle to that effect is the reliance on ready-made phrasing. "Make the heart sing," "pure ecstasy," and "sated slaves" reach for feeling through inherited language rather than the particular observation the poem is otherwise capable of. Where "salt sweat on tongue" shows something seen and tasted, "pure ecstasy" only names an abstraction, and the contrast makes the abstractions feel thinner. One route forward would be to trust the concrete images already present and let them carry the emotion, cutting the summarizing phrases that tell the reader what to feel.
The meter is largely iambic but wavers in ways that seem unintended rather than expressive. The third line of the second stanza, "Skin, satin smooth that glistened through the night," runs long against its neighbors, and "Bodies that writhed and lifted and thrust" stacks stresses in a way that stumbles. Reading the lines aloud and marking where the beat falls would help identify which variations serve the sense and which simply trip it.
Two smaller matters: "throgh" in the third stanza appears to be a typo for "through," and the exclamatory openings, "Ah!" and "Dear Lord!", risk overselling emotion the images can convey on their own. Restraint in those two spots would let the remembered scene speak more directly.
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