Ballerina No More

Basic background of the story: The story took place in a time when everything was restricted. If you were smarter, they dumbed you down, if you were prettier, you wore a mask, etc. Harrison was in jail and breaks out because he wants to overthrow the government. This is a poem I had to write last year in my English class responding to the story of "Harrison Bergeron" or something like that. We had to become one of the characters in the story and write a poem about what they were like based on our own opinions. Feel free to nitpick!


I am from where there is no inequality.
Where government is no longer a free democracy of justice and opinions.
Where the dark cloud of dictatorship has stormed its way to our sunshine-filled home.
Where being equal has been banned.

I am from where liberty and unique doesn’t exist.
Where average is the fad of the moment.
Where everyone is horrified of a woman that resembles a jaguar in a hen house.
Where we don’t know even ourselves.

I am a dancer.
Where trapped and stranded is my useless life.
Where graceful and beautiful have been stolen away from me.
Where I no longer am confined to the handcuffs of equality and my emperor is a god sent to me from Zeus himself.

I was a slave to the grace of the dance that no longer had a song.
I was the empress for a mere smidget of time that passed as fast as a pendulum swings.
I was in the land of no hope, a modern-day “no man’s land”; wearing the mask of obscurity.
I was alive, until I broke the rules of equality.

Overall I think its pretty good, but I have 1 suggestion. You don't need to do the repetition thing. Your poem would flow a lot better without that.
Compare:

I am from where there is no inequality.
Where government is no longer a free democracy of justice and opinions.
Where the dark cloud of dictatorship has stormed its way to our sunshine-filled home.
Where being equal has been banned.

I am from where there is no inequality.
Government is no longer a free democracy of justice and opinions.
The dark cloud of dictatorship has stormed its way to our sunshine-filled home.
Being equal has been banned.

Hi.
I'm a bad girl. I didn't read your intro first. It doesn't need the intro, and I assume you wouldn't publish an intro to it.

Point being, that I liked it. You have a way with words that made me imagine such a country without you having to tell me what you were referring to.

My only problem with it was this one line...

diaNe cHavez wrote:I was alive, until I broke the rules of equality.

You were killed because you broke the law. I get that, but you didn't say what you did. What rule did you break? Were you not allowed to dance? Were you too pretty? I don't know.

--McMourning

Wow. Thank you both. The whole point of the poem is to keep repeating the "I am" part. I forgot the name of the format, but it's supposed to be like that. Thank you anyway. And McMourning, I don't know if you're going to see this, but thank you. I never noticed that before. Thank you for pointing it out.
dianne

It doesn't quite sound like the dancer in the story. I mean, you have a strict format to work with, but you can tweak it so that the story is connected more to the poem than not. For instance, you can have her think and then be interrupted by a large sound. Though... that might not work because it sounds like she is dead when she begins this poem. Still! You need to make it quirky. Maybe you can start off with the lines, "I am dead" since that kind of grabs your attention. So then it becomes less of a rant about the horrible society and more like a snapshot of what could have been, before it was shot down. Literally.

Best of luck!