I live to see you smile.
You lived to see me frown.

That it?

__________________

why do you share stuff like this dude? its only value is emotional. theres not even enough TO critique, other than the fact that theres mild curiosity set up by the conflicting tenses (lived/live)

__________________

Well from just 2 lines you can get this:

A man and a woman in a relationship. The man obviously loves the woman "I live to se you smile." If she enjoys inflicting pain on him [mentally or emotionally] that obviously is what she likes. It's easy enough to say that what you like makes you smile. He see's her this way and can't bare to leave her because as much as she hurts him he is devoted that way, he keeps falling back in [hence the smile isn't EXACTLY literal]. Since this is in first person, he says that he is living, and that she lived. You might want to put it together and say that he had had enough of the perpetual cycle and killed her. I did forget one line though [Posted: Today, 01:10 AM] it was late and I was tired. The line might clear confusion about why someone with such a love to go back to someone that is only hurting him would kill her. It should look like this:

Looking at your photo.
I live to see you smile.
You lived to see me frown.

Theres alot to gather from things like these you just have to think about them man dont take things so literally and shit thats why all my pieces are so small they are full of metaphorical imagery mostly.

The point of poetry is to charge as few words with as much meaning as possible. A lot of Infinity's, and as far as I can see all of everybody else on here's, attempts at this fail, but minimalism's always a valid goal.

minimalism is A point, not THE point


infinity that photo line totally changes around the whole thing. think about if youd want that included or not, that immediately throws it into dead guy staring at his gf territory

__________________

I didn't say minimalism was THE point. I said the point was to charge as much meaning into as few words. That doesn't define minimalism; minimalism's just a valid path towards this, and one worth pursuing. There are others. Hence why I called minimalism 'a valid goal,' and not 'THE point of poetry.' But if you don't see poetry as essentially terse I think there's a problem.

Wrong, poetry isn't essentially terse.

Well i'm not attuned enough to the aspects of poetry to come up with some crazy opinion of it, but I liked it, personally. Without the first line, it leaves more to the imagination as to why the use of the past tense "lived." With the first line it puts more into place.

And I don't like long poems, I'm not much of a reader, so I like the short and quick ones that people put out around here.

__________________

Awesome man if you do like this maybe you should read some others they are all like this with the exception of about, 3, lol.

You and your bro both are good writers, wally, you should write and post something. Maybe Infinity's short sweet style can fuel something lyrically for you, too.

__________________

I burned all my old shit. Bad memories that I didn't want. Haven't written in years, and I don't have too much desire to...

Infinity: I have read a few of the things you posted, most of the time I don't comment because it's kinda useless getting a plethora of "Hey this is good" since I can't offer a whole lot of advice on structural improvement or anything like that. But maybe I will a bit more often.

__________________

Nah, poetry's essentially terse. Even epics are.