Crucible

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The poem's strongest moments arrive when it trusts its concrete images: "Swept beneath a concrete grave," "linoleum danced upon," "Nicotine yellowed our fingers upon the curled pages." These have weight and specificity, and the pairing of Mercury sun with cobalt moon earns its place. The grief at the poem's center — seventy years, a lost lover, the name Ida — is genuinely moving material, and "lips bleed from the force of a needed kiss" lands with real force.

The main difficulty is that the opening section, which reads as literal notes about uploading to a website and navigating a poetry contest, works against the poem as a finished piece. Lines like "help my technological ignorance" and "Forced upon the cobblestone of contest to upload" feel like process notes that were never removed. They fracture the reader's entry into what is otherwise an elegy of considerable feeling. The poem would be served well by returning to its own emotional core — the lover, the grass, the yellowed pages — and letting that be the beginning as well as the ending. The closing images are strong enough to carry the whole piece if the scaffolding around them is cleared away.

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 it took me so long, with so many clues to figure it out! This brought me closer to tears than anything I've read or written in the past few weeks. I miss Esker a lot. we used to have some awesome conversations. Lots of kisses from here! You surely were a part of who he was. I see it in the way you write. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance and certainly hope that you will stick around a while. I never had imagined that you would write like this.
I don't think there is anything that I could or would suggest to make this better.

I am going to have a chatroom open on Sat. nights 10 - 12 p.m. EST It's an everyone invited kind of thing any subject [especially the weird, dark and scary stuff,] bring a tale about Esker, I don't care, stop in talk a spell.

~ Geezer