Rewrite! (First Post for feedback yay)

[Todd]

Hello and welcome to the site! Okay so you're looking to merge these. Let me see if I can help you with that and give you some other feedback.

Merging ideas: The Aubade/Crayons poem is where you deal with the death.  The Michael elements that you blend in probably should deal with the speaker's conflicted or unrealized relationship and nothing more.

I'm not going to attempt the merge here. I'll just pare both down to their essentials as I see it with some commentary. If this was in Serious I'd probably give you a line by line. In this case, I'm simply going to show cuts and deal with it in chunks.

I have two pieces that are related and I need some input on how to merge them. Thank you!
~~~

Michael

I put you on a pedestal even Gods wouldn't reach.
Now you're gone and I have just a few memories
of when you wooed me with your silly smile
your musical charm and every time I said yes--These lines conceptually belong here, because they are the relationship not the event. Silly smile and musical charm though need to be drawn out more with imagery to make them more than shorthand tags. They convey emotional power in their present form.
to your beer night I meant yes to wanting you.--My first line of this poem as a stand alone might start with every on the line above and include this line (probably need to have a break in there somewhere. This is the first line of interest.
But you didn't date friends, like my senior prom date
and now you're gone, asleep forever--asleep is a pretty common way to describe death. I'd try stretching yourself a bit.
torn from my life without warning--Just repeats without adding much.
leaving me wondering who you really were
and why I didn't know your faults
or maybe I just ignored them.--So these last lines imply there really was warning and he did himself in by his lifestyle, or depression, or something.

I'm wondering if you really want your takeaway to be how did I miss the signs, as opposed to, if there was an us would it have made a difference. I get both possibilities from this. 


The piece is asking for more imagery, and a bit more focus in my opinion.
~~~

Aubade After "Box of Crayons"--is box a crayons multicolor shot drinking event? (that's what I took but I'm starting to lose my cultural reference points. An Aubade may be overstating the relationship between the speaker and Michael. I like the idea of an aubade. I haven't got departed lover from this though.

Lots of crying, lots of laughing, lots of healing,
Seventeen at Dan's house,
another twelve online - --This part doesn't draw me in.

we take turns offering memories of you.--This could be an opening line
Clay K threw some glasses to shoot the
Black Label in your honor. Passing the glass
like we did so long ago.--This could all be pared down without losing much

6am internal clock woke me from deep sleep - too deep
to dream. But you crept in like you always did
wooing with your memory, sweet-talking
with a shot of Jack until I woke to the truth.--This could be much more imagery driven. This is a marble block of words needing to be chipped away at to have any punch to it.

The sun was breaking through the snow clouds,
Dan was shoveling the walk and I remembered--These two lines have promise. If you're going to have an expansive long line style that is trying for prose poetry. This is closer to what you need.

we weren't twenty again,
you were really gone
singing off-key with the blue jays
that left a mess on my windshield.--I think you can work with this ending. If the cause of death was a car accident than this has a good sense of completion. You may need one or two other very subtle touchpoints earlier to give it the resonance it needs.

Just some thoughts, I hope they help some.

Best,

Todd