A Poem for the Decade

Apathy is what the world feels now,
everyone wants something to be done, something to be won,
But the false pretense is clear when no one cares enough to take action.
War, crisis is on hand-fighting soldiers that are dying while we're over here,
complaining about 8-hour shifts.
More is needed to suit our lethargic life,
listen to the music on the newest piece of technology,
unknown to you that time is slipping away, as well as progress.
Don't act out sympathy, giving money to those caught in the tempest.
Katrina laughs at the after-math.
People need builders not givers.
Uncap the pen and place your name upon the sign-not in vain, not for publicity,
Not for the bandwagon.
Do it for the feelings you contain-the ones that haven't been washed away by apathy.
And during the moment of silence,
Cherish the quiet, and bless what you have
Conformity is spreading-but you can
Still escape.

I'd say I like it, but it's really preachy. It's saying a lot without really saying anything. Sure, people should get off their lazy butts and do something about the world, but instead of inspiring people to do so, this poem just yells at them and demeans them for sitting around.

One glaring thing grammar-wise that I noticed:

... on hand-fighting soldiers ...

... upon the sign-not in vain ...

... you contain-the ones ...

... is spreading-but you ...

In these four examples, your dash is actually a hyphen, so what should be a sudden break in thought is actually a compound word. I don't know what "hand-fighting", "sign-not", "contain-the" or "spreading-but" mean, but I'm sure you didn't mean for them to be single words. When you're posting something on here and you want to use a dash -- unless you copypasted it from Microsoft Word or some other word processor -- put a double-hyphen, like I just did. It'll better show your abrupt break in thought, and not confuse your reader.

Other nitpicks:

Ryukun7 wrote:War, crisis is on hand...

I'm thinking this part is oddly worded. Grammatically, I guess, it's correct, but the comma throws me off; it's not a list, it's two items, so why use the comma? "War and crisis" would be the better option.

complaining about 8-hour shifts.

Write out your numbers. This entry in the YWS Blog gives some examples where you would write out a number (for reference).

listen to the music on the newest piece of technology,

Generally, in poetry, brevity is your friend. That being said, this line is lo-o-o-ong. Shorten it. In fact, just use "iPod", since it's quickly becoming the all-inclusive word for MP3 players.

Katrina laughs at the after-math.

I believe "aftermath" is one word.

People need builders not givers.

People also like commas when comparing things: "People need builders, not givers."

Uncap the pen and place your name upon the sign-not in vain, not for publicity,
Not for the bandwagon.
Do it for the feelings you contain-the ones that haven't been washed away by apathy.

This could be shortened and tightened. Might I suggest:

"Uncap the pen and sign your name --
Not in vain, not for publicity, not for the bandwagon,
But for the feelings you contain,
The ones that haven't been washed away."

And during the moment of silence,
Cherish the quiet, and bless what you have
Conformity is spreading-but you can
Still escape.

This is probably the strongest part of the poem, but it still needs some tightening, mainly with punctuation.


Overall, it was a good attempt, but definitely could be much, much stronger. Keep working on it, and soon it'll be magnificent.
kf

Thanks for the critique. I don't usually write poetry, and I'm not very good at it. For some reason, although I used dashes in Microsoft Word, they always appear as hyphens in YWS.

For some reason, when I read your poem, I thought of Allen Ginsberg's America (watch out for the F-word). Yep.

One huge difference between your poem and that poem is that your poem seems to be angry without revealing any of the narrator's humanity, and it just feels weird. I mean, usually you can sense some sort of weakness from the narrator in the way he speaks, but this was just an angry rant. You have to make the rant meaningful to us and, to do this, let us sense something more about the narrator.

Hello!

I'd suggest you divide this into stanzas or then make some lines longer, some shorter. You have awfully long lines there, followed by very short ones, so that doesn't either look or flow well.

Hmm. This is a hard one to review, for some reason. You could maybe hit the reader (us) with things that are even more close to our lives, so we could really feel guilty about not doing anything – that's your goal, after all, isn't it? You try to make us act, but all I can see is bunch of lines filled with word mazes. Use sharp and in-your-face words, so we can really feel the stab. This is a good frame for a poem, but edit it, with or without our suggestions, so I can truly say to myself after reading: "She is right! Why haven't I done anything before? Stupid me!"

I hope this was of any, slightest bit of help.

See you around!
Demeter xx