Some of my poems from NaPo.

Hiya! These are some of the poems I wrote for National Poetry Month that I actually liked a bit. Reviews are appreciated!

~*~
1.

Spoiler

he sounds like love,
his words transforming into
briars of silk that twine up over
the concrete petals that
refused
to
unfurl.

~*~
2.

Spoiler

The white-picket fence
disguises the demon rats
and Poverty's offspring,
transforming them into
puppy dogs and clean children
with button eyes and
sewn on smiles.

~*~
3.

Spoiler

Do you remember us?
Remember the easter egg chocolates
and lollipops that tasted like summer?

You bought them on sale in October
at that tiny, grocery store I hated,
(I always said that love was impossible)
chipped front tooth biting those lips,
as you gave them to me,
(Maybe I was wrong.)
in that stupid 'Have a nice day!' plastic bag.

I would lie on the beat up couch
and let the sun tease through the dusty blinds,
the faint scent of Chinese/Portuguese/Lebanese/Americanese
dancing in the screen.

Sometimes
I'd eat one or two,
try to let the taste of July overtake the November air.
It would never work.
(Maybe it was impossible for me.)

~*~
4.

Spoiler

It smells like incense
and it's burning my eyes;
My hands are sweaty but it's just so
cold in this room, in this house
but my body(ies) keep burning up,
fire licking up my(their) throat(s),
trying to make me(them) cough up the tar filled words that
killed me(them).

Dead flowers are spalshed with gylcerin
and
prayers are whispered,
in hope that we can make them last
forever.

~*~
5.

Spoiler

She doesn't wear her wedding ring.
In place of it,
a thirty dollar cubic zirconia
from the classy counter of her local Wallmart.

She doesn't wear her wedding ring.
But wears the fake rather than nothing,
to avoid the whisperumors that
she was that old and not married,
those eggs won't wait forever you know.

She doesn't wear her wedding ring.
She hasn't since that night,
when sharp knives
and even sharper words were thrown.

She doesn't wear her wedding ring.
Keeps it in a dusty keepsake box,
where pressed letters and dry, browning roses
sleep.

She doesn't wear her wedding ring;
hides it between fluttering butterflies that danced in her stomach and
and sobbing in the shower, a loud guttural thing.
She hides that ring between
the memory of yesterday
and the thought of tomorrow

~*~

6.

Spoiler

Don't do that, dear.
It's creepy.
You're not winning her heart,
you're scaring her away.

You see how she nods to what you say too soon,
and looks everywhere but your face,
her eyes lingering on the door and what lays beyond?

Go clean up, run a comb through your hair, maybe wash it first,
you look dirty.
Like a sewer rat,
or one of pesky roaches that flee to the corners and crevices when you turn the light on.

You didn't see the look on her face when she saw them,
but I did.
It was a mixture of pity and disgust, like she wanted to help them, but mostly to get away.
Kind of how she looks at you.

She pulled her dainty little skirt up a little higher to get away from the frightened, survivalist roaches,
then pulled it down when she saw your staring eyes.
She wants to leave so badly
but she can't because you come from money
even though Dad and Mom haven't been very supportive since you dropped out of Harvard.

What'd you think?
That'd you make the next Facebook or something?
Maybe.
But now all that's going for you in an excellent career as a cheap exterminator.

You were always good at stomping on and kicking things,
first Mom's glasses,
then those wretched bugs
now this girl's chances at finding true love
because Dad and Mom will love to hear that you're engaged and
her Mom's greedy, blind eyes care about nothing but repaying all that debt
and she doesn't have the guts to say no.

That's not love in her eyes, dear.
It's not even respect.
That's fear.

~*~
7.

Spoiler

She whisper-giggles the secret in the way
that little girls do, dancing through the grass and
kissing the rain before perching on a withered branch and singing taboo songs.
Before she grew, up she went on the swings, high high high, until her fingers
brushed the clouds and petals bloomed across the sky.

She locked her eyes on mine and breathed her lullaby lie into my ear;

Daddy, I'm pregnant.

8.

Spoiler

Light up my acid candy,
set my blood on fire;
Shatter the bottle against the wall
and lick the liquid from the floors,
cut your tongue on the screaming glass.
Fill the porcelain tub with my blood,
lap it up like a dog.
I love
that crazy-eyed look that
only you get when
your hitting me
up.

That's it! xD I think it's funny how out of 34 poems, I only liked 8 of them. Thanks for reading!

hellooo jass! *hugs*
I am going to review poem number six, because it is my favorite one!! I love the idea behind this poem and I just love how you worked it out! I especially love the beginning:

Don't do that, dear.
It's creepy.
You're not winning her heart,
you're scaring her away.

You see how she nods to what you say too soon,
and looks everywhere but your face,
her eyes lingering on the door and what lays beyond?

It made me think of something that's going on right now over here, and it made me smile because you've described it really good XD

A few little nitpicks:

You were always good at stomping on and kicking things,
first Mom's glasses,
then those wretched bugs I think there should be a comma here, but maybe I'm wrong
now this girl's chances at finding true love
because Dad and Mom will love to hear that you're engaged and
her Mom's greedy, blind eyes care about nothing but repaying all that debt
and she doesn't have the guts to say no.

