Water-Logged Letter Jacket

Water-Logged Letter Jacket

It's Mr. Popular down there.
All around athletic type.
Every girl in school
had a crush on him at one point.
Honor roll since preschool.
Scholarship to his college of choice.
That's who's down there.
Underneath the water.
Below the swimmers and boats.
Dead,
bloated,
rotting,
gone.
I can't help but imagine him
stuck under that rock,
his one arm floating upwards,
reaching, for the life he'll never have.
His crystal blue eyes open,
drowned in sadness,
wanting to know, like me,
why? Why a beautiful life had to end.


From the 7/4/06 drowning.

Hey yoha-ahoy! This poem was very straightforward and you definitely conveyed your point, but I think it could have been done in a more creative way. In this poem, you did a lot of telling the reader what your point was, which can be good sometimes, but here I see potential for using more figurative means to convey the point more powerfully.

For instance, your title 'water-logged letter jacket' interested me almost immediately, but you never used that idea in the poem. I think that if you mentioned the letter jacket, with all his patches awards sewn on there, symbolic of all his achievements, it could work wonders for this poem. I suggest reading through this again and pursuing any ways of conveying your point through word images.

A few other things...

It's Mr. Popular down there.

I can see the point you are trying to make here, but Mr. Popular is awfully cliche. Later on, you twist that cliche by mentioning that he drowned, but it doesn't have the full effect because of all the things you mention in between the first line and that part. If you said 'It's Mr. Popular down there. Underneath the water.' after or in place of all the lines describing his achievements, it wouldn't be as obvious a cliche.

stuck under that rock,

This is a new detail you are giving the reader about his death, but the way you describe is not very powerful. Stuck seems like a very ordinary word for something this terrible.

His crystal blue eyes open,
drowned in sadness

,

Just a question in here. Are you saying 'Mr. Popular' drowned in sadness or that his eyes are drowned in sadness?

wanting to know, like me,
why? Why a beautiful life had to end.

At the end, you stated your point, but as I mentioned above, this could be done more creatively.

Good work, yoha ahoy. Keep writing. I look forward to reading more.

You might want to add some stanza spacing in a lot of places, that way it'll be better on the eyes. It would also provide a better flow.

yoha_ahoy wrote:It's Mr. Popular down there.

I think you said 'Mr. Popular' because it is cliche, and a figure that people can identify.

yoha_ahoy wrote:Underneath the water.
Below the swimmers and boats.

Here, the poem takes a dark turn for the better, since it gets the reader thinking. Why is he down there? Etc., etc. And because the readers want to have their questions answered, they will keep reading. Also, add some line spacing after this.

yoha_ahoy wrote:Dead,
bloated,
rotting,
gone.

I'm not that fond of this part. I just don't like it.