Poem - rip the veil

rip the veil

rip me from my veil
I do not want it.
take the vision of self and security from my eyes,
make me blind,
give me a reason to scream.

I promise to shatter you.

take reality, the dirt beneath your feet as it
hums with spring and life...
murder it. and rake up the blood, bottle the cries,
do it the hard way.

souls that cry up from the ground,
hope does not rain in the place,
but blood and toil have a shape,
a substance that makes humans real,
real to me.

make me make my own rain,
make me wake up and smell
the real scent of sky
and not someone's perscribed
definition of 'fine'.

give me a reason to be angry, to react,
stimulate my mind to find a path through the fire,
do not let me fall into comfort.
crack the shell, peel back the layers of my lie,
and, I promise....

I will shatter you.

copyright 2007 Casey O'Malley

Nothing wrong with stanza one, except the missing capitalization. That seems to be a trend throughout the poem.

"take reality, /the dirt beneath your feet as it
hums with spring and life.../murder it./ and rake up the blood, bottle the cries,/do it the hard way."
Once again the capitalization issue. Whether this was left out for emphasis you'll have to tell me.

You can't rake up blood. "Murder it, gather up the blood, contain ((the repetition has a nice effect, aye?)) the cries, take it the hard way."

"souls that cry up from the ground,
hope does not rain in the place,
but blood and toil have a shape,
a substance that makes humans real,
real to me."

Okay. Rather morbid, but whatever. I would suggest changing the "toil" for "cruelty" or something. It goes with the whole human thing.


make me make my own rain,
make me wake up and smell
the real scent of sky
and not someone's perscribed
definition of 'fine'.

Prescribed. Depending on your accent, yeah, you would pronounce it "perscribed" but it's not how it's spelled

The second "make me" is awkward. "Force me to wake up and live/ see the brilliant sky" and that goes with th e rest of the stanza.


give me a reason to be angry, to react,
stimulate my mind to find a path through the fire,
do not let me fall into comfort.
crack the shell, peel back the layers of my lie,
and, I promise....

I will shatter you.

"Give me reasons to be angry, to reply" sounds better then the original first line, I think, mostly because "react" is something you expect to hear in a science textbook and not a highly emotional poem like this seems to be.

"Don't let my eyelid fall or my senses to dull" also sounds good, but that's just a longer winded-version of comfort.

"crack the shell" makes you sound like a appetizer. Generally, poems that make you sound like a appetizer are not really what you want

"Break at the surface, dig through my lies" sounds more...un-foody. XD


Overall, I think it's got some interesting imagery and it's a lot different from the rain one I critiqued (and you critiqued my critique).

I tend to get carried away when crit'ing other's poetry. XD Sorry. XD

We had a deal. Go crit something of mine!

~Sumi

P.S.
There is a "Edit" button at the top of posts, FYI.

Thank you!