Black Ooze

[Todd]

Hi AckeleyP, welcome to the site! Let me try to give you some comments that might help you move this forward.

It's hard to place your meaning, but I think it's locked in the last line. Perhaps the idea of someone dealing with the monotony and conformity of the crowd. 

This is the first poem I have posted for critique, I look forward to hearing feedback.

Your line lengths and spacing between lines is a little all over the place, and while I like some of the imagery it doesn't feel connected and it doesn't build on itself well in my opinion. 

Black Ooze

He smiles scarred tracks on ice, cracks in the earth’s crust, cut into brown dust cheeks, protected in a barbed wire moustache.

Let's try looking at these lines a bit differently. Let me do a few minor adjustments.


His smile is a scarred track on ice,
cracks the earth's crust,
cut into brown dust cheeks,
protected by a barbed wire moustache.








by isolating His smile on the first line you draw attention to it. You imply that the smile is false. You do that in your longer line but it lacks emphasis. I would draw your attention to protected. I can see how that could be the right word. Confined also may be a good choice depending on your meaning.



Black treacle gathers in the skin cracks of his chin.

Tar dribbles at the sides of his mouth, strains onto his chest, madness circles into his nostrils, black smoke in his brain, a charred bird’s nest.

Be careful of words like madness. You're just telling us its there. Its too abstract of a concept to just convey without telling us. That's not as effective.  Also circling INTO the nostrils is hard to envision. Tie the concept directly to an image and than let the image convey the madness without having to say it directly.

His melted and burnt form, gritty grease gets caught in his teeth.

A caustic sour chemical tangles his mouth, his tongue, his hair. Hot melted black bin bag stretched over his forehead, mat shining plastic, boarded with a crusted smear of black gravel.

A caustic sour chemical has way way too many modifiers. Again find a way with fewer words to convey what you need to say. When you see this many modifiers it says you haven't figured out what the right words are. This actually reads as vague.

His tongue sinks in a thin pool of ink, bubbles on his teeth cause fierce pain under his ripped lips.

The skating smile from his hole razors through his face, slashed spirals, twirls, dots and blotches, deep stains through the skin’s soul.

A tearing of plate territory, violence cuts into features.

Fluid flows as charred lava inside his husk. It rides the slopes to his eyes. Through the veins of his white domes it soaks into his pupils, black clouds in dusked water.

His dead face, pleased of any sensation. Rotting clotting black, gushes out his portals.

The stretching aperture holes of his Halloween mask smile with lunacy, they tare as its chin falls off, creating piles of singed plastic.

The lacerations, argue its face, collided to cause further physical distress.

His blade smile a compulsion, a nervous sickness. The black gold of the ocean, spewing out a rig. Severed arteries out of his neck create this repulsion.

Black ooze spews, unable to break monotony, convulsions out of a mass.

Since this is mild. I'll just leave you with this. Less is more figure out how to express what you need in as few words and images as possible. This feels overdone and not to good effect. That is not to say that you couldn't develop it into something.

I hope some of that helped.

Best,

Todd