Poetry is difficult to write, but sometimes it’s almost as difficult to write about. Well, that’s not always true: bland prose statements about this or that emotion or recollection arbitrarily hacked into irregular lines are fairly easy to dismiss. They make their deficiencies clear by the second line.

Poetry like yours is much more difficult to discuss. For one thing but, many might find it unlikable. This is by no means a flaw. Personally, I despise “happy-talk” verse which, while perhaps technically adroit with craft elements like rhyme and meter, leave one to wonder why bother? For another, it would seem to wander outside all the established lines. Again, by no means a flaw. But it means one can’t talk back on conventional assessments.

I can’t comment on your use of rhyme and meter since you really exploit neither. As for form and structure, there is nothing of the former and the latter can only be described as chaotic; again, neither of these need be seen as flaws. More on this in a minute.

Here’s what I admire—you are not wasting your language to simply tell us about a situation, describe a condition or deliver an assessment of either. Worthy tasks, but primarily the role of prose. I often tell poets, “You’re thinking in poems, but you’re still writing with a prose sensibility.” Writing like yours is what I am talking about. There is not one spec of prose to be found.

Your language is spare and economical—some might say emaciated. It’s rich with imagery that is not explained—that’s the whole point of images, to eliminate bloated explanations. But most important, you are using language not to replicate a prose treatment through narration, but to evoke an experience from within as it is unfolding.

I find that, whatever the form or style, no poem attains a place in the canon by espousing a particular position, or choosing a compelling subject. They all must be willing to challenge the language, make it do tricks, dazzle us in unexpected ways, show us what happens when it is severed from the need to conform to linear, prose sense. It’s language that dances alone, exclaiming, “Look what I can do!”

There is no question you achieve this. Do you do it well? That’s a question of style so there are no objective answers, only opinions—hopefully educated ones. But certainly there are questions to be raised, preferably by you, the answers to which can provide useful guidelines for your writing.

First up: structure. I’ve described yours as chaotic, which, given the content, is a risky but wholly appropriate approach. Google literary magazines. From the thousands of resulting hits, any random sampling will show a range of poetry from traditional form-based verse, to poems that try to boldly go where no poem has gone before, and everything in between. One could be forgiven for thinking there are no rules—anything goes. Not so. Of course there are rules. The good news is, you get to make them up. The catch is, once you establish the rules of whatever linguistic universe your poem inhabits, you have to follow them. That’s what will give your poem an internal consistency and allow the reader they are experiencing a single, whole work.

One of your rules is a chaotic, illogical mindset that calls for a disjointed language replicating the jagged shards of your experience. How has this been applied? Are you taking a uniform approach to the relationship between the language and the content it conveys? There are no right answers, but clarifying the question can offer additional options to the ones you’ve chosen.

Next: rhyme and meter. One would not expect many opportunities for rhyme or meter in a poem of mostly one-, two-, or three-word lines. You offer neither opportunity nor need for end rhyme schemes.

Like all poetic elements, rhyme has nothing to do with subject and meaning. Instead it acts beneath the surface content of the words as a kind of glue to give the language coherence and a sense that your words are connected by more than the meanings they convey. Right now I find no rhymes. See where you might create examples, not necessarily in immediate proximity; rhyming words remind us of each other, wherever they appear.

And don’t think rhymes have to be full, or perfect rhymes like moon/swoon/June. Slant rhymes are an opportunity to accomplish the desired results while hiding in plain sight. Words like worm/swarm, shape/keep, moon/run, hold/bald use different vowel sounds to arrive at common end consonants.

While there is little opportunity to establish scansion and meter, there is unquestionably rhythm, a percussive assault as words come at us like the sounds from an out of control drum section. This is fine, but like all the other aspects of the poem, creating the chaos is not a random act, but one that needs to be planned.

Try reading this poem aloud, ignoring the words themselves and instead listen to the sounds as they stack up one after another. In terms of rhythm, you are using words the way other writers use punctuation. You accomplish much with your line breaks, but is the rhythmic effect all you want it to be? Is it as jarring as it could be? Does it build to a dramatic conclusion? Can you fine-tune it to enhance the effect?

My one major complaint is the weighty prose “explanation” that you’ve attached to your poem, like a wart or boil. The beauty of poetry is that it is not prose; it has no need to include everything, or indeed anything in particular. It is the negative space, the holes in logic and meaning that allow the reader to complete the experience for themselves and make it theirs as well. Trust what you’ve written. It doesn’t need help.

One last thing: drop “continued” from your title. I know, a poem in your portfolio already has “A Love Note” as its title, but if you publish this, no one will know that other, far weaker, poem exists. This poem stands on its own. Let it. We expect more of a title the just a quick crystallization of what is to follow. In the former poem, we read the title, and then that is exactly what we get. Kind of boring. But in this poem, we read the title while we expect to encounter some kind of love note, we also expect something else, not knowing what, but trusting that you will thwart our expectations in some way. Which you certainly do.

All the preceding notwithstanding, you may very well find a place for this. You should submit it at some point.