REST ON THE WAY TO EGYPT

[sour herald]

Rest here now, where dark earth envelops you.
Babe plays by the flame, Ass is bronzely lit.
With tired eyes and aching bones you sit
Beneath thatch and thistle to rest anew,
For strifeful days await to singe and hew
Your soul, your skin, your will, and every bit
Is writ for the babe to one day transmit
Through the bent knees gathered ‘round his fescue.

Wake now from your hazy dream you Joseph!
You’ve been called to Egypt, called to suffer
As you wander, beyond this sheltered fire,
From Manger to manger. Seek your Aleph!
Your silent master! Your Always-Better!
Whistling through dark nature you hear temptation’s Lyre.

(sort of an experiment with the petrarchan sonnet, stuck to the rhyme scheme but not really Iambic meter. The you before Joseph is intended to identify the reader with Joseph. The first capital Manger is on purpose to differentiate the holy manger with other mangers. A fesucue is "a small pointer (such as a stick) used to point out letters to children learning to read", in ancient times it was used to draw the letters in the dirt.)

[tiny shuttle]

Is writ for the babe to one day transmit , spelling mistake

great rhymes

loved it

[rocky blaze]

First of all, is it supposed to be "your always better!" or you're?

[sour herald]

Thank you so much for the feedback, but I'm sorry I don't see the spelling error 😅 can you point it out for me please?

[rocky blaze]

anyways I'm currently skimming thru the poem

[tiny shuttle]

do not be sorry it is your poem, you rule it , we suggest

[sour herald]

it is your on purpose, as in his eternal better, since the aleph is God but also simultaneously his child (Jesus)

[sour herald]

I wanted the always better line to be a hint of doubt before the temptation of the last line. Since the common adage is that "everyone has a master", to bend to a master is to bend to a better. So that is where temptation to break away comes in, if that makes sense.

[rocky blaze]

I'll go for harsh criticism based on the tag, although I like the theme and I wish you a happy (belated) Easter

[sour herald]

go for it! I'd love harsh criticism, it's how one grows as a writer

[sour herald]

Haha thank you for the wishes, but my Easter is the coming Sunday so you're quite early 😅

[rocky blaze]

I'll try to keep it into a long string of a message:

The first and the strongest flaw, and the one I've noticed early, is the 2nd half of the line:

Your silent master! Your always better!

I will address the grammatical errors first:

If "better" is an adjective then it is obviously grammatically incorrect, but based on your comment earlier, the word is a noun. I would prefer to capitalize that to prevent confusion.

A possessive pronoun, such as" your", needs to directly modify a noun or noun phrase. However, the word is immediately followed by the adverb "always", which results in a syntactic error due to these 2 reasons:

1. Always is not an adjective, but rather an adverb, so it strictly needs to be used as a modifier for verbs and adjectives.
2. The possessive pronoun expects a noun (or noun phrase beside it), but "Always better" is not a proper noun phrase because of reason # 1.

I would recommend the phrase "Your eternal better".

There is also the "jarring" factor, and this feedback is solely based on the "feels", but as the preceding lines before the sestet are full clauses, the line feels more like a jolt and caught me off guard (because they are fragmented i.e. w/o a verb).

To make the line flow smoothly, consider connecting stanza 2 line 5 to stanza 2 line 4 "From Manger to manger. Seek your Aleph!", so the entire thing is one full sentence.

[rocky blaze]

oh, different denominations lmao, sorry for that

[rocky blaze]

I will edit this message until I'm done

[sour herald]

Hmmm this is really precise feedback! Thank you for the thought you always put into these!

[rocky blaze]

actually this is the only major flaw I can find

other "flaws" I can find are again, just nitpicks

[rocky blaze]

For my suggestion I would probably write:

From Manger to manger, seek the Aleph:
The silent master; ever your better

as somewhat of a shameless reference

[sour herald]

Ooooh, I like ever your better as well

[sour herald]

Maybe I could change it to 'Always-Better' as a compound noun because it is in reference to a divine entity. I'll definitely consider changing it but the reason I like always is because it sort of functions as a compression of "always better than you", there needs to be a hint of tension for the temptation to break away to work, in my opinion. Does that make sense? I'll definitely look into the sestet more, but the tension is kind of on purpose. He's commanded to sort of give himself away in service of a master (he famously never says a word in the bible).

But obviously something went wrong for the jarring effect to feel as though it doesn't fit so I definitely need to work on that

Thank you for pointing that out! It's much harder to gauge the feel of a poem when you're writing it

[sour herald]

what's the reference?

[rocky blaze]

the line I wrote

I don't like writing "replacement" or "reference" lines

as I did not write the poem and I do not have a right to

but I think not putting a reference would be a bit unclear

[rocky blaze]

that could also work

[sour herald]

Ah I see, I thought you meant a reference from the show shameless lol

[rocky blaze]

Anyways, this is quite a good read and also a fun time giving feedback to

[sour herald]

Thank you as always! You're seriously my savior when it comes to feedback, you actually always put in the time and effort 🙂

[rocky blaze]

you're welcome