the boy

[misspeltyouth]

The boy stood shivering slightly in the cold wind as he stared out at the cars passing quickly beneath the bridge. He was tired and it had taken all the energy he could muster to get this far. He was tired of constantly fighting his past mistakes, no longer up to the task of struggling through an uncertain future with the deadweight of a thousand misdemeanours shackled to his aching ankles, tired of having to fight tooth and nail for each worthless advance he made and of having to live constantly on his toes, never sure when he would ever earn the right to an elusive respite. Tired of the line always being pushed further back as he was about to finish. Tired of never knowing what it was he was fighting for. His pale eyes observed the traffic blazing crimson and gold against the thick night and in the distance he could see the flickering campfires beckoning him to return to a town which he could never call home, to return to the pack and relate his tales of woe and regroup himself, regain his strength and composure for the struggles to come, solving problems with cups of tea and featherweighted platitudes. The wind picked up and blew his hair into his eyes. Without adjusting it he stepped out over the edge and into the red.

[*Sticks2UrFace*]

I like your descriptions however I feel as If the story is going no where, am I meant to feel like I'm being made to wait? Perhaps some more descriptions of the boy, facials expressions or something like that. I like your metaphors describing the traffic, I can certainly see that.
Although one thing that does bug me is the leap from reality to his thoughts/feelings, it seems abit too daunting (hope I spelt that right).
Not bad though, keep up with your writing and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

xx Louise xx

[sam]

Sticks2UrFace*, in what way do you feel you are being made to wait? Unless I am way off the mark, it ends quite dramatically. The only thing left to wait for is a slow procession and the final lowering.

I really enjoyed this post, it ran fluently to its end and was complete. A strange comment but I hope you understand what I mean.

Sam

[pseud]

Maybe it's just me, but this seems to be an end, not a beginning, of a work. There could be many events to describe that led up to this. Instead of referring to "mistakes" you could then refer to actual events that the reader remembers.

It could be a beginning too, I suppose, if you did a Tale of Genji sort of thing. "Life after the boy."

Either way it would be fitting to include this in something bigger, I think.

[pb]

Sticks2urface,

Just because it's prose, it doesn't need to have some sort of 'storylike' teleological progression, it's as simple as that. This is, to me, a very effective post, both technically - great use of punctuation and sentence length to add to the desperation of the tone - and in content - through an almost a Joycean psychological realism.

I also agree with Sam that the passage has a pleasing aura of completeness. Whatever happened to the prose poem, pseud? Only the quality of the writing would make me wish it was part of something larger, not anything lacking in the piece as it stands.

pb

[pseud]

peeb: can't argue. good point.

[*Sticks2UrFace*]

It seems as if I may have offended some of the readers of this piece. I do admit that I look at prose in a very blunt way, however I am very inexperienced and only have been writing and analysing poetry for a year or so. Hopefully I will become more open-minded at university.

[pseud]

I doubt anyone was offended, some merely disagree.