Advice on how to write cryptic/abstract metaphors/poetry?

[Delivery]

Anybody have some good advice on how to write this kind of stuff? I wanna make my stuff more thought provoking.

[Eldora]

Okay. I'm not much more than an amateur, but I'll try to help out with this.

When I'm writing poetry, I try to find different qualities of the thing I'm writing about, and highlight those. So, for instance, with a TV.

A box a’ ringing with morphing photocopies of society’s perfection,

What I outlined here is obvious, in ways, but then not obvious, in other ways.

The ringing box is obviously the basic structure of the TV. The "morphing photocopies of society's perfection" bit can be interpreted in many different ways. If you take it at face value, I mean the moving pictures of society's elite on the TV. However, if you look more deeply, you could interpret it the way I meant it to be, which is pretty much that society morphs the image of perfection so much that it's impossible to keep up with, then projects it for the world to see on the TV, morphing society through the box.

What I did was look at the TV, and I thought in two ways: Not only what do I see, but also, what do I feel about what I'm seeing. I wrote down what I saw, but I also did so in a manner in a way that let my negative view of what I was seeing flow into those words.

That's the hard part. You have to learn to do that last part in your own distinctive way. I use large words or words with many different meanings to adds twists to each word I put into my poems.

Now, emotions are more difficult for me to do. When I'm writing about emotions, I tend to use inanimate objects and characters to illustrate my emotions. As I grew up around forests and trees, I tend to use those a lot to illustrate my feelings.

If I'm frightened, for instance, I'll use a character walking through the woods. As she's looking up, she might see the twisting, gnarled branches; and somehow, I don't know exactly how, the words I use, the lilt of them, give the impression of fear. It's a way for me to vent my emotions.

Above all, if you want to write thought provoking poetry, then I suggest listening to some good, emotional music while writing. Feel the emotion that the music invokes in you, and just spill it out onto paper. Don't think about what you're writing. Too much concentration on what you're writing, and you're going to lose the emotion, the twists and turns, the metaphors and foreshadowing and everything else that provokes thought.

Poetry is a cloud in the sky; abstract and free to be interpreted by any soul who sees it.

[Delivery]

Thank you so much for breaking that down for me! You must be a genius!

Here's what I thought of:

I'm the cousin of sleep, so rest assure you'll die
And since your eyes are closed, there's no occular proof of my physique

This is me personifying death in first person. I could use more descriptive words/imagery, but is it a good start?

[Eldora]

It's a very good start. It's got your own style to it, and there's nothing more important for a poet, I think, than to be able to have your own style. It's also kind of like a riddle, and riddles are awesome, so two thumbs up from me!