[oats]

Soulstice:
the rhyming was crisp, and the writing was rhythmic and fluid, so on pure aesthetics this was a fun read no doubt. But I had some pretty inconsolable clarity issues. I think your knack for detailed descriptions hurt you here, it just became overbearing and difficult to piece together. In a vacuum, each stanza made sense, but it could have really benefitted by some concrete action, or even narration, to ground me in the actual goings on of the story. Apologies, because I read this last night, and now again in the morning, and I still only have a vague idea of what is going on. Perhaps it simply requires more time to chew on mentally, but this didn't work for me.

Buddha:
there is a lot going on here. your subject matter is overly academic circa philosophy 101 class, and while I don't mind that angle per se, I felt this was much to expository to really have an impact. That being said, you did bring up a lot of intriguing issues and ideas, some of which were new to me, and I appreciated coming across them. The verse was long, though, to the point that, at the end, the final salvo of addressing the reader directly lost a lot of steam, whereas the technique could have worked much better with a more succinct piece imo. It just felt a bit redundant.

Vote: Unborn. Sorry for the brisk breakdown, but even though his writing wasn't nearly on the level of Soul's, I felt his execution was more successful, and the ideas were interesting enough to tip the scales in his favor.