WHICH IS FIRST?

I'd comment on how and where and why the lines in this submission are verbally sloppy as well as contradictory and incohesive (as they demonstrably are),  but knowing that you'd assert (but not demonstrate) that my comments are not worth taking into consideration, it would be a waste of time to do so.  Besides that,  you've shown that what you really want is not honest criticism of your work,  but praise for how much the grand poet you believe yourself to be.

Dear Baldwin,
To tell you the truth, l find that your writing is very poor poetry, and it's not worthy to be looked at, and you look at my poetry in the same way or perhaps you are jealous of me. I can't know. Therefore, how can l take your criticism seriously?

Thanks for fulfilling my predictions that you'd respond with  unsupported assertions.  And I note once again that since you have said that you are not a critic,  and therefore do not have the skills or the capacity to  make good and informed (let alone articulate) judgments of  the  quality of my submissions,   there's no reason to think that your judgments have any merit or should be taken seriously.  Nevertheless, I still have a small hope that someday you might actually provide demonstrations of your claims.

And perhaps stop employing the fallacious logic you do when you claim that a person's alleged inability to write well is  good grounds for saying that their criticisms of your work are not on the mark.

Perhaps you'll demonstrate (and not just assert) that I write poorly by answering these questions about the challenge piece below.

1.  Does it contain "rhythm", yes or no?

2.  Did I have to engage in ellipsis in order to maintain a the rhythm of a line, yes or no?

3.  Is the meter off anywhere,  yes or no?

4.  Do the places, if any,  where the meter **is** off,  not conform to the rules concerning what is and what is not acceptable metric substitution, yes or no?

5.  Does the piece contain rhymes, yes or no?

6.  Are any of the rhymes which appear here forced, yes or no?

7.  In getting my lines to rhyme, do I end a line with a word that I've already used at the end of a previous line, yes or no?

8.  Have I made any mistakes of grammar, yes or no?

9.  Have I misused words that appear in my lines -- i.e., misunderstood what a word means, yes or no.

10.  Are any of the expressions I use in my lines incomprehensible, yes, or no?

11.  Is the point that I am trying to make ( that according to the biblical witness a person's ultimate involves the resurrection of the body and an existed upon a renewed earth, not a disincarnate state in some spirit realm) clear, yes or no.

12.  If you answer "yes" to these questions,  does your claim that this is poor writing still have merit, yes or no?

13.  If you answer "no" to these questions,   should anyone take your answers seriously unless you demonstrate that your "no" is warranted?  

You say it is my destiny,
if I show “faith”,
to end up as essentially a ghost
that stays for all eternity
within an otherworldly ghosty place
sans all the flesh
that stands now as
the sign and seat of my identity.

But isn’t this a lie?

For after all, it’s something that
quite fundamentally denies
the import of the proclamation that
the I Am said
when he created in fixed form
the earth
to be man’s dwelling and his home;
that it, and not
some disincarnate realm
beyond the  firmament above
outside of time and space,
is what is truly grand!

It’s Gnostic (a Platonic riddled) heresy
to say that our true, final home
is up within some ethereal realm
and that the body is
a prison which we should and will,
upon that moment when we die,
eventually and gratefully escape.
.
For such belief makes nonsense of,
decries,
the Counseled, apodictic  statement
in the Creeds
that I shall, yes, despite my death,
be brought one day
back to it bodily to live there
once again as I once lived
before I knew demise –  
as quickened, breath filled clay
that’s deemed to truly walk upon
a blessed,  substantiated earth
that by God’s hand
will be renewed
and circumscribed on Zion’s hill
as true Jerusalem.

Dear Baldwin,
First of all, do we say GHOSTY or GHOSTLY?

I don't know about what "we" say,  but **I**  say "ghosty"  because the realm I'm speaking of is an immaterial, not a spooky,  one.  

Are you trying to suggest that I used a word that doesn't exist?

And since you said  "first of all", does that mean you are going to answer the rest of my "yes" or "no" questions?

Can you find GHOSTY in the dictionary, or you have a special one.

Google it.  You'll find it attested.  And even it you couldn't find it anywhere,  why would it be wrong?  Aren't poets allowed to find or use new forms of words?  Shakespeare did. So did many other writers.  Have you not heard of neologisms?

But why focus on this one word instead of answering my "yes" or "no" questions?

Do you really think that my using a word the meaning of which you do not know shows that my poetry, and especially the one above that  I asked you to comment on, is **from start to finish** poorly written?

If so,  **show** that its is.

FWIW (and it should be worth much),  it's in the Oxford English Dictionary.

My only concern about the poem is the over-realiance on the words "life" and "live" as well as others "it", "is"

I would suggest, as an exercise only, rewriting the poem without repeating any words in it; initiate a conditioning process to expand your vocabulary.

It would be time better spent, which you and Baldwin seem to have an overabundance of.

Dear JhonnyBlaze,
Thank you very much for your most useful comment. I'll do my best to avoid repeating words. Please, keep in contact.