What a fun - and original - idea! And this is backed up with lovely vocabulary and good use of assonance/consonance/internal rhyme (I love "syllabic cells" and "Into my veins and drains from my/ Lungs" ).

I do think your metaphor gets a little muddled - at first, all the vowels of "queueing" make the blood drain from the speaker's face, but those of "Aeonian" undo this and replenish the blood. That confused me a little, although it's perfectly like that I'm just being quite stupid...

I really liked the way it feels like the poem is rushing along like blood, it sort of gushes with all the action going on and the enjambment helping to force the eye to keep reading. I can kind of see this rushing feeling as a reason not to use punctuation, but at the same time I don't think a bit of punctuation to improve the clarity would have hindered the flow significantly.

I was uncertain about the wording of "heartfelt face" - I just don't quite see how their face can be heartfelt. It does nicely deceive the reader into thinking at first glance that you're going to talk about the heart, but I wonder if there would be some way of keeping "heart" in the line with an adjective that would be more fitting of a face - possibly "heartened" or "hearty"?? Maybe?? If I'm completely missing your meaning here, by the way, do let me know!

Final thing I'm going to query - the line "Turns purple and then turns pale" is pretty wordy for what you want to say, and I wonder if it might sound better as "Purples and pales" or something along those lines. Though that would completely mess up your line length... And I can see that the speaker here probably rather likes wordiness anyway! Anyway, I hope that my assorted badly-worded suggestions are vaguely helpful to you in some way.

I really do commend you on your choice of metaphor, quite unique and intriguing for the reader! And the extension of this into it rushing about the speaker's body, and their need for a donation, was great. And then you play with the more boring metaphors of love and hate being associated with blood - wonderful! I really like the idea at the end of not being able to use vowels in your writing anymore, too. Very well done indeed - this made me smile!

Hi Ricardo,

Thanks for entering this piece into the workshop. Let me see if I can leave a bit of constructive criticism and a couple thoughts on the piece.

My first reaction on reading the poem was pure delight. I would have never thought to compare vowels to blood. It's fantastically unusual and the title makes me say, "Oh hold on. Tell me more." And that's exactly what I want a poem's title to say to me. I'll take a moment and jot down my line-by-line reactions to the piece, and then finish up by summarizing it and my thoughts.

I see red when words like "queueing"

Seeing red is a figure of speech for becoming very angry -- seeing through a haze of rage. So a lot of vowels (wow, five in a row ) make the narrator angry. Or perhaps it's the use of "queueing" vs "queuing" (both real words) that causes the anger? Let's read on and see...

Spill a rush of syllabic cells running

Lovely use of consonance here, with the /l/ sounds and the slight /s/ alliteration. I see it continue throughout the piece and it makes the read more interesting and smooth. I did wonder whether the sounds were in any way connected to meaning -- I imagine that the anger would hiss as is raced in a rush. But was that intentional here? If not, it could be something to look into. The use of sounds to mimic content can create an amazing experience for the reader.

Mad from my heartfelt face that soon
Turns purple and then turns pale

The break in running / mad creates an interesting play on word and meaning. Read normally, the cells are running around madly. However, there's also the hint of that seeing-red anger here. I think it's underscored and made more obvious also by the use of capitalization at the beginning of each line. The change from red to purple to white makes me think of death or perhaps a heart attack. Red = flushed, purple = not getting enough oxygen, pale = subsequently dead.

Unless a fresh donated batch of
"Aeonian" language breaths new love

And here, the poem turns around and pulls the metaphor back in, develops it. "Fresh donated batch" makes me think that the narrator needs to read or hear the vowels (and quality language) to feel alive/love, rather than being able to just write something by oneself. The play on the cliche "breathe new life" is wonderful and unexpected. (Side note: "Breaths" = "breathes"?)

Into my veins and drains from my
Lungs their carbonized hate

This bit made me pause. I'm not sure if the metaphor holds together here. Blood draws oxygen from the lungs, and releases carbon dioxide into them, so that it is subsequently breathed out. Here, it sounds like the vowel-love/fresh-blood takes carbon dioxide from the lungs. Also, I'm uncertain here about the anger-love-hate transition. I sense that perhaps the blood-vowels don't actually cause seeing-red-anger in the narrator. Perhaps that could be addressed in the beginning with a slightly different word choice?

Otherwise I am typing without U

This line just plain makes me grin, especially the play (intentional, I'm sure of it!) on "typing without U"/you. Maybe this "you" refers to the vowels...or maybe not.

Bleeding from A to O until I die
During my consonant Zzzzzzzzzzs

The ending sheds more light on the poem -- the dying (and maybe even the going pale) is tied to consonants (incidentally Z's which can be used to represent sleep or an end of the alphabet), completing the metaphor. Having gotten to the end, I'm inclined to think that the flush and the red is a result of a frantic, manic drive to drink dry all the vowel-goodness while awake, but once the energy is gone and the supply of literary food has dwindled, the narrator slips into sleep/coma; the silent realm of consonants.

Also, I noticed that the piece is not punctuated. In itself, that's not a huge issue, since it's one large sentence and then one small one. However, I do feel that it wouldn't have hurt the poem to add in the period after "hate" and that comma(?) after "U". The way I see it, it'd clear up a bit of ambiguity and keep the reader from stumbling at that point in the piece.

After all, the two lines could be read "I am typing without U [and that same U is] bleeding from A to O" or "I am typing without U[, and I am] bleeding". I don't know whether this was intentional or not, but I would prefer to have it be more clear cut, grouchy reader that I am.

Winding down and back around to the main point of the workshop, I very much liked the metaphor this poem expanded on. It was original and unconventional; just what I was hoping to see when I typed up the workshop description. I do feel that the execution could be tweaked a little, if only because I had some trouble accessing the meaning. I don't know if this is the case for all reader, of course.

I'm going to star this, since dA makes it so that one has to rate to submit a critique, but please know that the stars here are completely arbitrary. They have nothing to do with my opinions or this critique.

Again, thanks for submitting this to #Writers-Workshop and I'm glad I had a chance to read it; it was a real pleasure. Please, don't hesitate to message me or shoot me a note if you wish to discuss something I wrote. Good luck writing and thanks for the read!

=nycterent