By Dennis Harrsch
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we swim in a pool of fish
in our backyard beneath lamps
and are lonely,
screaming at skeletons,
asking for Liberty and Freedom
and shoving our throats full of mouse bones
until some splinter and we cough
under empty flaming eyes
& we fly on little wings into sunsets
and burn our feathered bodies
in blues music, jazz rhythms
until we exist again
& we watch cinema screens
with macabre cartoons
playing in the background
We laugh in their bluish light because
they portray the moon as eternally Full,
like we do ourselves
& we see Ourselves on the screen
in the parisian couple
who laugh under fake starlight
& on the street vendors caress their
goods, turn on twilight spotlights,
grasp at passerby
They take their elbow and dig in with sharpened ring finger
until a thin trickle of blood runs
It will show the way back to the stand come tomorrow
& the passerby take the goods,
and carry in their pocket a golden rat trap
If they don’t lay it they will pawn it off again
and buy another tomorrow
& we walk along the asphalt streets
under the high rise dark roots
that grow until they consume everything
including our sight
& we no longer notice that the trees
in the cement sidewalk are dead
and the leaves piled around their stumps
are ugly and gray.
Critique
You do a great job of getting a lot of perceptual elements out of these scenes. However, the images in the first half of the poem come rapid-fire, one after another in a way that doesn’t allow the reader to catch their breath and that doesn’t appear to have a clear purpose in the larger context of the piece. This first, rapid-fire half (up until "we see Ourselves…") contrasts sharply with the slowness of the last half in a way that makes the overall poem feel somewhat disjointed. I’d recommend choosing one of those halves and going full throttle with it, either focusing on the “hit you in the face” montage and the perceptual experience of reading that (as well as figuring out why you'd want the images to be “hit you in the face” ) or on the walk through Paris streets.
The second half ends somewhat abruptly, and the change of tone in the last four lines is unexpected and introduced so near the end of the poem that the reader does not have time to adjust to it before the piece finishes. I’d recommend asking yourself why you need that tone change, what purpose it serves, and how that purpose could be incorporated more explicitly in the poem.