Deleted

I figured I'd just rewrite it. So it's not here anymore.

This poem isn't going to win any contest. Let's begin:

The content is basically a laundry list of events and incidents, and then a shallow remark on the general concept of fear, and then some random murder that came out of the blue. The End. Where was the horror? I suppose those events are scary in the type of way that you can sit in class, learn about something awful, and nod your head sadly, but why aren't you as the poet trying to push yourself to create a landscape of total and perpetual shock for the reader? That would charge a most lasting impression and people always respond favorably to having their emotions shaken, whether positively or negatively. That's not happening here, so get rid of the bland stanzas about the Holocaust, cannibals, and Guantanamo. (Guantanamo? What? That's not even on nearly such a large scale as the others were, so it seems very out of place.) Replace them with more personal stories. A boy falling down a well and starving to death, clawing his way up before sinking under the water. A little girl having nightmares about murder and fear that come true in real life, scaring her to her core. Something to really show the subject of your poem that you mean business and that his death is better than millions of others in the world.

Secondly, the style this poem is written cheapens its value as a poem. I've arranged these first two stanzas as such:

You sit here trembling, wracked with fright, not realizing how selfish you appear to be scared of your imminent demise, when actually the world has worse tragedies than yours. As much as it may pain you to hear, your death has no affect on anyone except those few you count your friends who might not care that much at all.

That's just rambling, as is the rest of the piece. I could not find one line that flowed well into the next. Some people do manage to make this style work, but that's because of the flow - the flow is supremely important. What you need to do is try to align the syllables of each line with one another, for starters, so that there is a beat present throughout the piece (this is not a requirement in general, but for your poem, it is almost necessary considering your piece is falling apart due to lack of any solid motion). Then please un-capitalize the first letter for every line, unless it starts a sentence or whatnot. It's very irritating and disrupts the reading of the poem.

Thirdly, imagery. This is a horror poem? It does not sound at all like one because there's literally barely any emotion. After we get past the exhausting list of historical atrocities, you talk to the kid and tell him not to be too afraid because his death won't matter. Explain this concept using an explosion of fear-based imagery. Right now, reading the poem is like looking down at a skeleton - it looks sort of like a person, but you know it will never walk because it has no arteries, meat, or skin. Add spice to the piece by replacing weak words like "quick, fascinating, etc" with words that you feel evoke the most terrible feelings out of yourself when you read them.

Right now, this poem might be good in the non-fiction section, but it is hardly a poem, let alone a decent one. Work on this and maybe you'll have a chance for the contest you speak of.

Hope that helped.

alright, the first reviewer was a bit harsh. I do agree with him an a lot of points, but it still wasn't an awful poem. The end was the best part of it in my opinion:

I do think you shall be part of history,
A calamity of fascinating malevolence
That even good people dread to love,
Because everyone enjoys a good horror story.

No last words for you to say,
Because I start my work much too quick,
Making the first strike of many,
And memorizing your screams of anguish.


The only thing that really bothered me was the fact that this was almost completely dry of emotion. You need to have the reader feel the victim's terror. Feel the murder's sick joy. Without emotion poems are just blah, if you know what I mean... Overall, this was ok. I hope my review helped

*Locked*