Alright Daniel, this is getting out of hand ... GO BACK to writing Free Verse. You're stealing my thunder. No one ever listens to me about writing Verse ... except the one bloody guy who can write it flawlessly.
Shit.
Dan, this poem is masterfully crafted. It flows like honey.
The theme is poignant ... the most powerful emotion one can employ, and the mechanics are impeccable. Normally, I don't care for enjambment (because I think it generally creates weak line transitions) and yet, you pulled off all instances flawlessly.
Writing in Verse controls the "pause" and I really noticed it in this poem. And, as I've written repeatedly, The Power of Prosody is in the Pause.
What amazes me, and I commented on this once before, is that you've managed to merge Verse with that unique "d-pend style." Now you're getting all the dopamine that comes from the patterns of Verse ... while still creating that "mystique" for which you are famous (infamous). :-) You're having your cake and eating it too.
There's no excuse now ... whales should be upvoting this stuff.
BTW, I think you'll like this one:
https://steemit.com/funny/@quillfire/2bqbg2-delerium-merlot-quill-s-delerious-delights
Quill
Hahaha... I did oblige with a couple recent poems. You know, I always think of T.S. Eliot's proclamation that there is no such thing as vers libre. A poem not having flow and cadence isn't possible. It's like writing music without a meter. You can improvise or attempt to escape all bounds, but everything is inherently ordered. With "free verse" the only thing that might be argued to be free is your illusion of freedom while writing it.
What I've found, though, is the lack of a regular rhythm presents its own remarkable obstacle. For art to be impactful you have to set and break expectations. What's more, were you to try to make every line stilted, irregular, and strange, it wouldn't succeed. The brain instantly looks for any pattern however minute to make sense of reality.
So, I'm not sure I can be convinced that any truly "free" verse exists. Another interesting rabbit hole, coming from a musical perspective, is that most "verse" has irregular pauses and uneven phrasing in it, i.e. it can sound quite bad reciting it to a metronome. There are organic breathing points that add extra notes to some bars, and the length of syllables is not always equal.
Anyway, I was pretty surprised that I started getting so interested in verse, but as poetry has largely replaced music as my main form of expression, it really isn't so shocking. One thing I've noticed is for me personally, I have to write more intimately/emotionally when writing verse. Free-form can be more cerebral/abstract. With verse it tends to demand more of an anchor. For my style of expression I find that quite helpful to make my ideas more understandable and relevant.
Oh yeah, and that post link: thanks. I laughed my ass off. Anyway, I won't be expecting whales to suddenly acquire a taste for poetry any time soon. But, while I wait for hell to freeze over, I'll warm myself with some solid dia-logs embering under the chimney.
Dan