A Colt .45

What could I tell him?
He's raising the gun to his head
While I watch him crash and burn
No words can I lend
To the hopeless last-act wonder
Of a Shakespearean tragedy.

I wasted too much time trying to be strong
For you. Lending compliments that fell on
Deaf ears that turned into arguments
When all I wanted was to fill your head
With the love and
Support that you never brought
To our relationship.

Next thing I knew
I'm standing in the rain as it
Gradually mixes with tears
Streaming down my face. How could you run
From your son? How could you give up on him . .

I raise my hand
To drop the dirt in but
You're already in there.
Pure selfishness. The words on my lips scream out
"Why couldn't you see your worth!" I told
You every single lie I could to
Make you notice yourself.

"What a good father!"
Mixed with unreturned "I love you"s,
But you didn't buy it, as I knew you wouldn't

I wasn't supposed to be home 'till 3
I saw the surprise on your face when the door opened
To capture the horrible scene inside. You had already
Told your finger to pull the trigger as the last
Syllable flew out of your mouth;

Shakespeare could have written the plot,
But he didn't have to watch you, or feel the pain.
I did.

Okay, overall I think this is a good start, but right off there are two things that bug me:

1. I know this is a poem, but there does not need to be a comma at the end of each line. In fact, there should NOT be a comma at the end of a line unless there would be a comma there if this was written in sentence form. Example:

I wasted too much time trying to be strong,
For you. Lending compliments that fell on,
Deaf ears that turned into arguments,
When all I wanted was to fill your head,
With love and,
Passion that you never brought,
To our relationship.

If we write this stanza as a sentence, here's how it looks right now:

"I wasted too much time trying to be strong, For you. Lending compliments that fell on, Deaf ears that turned into arguments, When all I wanted was to fill your head, With love and, Passion that you never brought, To our relationship."

Here's how it should look as a sentence:

"I wasted too much time trying to be strong for you. Lending compliments that fell on deaf ears that turned into arguments, when all I wanted was to fill your head with love and passion that you never brought to our relationship."

Which translates itself back into a stanza as:

"I wasted too much time trying to be strong
for you. Lending compliments that fell on
deaf ears that turned into arguments,
when all I wanted was to fill your head
with love and passion that you never brought
to our relationship."

(If you want, the first word of each line may be capitalized, that's a personal preference thing - my preference is uncapitalized unless it's a new sentence, hence the previous example of a stanza, but you can keep them capitalized if you want - and I know most computers automatically capitalize each line.)

The thing is, this has the potential to be a really good poem, but having so many unnecessary commas breaks it up so much that it loses its flow and some of its meanings. Parts of it have to be read over again because the commas cause conflict of meaning - the reader reads each comma as a break, a new idea, when in most cases they ought to be reading this line as part of the previous line.

2. ...I know I had something else to say about the poem as a whole, but I can't remember. I guess I just really got into the comma thing... It comes of being an English nerd. Oh, well.

Anyways, I really liked the lines "to the hopeless last-act wonder,/ to a Shakespearean tragedy." However, "I buried part of myself with you" is a cliche.

Other than that - start off by taking out the unnecessary commas and the poem will already improve a lot. If you don't know where you should use your commas, try what I did above, rewriting each stanza as a sentence. If you're normally good with grammar, you should be able to see which ones to take out just by doing that.

If I think of what the other thing was that I meant to say, I'll pop over here and review again!

Hope this helped,
Blue

Hi, Tommy!


I think this could be quite a powerful poem with some tweaking. Some things that disturbed me as a reader were your nonchalant usage of punctuation and a few funky line break solutions you had made. For example, in this stanza:

Two weeks later
I'm standing in the rain as it
Gradually mixes with tears streaming,
Down my face. How could you run from
Me; your son? How could you give up so early!

all I'm seeing at first is just about every punctuation mark in the daily usage. There's a comma (that shouldn't actually even be there), a period, a semi-colon, a question mark, an exclamation mark... Here, these tiny symbols get all the attention that should belong to the words and the imagery.

I'm also a bit thrown off by new sentences starting mid-line, like you have in nearly every stanza. This is a matter of style, I suppose -- each to his own -- but it doesn't appeal to me. It might appeal to some, however.

I'm not sure what to think of the rhyme in the very last lines. It was a little in-your-face, since nothing else in the poem rhymed, and especially because you obviously had to step out of your way to get the rhyme. Unfortunately it shows -- it could come across much more smooth and effortless, but it doesn't.

No words can I lend
To the hopeless last-act wonder
To a Shakespearean tragedy.

This ending of the first stanza is my favourite part of the poem. It's really nice. I'm just not sure if the last "to" should be "of"? My mind automatically makes it "of", so. I might be wrong, though.


With some stylistic changes, this will become a lot better. After that, you could try replacing some of the more obvious word choices with something less expected (for example, in a poem about suicide it's really not necessary to say the actual word "suicide" -- readers should know this just by the images and the other words you choose to use).

I hope I've helped at all!


Demeter
x

Hi!

I loved the first stanza, it had a really nice flow and I loved how you included, "Shakespearean tragedy" there too. It reinforced how truly sad the occasion is.

But I noticed that towards the end, the structure starts to get a bit funny.
Especially this bit:

Tommybear wrote:"Why couldn't you see your worth!" I told
You every single lie I could to
Make you notice yourself.

So, maybe you could fix that up a bit.

But other than that, nice job on the poem .

I think the subject matter is very powerful. The second and third line don't mesh very well--you create two seperate images to closely in conjunction. Also, unusual line break/punctuation can be very effective, but make sure each one has a meaning. Using too many can just be distracting. You need some sort of structure to hold it together. Try reading it aloud in you head. You have a couple great lines, like

I'm standing in the rain as it
Gradually mixes with tears streaming,

Keep up the good work

This poem was just amazing. I've always thought about suicide from the perspective of the person killing themselves, never from their family's or friends' point of few. It's harsh and I loved your wording. Just... Just amazing.

Hello

First off, this is a very emotional poem, and it written quite well. A few things though:

Gradually mixes with tears streaming, There really doesn't need to be a comma here. It doesn't add anything really and is just kind of distracting.
Down my face. How could you run from

When all I wanted was to fill your head
With love and I think it would flow better if you put 'the' before love.
Passion that you never brought

Good job. I loved it. I also thought this bit:

raise my hand to drop the
Dirt in but I realize you're already in

was really clever.
Keep writing.

~BTM

Wow. This one was...amazing. It made me think of my best friend's suicide. You got the emotions down really good. I felt everything that you were trying to convey. All in all this piece was one of my all-time faves because not a lot of people can write about the subject of suicide without boring me. If you can do that you're a golden writer.