Why I Write (revision)

Okay, I've read it through again. I'm going to make a suggestion you might not like, but sometimes its an interesting exercise when editing. Try removing about half of your adjectives from the poem, paring down the imagery and language. Make a list of the adjectives, converting them to verb or noun forms and begin looking through the poem to see where they might replace other words, or be used in different ways. The reason I suggest this is that, to my ear, the over-use of adjective/noun pairs often times gives a redundant sound to the grammar of a poem. You chose the adjectives because they imply a mood or a thought that you want to get across, but by looking at the words in different forms you can be spurred to achieve the same effect by replacing weaker words, avoiding too many adjectives, and finding new ways to look at the sentence structures. In fact, many of your adjectives are already in verb form and could be used more actively as verbs (e.g. twist or tatter). Other phrases, like "I try to repaint my own tainted imagery" are equally strong without the "tainted" modifier, and sort of tantalizing in their ambiguity. But you want to keep "tainted" in there somewhere, so maybe in the next line you state something like "Tainted, I mold all the pain into a ball" - still employing the adjective but in a grammatically different way, modifying a different noun. Do you know what I mean? And of course you do it in a way which is true to your meaning (which my example is not) Its all subjective, I know, but shooting for a more pared down imagery, and varied grammar, sometimes is like sharpening a knife - it slices very neatly to the core of what you want the reader to feel.