[Certain]

Cimmerian: One of my favorite elements to your writing is that you execute meter and cadence with such grace that your simplistic rhyming seems of no consequence. It’s nice and rare to be able to look straight past the caliber of rhyme scheme as an element of critique, allowing me to focus on the verse itself. This verse was a wonderful take on the circle of life. The focus on light sources and shimmering colors carried a thematic resonance throughout the verse. The cradle-to-the-grave concept has been done to death, though, and even though this was a particularly deft version of it, the verse simply lacked much in the way of substance and even attempting to say something new. The other element that fell short was that while the theme of the painting was the ticking clock until death, it did not match up with your choice of imagery very well. I look for verses that conjure the topic, so that I could immediately pick the topic out of a wide grouping of options. I’m not sure you hit the tone of the topic, even if you hit the purpose. However, it was a beautifully written verse with enough subtle twists and turns to create a full picture.

dead man: First, before I forget, I loved the Allen Iverson line. OK, with that said, I thought this verse was a nice change of pace that stayed within your normal writing style. You told a story pretty clearly and cleanly. You lingered too long on the drug references, to the point that you referred to pulling a string/rope twice. We get it. You mentioned seemingly every drug you could think of in some form, and it added a nice bit of atmosphere but also made the story more ambiguous. Throw away a few lines in that middle section, and you’ve got a crisper telling. The development of the father as hero was really the heart of this piece, and it perhaps was a bit simplified. We didn’t get a very complex view of dad, to understand his past and his frustrations. Much like Cimmerian, a lot of the content here was cliché, but the writing was great and carried it. The difference is that I think you captured the vibe and the theme of the topic better. The idea that time, not a person, was the thing that dies, was a pretty clever twist on things.

Vote: dead man