Metal Detecting

[newtothis]

Material sand beneath my feet,
The bleep of children’s sunken hopes
The toot of every misconception
Hiding beneath the downy shore.

Pursuit of tarnished treasures, masked
By rust of time elapsed and gone.
But oh for all the world I long
To be a child, inquisitive, naïve

Of crabs beneath the callous
Assets hidden beneath the ocean floor,
Of clam shells crushed by tiny shoes
And ancient nickels never found.

[thespearkid]

I like it although I wish some of your metaphors were a little more thought out and a little more meticulously selected.

[The Personist]

Material sand beneath my feet,
The bleep of children’s sunken hopes
The toot of every misconception
Hiding beneath the downy shore.


Very lofty diction. As someone who was similarly stilted, I can understand where all of ths is coming from. A lot of these images are gorgeous LOOKING (on paper), but mean nothing or are just words and nothing else. "Material sand" sounds great, but is on the whole ephemeral in that sand is material by nature. That said, I love "bleep." Did you mean "bleep" or "bleat?"

Pursuit of tarnished treasures, masked
By rust of time elapsed and gone.
But oh for all the world I long
To be a child, inquisitive, naïve
"Tarnished treasures" is another one of those images. It sounds great--very musical--but it is no more than lofty diction. I really. I think this piece, compared to your others, is largely impersonal. Thus, when you do something like the third line of this, I am intrigued. I think if you let a little more of yourself into this piece, it would be stronger.

Of crabs beneath the callous
Assets hidden beneath the ocean floor,
Of clam shells crushed by tiny shoes
And ancient nickels never found.
"callous/Assets" is awesome...if a little stilted. I think this stanza has my favorite images in it and moves the best of the three.

Overall, you seem to be doing what I did in the past. You're focusing more on big words and stilted pedagogy rather than on conveying an actual feeling or image. I think you're very talented, and this is by no means bad; in fact, I really like it. I just think that you should try to make it more accessible to the reader and insert some of your conversational voice. However, that said, you should also hold onto these images. Perhaps morph them a bit; things like "material sand" you can probably throw out (or develop more, as in, "why is it important that the sand is material?" if you gave a reason for emphasizing the tangibility of the sand, that might be something of an "ah ha!" moment for the reader as he or she figured it out), but there are also great images--"callous/Assets" being my favorite--that you simply need to bring the audience into a bit more. With some work, this could move beyond just being good and become downright fantastic.