i hate you a thousand times.

7 posts
User avatar
Gender Female
Points 1808
Reviews 10
Those features you carry
That always persuade me to kiss you.
Brown eyes that never tempted me before
I hoped to watch my every move.
Your lips that cut in the corners
So plump and red.
Too much for my thin ones
But you’d kiss them anyway.
Lies filled up those venom lips
I was merely a prey to you.
And I cant turn away from your stare
Shocked and awed by you,
I forget what surrounds me.
Your betrayal, your lies, your hypocrisy.
Blinded by big brown eyes,
I stay in place.
I don’t mind how you run towards me,
The way you rip into my heart.
You’ve taken out the weakest organ.
Slayed and defeated,
I still look for the russet gaze
That once smothered me with love.
Comfort from a lie,
I laid in peace.
But I feel each razor-sharp touch
Eating me away.
I lay very soundly
paralyzed and useless
just as you intended.
spit out my bleak raw core,
it still beats, in your control.

edited.
Last edited by nayex on Mon Jun 28, 2010 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.




User avatar
Gender Female
Points 10087
Reviews 701
Hi nayex!

I can see you're relatively new to YWS, so welcome :) It's always nice to see new 'faces' on the forums!

Re: your poem, I can tell that there's a lot of strong emotion behind this piece: you convey that very well. It does seem a little haphazard, however, and some parts of the story aren't very clear to me.

Those features you carry,
That always persuade me to kiss you.
Brown eyes, that never tempted me,
I hoped to watch my every move.


This line is confusing. If they never tempted you, why do you want them to watch your every move? Perhaps you could add a bit here to explain. For example, perhaps they never tempted before, but they do now for some reason.

Your lips, that cut in the corners.
So plump and red,
Too much for my thin ones,
But you’d kiss them anyway.
Lies filled up those venom lips.
I was merely a prey to you,
And I cant turn away from your stare.


I like that first line. It presents an interesting visual. Perhaps you could expand on this a bit.

A lay in peace.
But I feel each razor-sharp touch,
Eating me away.
I lay very soundly,
You’d think I'd be dead.


This line doesn't make sense.

But I’m just paralyzed, immobilized, useless,
just as you intended.
spit out my bleak raw core,
it still beats, in your control.


I quite like the ending. It has potential to be very powerful. But it does need some tweaking.

To be honest, this wasn't really my kind of poetry. There are a few things I thought could use improvement:

(a) Tenses: You switch tenses a lot, often without apparent reason. Try to keep the poem either all in the same tense (past or present), or perhaps think about dividing it into verses which make the structure clearer for the reader.

(b) Punctuation: Remember, poems need punctuating just as (if not more) carefully as prose. You have commas and full stops all over the place, when not all of them are needed. Perhaps you could go through and trim them down some.

(c) Cliche: What separates this experience from other, similar experiences? Push yourself to go beyond the words and images within easy reach and look for something unique that you can use to make the poem your own.

(d) Navel-Gazing: This is what I would call a navel-gazing poem, in so much as it is more about the poet (not necessarily the writer, but at the very least the "I" of the poem) than it is about the reader. Instead of giving us a window into the poet's thoughts, you've chosen to address the poem to an ambiguous "you" whom we don't know or care about. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, there is very little for the reader to connect with without knowing the greater background of the story. The poem is therefore very self-absorbed, when really what you want to be doing is reaching out to the reader.

Perhaps next time you could think about ways to draw the reader in and help them to experience what the narrator is feeling rather than telling them directly. Metaphors and similes, as well as other literary devices, can be helpful with this. You have a couple of good lines in there - lips that cut at the corners, for example - that you could build on to give a vivid picture if you expanded on them a bit.

Hope you found that helpful. Keep writing!

Cheers,
~bubbles
Got a poem or short story you want me to critique?