I absolutely love how you ended it. It's my favorite part!
I really enjoyed writing and I hope this helped a little.
Keep writing!
-qaralynn-

Hi Jasmine,

too many for me to handle poetry wise at once, but nonetheless I'll be patient.

1.

Cute, rather meaningless to the reader though. What do we care? You use two textures to insinuate a deeper meaning. Curt and "sweet" image, but that's all it has to offer. It doesn't stand on it's own out of the context of NaPo, and doesn't bring any sort of thinking out of me. I forget the words as soon as I've read them.

2.

You've got a confused message here. What are you trying to say, the poverty behind the image of some form of the "American Dream"? In short pieces, you have to be extremely precise in what you want to say. It can't go off in more then one direction. Short poetry, like the above, needs to grab the reader's attention with powerful lines and funnel their thinking to a certain point before releasing them out on their own to think about what you've told them. It's difficult to write good short poetry I think. Why? It's got to have some sort of impact, in the few lines you give the reader. The reader has to walk away having been given some sort of snippet of what you want them to see. But as soon as it's slightly hesitant, you've lost any punch and your reader just moves on because you haven't caught their attention. Next, watch your cliched imagery. Sewn on smiles, button eyes. Doll like descriptions are used more often then you'd think in poetry and it's nothing new, which really is another bit of why this poem stands pretty pointless here.

3.

Breaking this one down:

i. Brackets: You have to know how to use them effectively before using them as much as you do. Brackets put a certain tone and emphasis on the phrase that you surround. Here, you have more of an internal dialogue going on and could easily settle for line breaks or italics. Brackets have to bring something new to the poem, something that is worth the pause, the extra thought. It's not for some continuation of dialogue and continuing the flow of the poem.

ii. Enjambment: Watch your line breaks, it makes it hard to read, some lines break right after I take a breath so it's incredibly awkward to read.

You bought them on sale in October / at that tiny,(no comma here btw.) grocery store I hated,
...
chipped front tooth biting those lips / as you gave them to me,

They're odd places to break because it's not where a person would pause if they're reading it aloud. It gets stuck in your throat if you're flowing with the poem.

iii. Interest factor: Eh. It's alright to read, but generally ends up pretty boring because it's brought no new knowledge for me at the table while it stands beaming with it's own success of using metaphors and symbols and it's understand of how tough love is. It ends up looking pretentious and I'm generally unenthused by anything stated. But this remains personal opinion.

4.

Again, what are the point of the brackets? It's gimmicky and ineffective and halting in me reading the poem. It's irritating to read and be stopped just to be reminded of the plural of some bits and pieces. They do nothing for the reader, or your piece and don't really bring something interesting for me. If there is some sort of deeper historical context in which you put your "I" in the poem as a representation of many people, then it may be interesting but I can't pick up on it. It's unclear, and even then if the historical reference was a part of it, their wouldn't be a need for the brackets. And do your reader a favour of checking for typos.

Dead flowers are spalshed with gylcerin

should be: Dead flowers are splashed with glycerin

5.

Not to sure what to make of this one. It's much more lyrical, with a nicer flow and more interesting voice wise. But at the same time, there are bits and pieces that make me look on the piece rather skeptically. It's some sort of hybrid with too many doses of too many things. It's conversational almost spoken word like with the slang, but also more classic with certain phrasing and imagery, and then there are certain cliches, and certain interesting concepts and it beats around the bunch to what in the world happened? You have to construct your piece with a few things in mind
1. Purpose and Theme
2. Flow
3. Emotion

The latter being your biggest issue here I think. Yea, you got the whole roses lying asleep or whatever, she doesn't wear a wedding ring, boo hoo. Yawn. You're telling me this. You're not showing me what she looks like, what the zirconia looks like. Etc etc. How does she feel, make me feel for her, with her. Because I'm listening/reading these events that you're telling me and really I come out of it knowing she doesn't wear her wedding right and her spouse (maybe? Who knows?) died. You haven't allowed me to get under her skin, it's like you're a third party observer retelling this thing they observed two weeks ago. It's so detached from anything I come out really not quite caring. And in reality this applies to all your poems.

6.

This is some form of prose dialogue in poetry format. Not much else I can say.

7.

You like to address these kind of topics I can see. I don't see the thought process, to be honest. I see the way you wanted to construct this, a picture of some childish girl and then the supposed "shocker" line. You need a subtle construction to make that line more effective. Something that leads into it smoothly while leaving that sudden harshness.
The imagery itself is nothing special, petals in the sky, swings, rain, kissing, trees, singing. Etcetera.

8.

This is my favourite out of the bunch. Typos are ever so irritating though. I fixed those and added some other suggested corrections for you.

Light up my acid candy,
set my blood on fire;
Shatter the bottle against the wall
and lick the liquid from the floors,
cut your tongue on the screaming glass.
Fill the porcelain tub with my blood,
lap it up like a dog.
I love
that crazy-eyed look that
only you get when
you're hitting me up.

Yours,

Kamas

Well, seeing as you already have 2 extremely long reviews for these poems already, Ill spare you from having to read another one. I pretty much agree with the first two reviews. But I loved the first three of you poems in here. Then I started to not really get into the next few, but by 7 and 8, I LOVED them. Good Job! Keep Writing!