Alone in the dark

[tectak]

We are open season for terse verse and I am terrified.

I think your definition of "terse" differs quite a bit from mine... just sayin'...

Dale, on re-reading post-coffee, I think you can do away with the first stanza entirely.

No. We both use terse to mean sparse, pithy laconic. It doesn't change its meaning when put before "verse" but I left out the hyphen. In this piece dale hits the reader with short, sharp jabs..,almost every line has a point or two within. As Often is the case with dale I find it hard to take breath between the pummeling thoughts. The reason I used the terse verse criticism should have been more clearly tongue in cheek because the thing is terse per point but has too many points. I am up for killing off a few but remain unsure of the veracity of the piece. It changes things for me if true.
...just saying......
Best,
tectak