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it. (C D Morley)




User avatar
Gender Female
Points 37146
Reviews 556
Hello there
buublewrapped has already touched a lot on what I wanted to comment on. I think though that you pretty much executed this well. I had a problem with the length though. I think that you exhausted your idea by the time you reached
Blinded by your brown eyes,


And then you started to repeat stuff like your emotions. So it got kind of boring towards the end. But you did good though, I will give you that.
The best is what you make it!

...eh, need a review? Click me!




User avatar
Gender Male
Points 42428
Reviews 411
Hey there!
Just a few suggestions really! Good poem though.

:arrow: Structure
Okay, so this poem has a good natural pace and it is basically punctuated, but there's no real dive or experiment to create an effect or rhythm from it. Your punctuation is sometimes quite bland and other times quite crowded with commas. This is disrupting the pace in some of the areas, i think and could easily be tidied up with a bit of experimenting in the semi colon and hash region of punctuation land. ;)

:arrow: Nitpicks
But you’d kiss them anyway.

The word 'anyway' seems out of place compared to the tone of the other lines in your poem, which I interpret as being softer. Anyway, followed by the full stop/period, seems a little to blunt in contrast.

Your brown eyes, that never tempted me

Although it's not essential, I always find that a bit of clarity will only do your writing good and it also feels more like you're involving the reader if you put a "Your" at the start.

Your betrayal, your lies, your hypocrisy.

Good line and well ended in terms of punctuation, I also enjoyed the word choices here!

:arrow: Ending
I think nearer the end, like others mentioned the content of the emotive language got a little redundant. I mean, you use a good range of vocabulary, yes, but the effect is repeated in a sense and I'm not sure it does many favours as the imagery becomes slightly bland. Although, the impact of the ending I really like:
spit out my bleak raw core,
it still beats, in your control.

What a way to end! Impact effect, to the point and powerful imagery, that's what your reader goes away with so well written ;).




User avatar
Gender None specified
Points 83309
Reviews 436
Hello!

This poem feels very raw, which means that the emotion comes off it very strongly. Whilst in some cases this is a very good thing, I think here you need a lot of control in order to make sure that the emotion you're showing doesn't come off too strong and obliterate what you're trying to write. As Bubbles said, the whole thing feels a little bit Navel-Gaze-y, and I think you could help this if you tried to temper the raw emotion and attempt to make the whole thing a little more structured within itself.

The language, for me, became a little too much at points. I felt like you were drifting off course and hiding your story behind layers of description which might actually be a lot better stripped away.

Hope this helps!

-Amy
"It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want."

-Spock.


Click if you love cookies




User avatar
Gender Female
Points 1808
Reviews 10
again my grammar is a issue in my writing. Also to be honest, i really dont care for my reader, i care about writing in ways that luckily my reader could possibly relate to, but it's not something i have in mind when i write. thank you for the advice and suggestions though, greatly appreciated.
oh, i did drift a lot towards the end, its one of my many weaknesses.




User avatar
Gender Female
Points 9692
Reviews 3900
Oy, yes, grammar is an issue in your writing seeing as you can't capitalize you I's in your comment. Very sloppy! XD

Anyway, your poem! :)

There's a couple of things that you can do to really make this poem stronger and more vivid! Right now as it stands, the first eight lines don't really give any hint of how evil this mofo is. Which is probably not a good thing because then you talk about him ripping out your organs and... well... he doesn't really seem that bad in the beginning! Rather generous, actually. So you're probably going to want to cut straight to him being full of poison, etc. That way, it'll be soooo much more dramatic!

Next, you can really really make this poem very... brutal and that will help emphasize how awful he is. I mean, as it is, you use several images (poison, ripping out organs, smothering) but you don't really go into depth. If you went more into depth, you would increase the darkness level and you would really make him into a mofo! So yeah.

Some things to play around with, should you decide that you want more power. ;)
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach

Moth and Myth <- My comic! :D



I want to always be known as the one who started the perry epidemic
— Quillfeather