Young Writers Society

Hello, this poem is called Find me aka poetry take two. I think it's an improvement (and much tidier) than my last poem, no?
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*Note: Random photo, it's not mine!
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What do you mean when you say that I
have lost my faith?
You with the family, smiling, at your sickly sweet
joyous life—and I am envious.
I am sweating. I am crawling into the dark shadows of my wardrobe
reaching out, my arms are trembling, blue blooded veins pronounced.
Then I finally retreat into my miserable mind and hum myself
into the blissful memories of my past.
-

You with wine dribbling down your thick chin,
patting your paunch, drinking your gin
the image sends me shivers,
and I am shaking. I am shaking against the screaming winds of the night,
whilst I walk for miles down the lonely road,
into the country and yonder the frozen fields.
Then I collapse into the nettle bushes of the road side,
and with one final sweep of the black horizon, I begin to hum.
-

So tell me please, what you mean when you say
that I
have lost my faith?
I have endured the blistering winds of the night,
I have, crept into my closed closets and uncovered
the deadly skeletons who guard the key to my past.
And yet, there is no sign of Him.
Do not look down on me.
Just tell me,
please, is it I who searches for Him?
Or is He who will find me?

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Thank you for reading.
I have an idea in my head to write my next poem about Corpus Christi. However, I am stuck on what aspect of Corpus Christi I'm going to write about. Any suggestions? Please PM me! I would be grateful for anything that turns up in my inbox.

Hi Onyx,

I have to say the same thing you've said. This was much more neater and the stazas were more connected.

Mistakes

You with the family, smiling, at your sickly sweet

Cut the comma after smiling. And I'm bit confused when you are talking about his family. Whose family are you talking about anyway?

reaching out, my arms are trembling, blue blooded veins pronounced.

Cut the 'are' after 'my arms' as it flows much better then.

Then I finally retreat into my miserable mind and hum myself
into the blissful memories of my past.

I know you say hum twice in the poem, but I think its more better to say, 'succumb' or 'sink' in this part.

You with wine dribbling down your thick chin,

A comma after 'You'

I have, crept into my closed closets and uncovered

No comma here after 'I have'

please, is it I who searches for Him?

This should be, 'search' not 'searches'.

Meaning

Well, I'm not going so deep into this as the last I did, but I think this poem also is a reference to a mentally ill patient. Depression if I'm not mistaken. But way you showed us that meaning was the thing that captured me in this poem. By only dwelling deeply in the sentences and stanzas did I get some kind of meaning to say that you are talking about a depressed patient who is fed up with their life.
But I can't understand why wrote about skeletons holding the key to her past. Unless, it was a metaphor to mean that she was always thinking and living in the past. Nonetheless, it was a really great poem, with a nice hidden meaning.

Well, that's all I can say.

Good luck.

Hey Onyx ^^ Shina here to do a review. The photo looks interesting, so let's see what you pulled out of it.

I. Nitpicks

What do you mean when you say that I
have lost my faith?

I like this beginning. However, I feel that the lines are off-balanced. I feel like either "have" should move up, or "that I" should go down. Then again, it might just be me.

"What do you mean when you say that I have
lost my faith?"
When I recite it, it adds more emphasis to the second line.

You with the family, smiling, at your sickly sweet
joyous life—and I am envious.

xD How contradictory to the first line.

I am sweating. I am crawling into the dark shadows of my wardrobe
reaching out, my arms are trembling, blue blooded veins pronounced.
Then I finally retreat into my miserable mind and hum myself
into the blissful memories of my past.

This part is vague, almost too vague, but I think it hooks more than it confuses. Also, I'm not loving the passive first sentences.

You with wine dribbling down your thick chin,

Dribbling? I know it has multiple definitions, but I think that some of your readers might not be able to help but imagine basketballs instead of wine.

II. Overall

A good poem, Onyx ^^ Personally, the only downside was the rhythm of the poem and the passive sentences--they kind of ruined the flow. But it's an easy fix.

Also, this doesn't have as much to do with the poem as much as it has to do with the picture and the context, but it really seems that the photo was barely used. We caught a glimpse of it in the beginning and the end, but the middle really seemed somewhere else. It might affect your score.

please, is it I who searches for Him?
Or is He who will find me?

I love this line, too. This is really the part that ties it all together. You just need to work on the jelly of the sammich ^^

Hope this helps

-Shina

Hi Onyx, here as you requested

So you haven't written a lot of poetry? I couldn't tell, if I didn't know. I remember I was sort of scared and shy when writing some of my first poems, and it showed, but this one doesn't seem like it at all. And that's good.

So tell me please, what you mean when you say
that I
have lost my faith?

Funny line breaks here – is it intentional? Also, the comma in the first line is very significant, because when you have it in there, you should say "what do you mean when you say", but if you take the comma out, you can have "what you mean..." With the comma, it's two different sentences: "Tell me, what do you mean?" Without the comma it becomes an indirect question: "Tell me what you mean." I wasn't supposed to go all grammar rules on you, but I just thought I would say this.

I was wondering, why does the narrator sound like they're begging? Who are they pleading? It's quite interesting, but I'm not sure if it's intentional. If it's not, and you use the word "please" just because, you could as well delete it, because it's slightly dragging behind.

Also, skeletons in the closet. We've all been there, or at least read about them, so why not go beyond that and surprise the readers? You could do the same with your word choices – a lot of them were rather ordinary.

The fact that I'm quite tired might affect the fact that I can't seem to get anything else out of this. You could find a way to make the stanzas connect even more, because now I felt there was little of the necessary connection. But don't let this affect your writing motivation! Keep writing and reading poetry, because that is the only way you can make yourself more comfortable with it. Good luck!


Demeter
x

Hey Onyx!

This is a lovely poem. Your style seems pretty sophisticated, so it's amazing that you haven't written much poetry! You're a lot better then me, anyway. But maybe that's because I stick to rhyming which sort of sucks.

One nitpick:

Or is it He who will find me?

But, yes, you have a lovely way of writing this. There are some strange line breaks which I think people have pointed out, those kind of detract from the flow of the poem. But, other than that, it reads nicely. You've left the reader with some questions, but that's not all bad. I like the way you tie it up at the end, it has a very final (that sounds stupid, but it's true) feeling to it, even though you've chosen to end with a question. Very cool.

Keep up the good work!

~Amy

I tried to review this properly but I couldn't find anything obvious to change(cept maybe the comma when you say: I have, endured ). Just, maybe when you say things like 'miserable mind' and 'blissful memories', you could choose stronger adjectives. Miserable isn't a word with enough power to fit in with the general tone of this marvellously dramatic poem. It has been much overused methinks.

But anyway, it was really good. Ignore me :]

Onyx, you my dear deserve some reviews.

Though I can't say I liked the poem, it was better done then I expected.

You're wording makes me happy, most of the time anyways. Just tighten it up here and there and you've got a nice basis for developing the language used.

Speaking of language, since you're almost there, I'm going to give you another pool to thread across. You have the language down and the metaphors close to down. Try linking the two. Sure your words tell us the metaphor, but when you really start thinking about the language and the sounds and the brutality/softness of words (like happy is softer then ecstatic.) You want to use those words to portray the metaphor and make it deeper. Using the right words for a metaphor can make the difference between a simple imagery to a splendid array of images in my head.

I leave you with that, keep writing.

Kamas