Nightmares in waking hours

I dont know, it needs work i think but i'm not sure what to do with it.

I lay my head to rest
sleeping
can caress my sins away.
I jumped into the murky depths
I began to play.
I thought a game would be such fun
this game of ours my lives true love.
Yet when all was said
when all was done
it wasn’t a game
the war we played in
their were no pawns just us.
Their were no rules
no judges to stop us,
no one to say when the knife needed to be brought away
no one to call disorder on our chaos.
When I sleep my dreams are sweet
no memories of what used to be,
yet in waking hours
my heart sways like poor built towers
flash backs of all my rotten deeds
of blood stained hands the souls disease.
Every day it seems to happen
my eyes wide open
I cant grasp it,
I sold my innocents and though I know the others feel
they just don’t show.
We grieve alone.
I know we won our game of hide-and-seek
I know we won the best pawns defeat
yet I feel as I lost it all
for I know that was when I found my fog.
Such violence and malice sought
its to late now to change the past
but what can I do its all coming back...
I lay my head to rest
tonight
but I don’t play
I just scream
in terror of my plight

Hola, senor good to see you around. My name is backgroundbob - they call me the Poison Pen Alchemist!

O_o

OK, I need to stop watching TV...

Seriously, however onward, to your critique!

Not surprisingly, the first thing most people will read from your poem is the title, so it's your first impression; you might think it's just an added bit you lift from a main theme in the poem, but beware! How people read the rest will often be totally filtered through how your title strikes them.
So, how does your title bear up?

Nightmares in waking hours

Unfortunately, it was at this point I started having heart palpitations from the sheer debilitating effect of the imaginary voice in my head saying "Danger, Will Robinson!"
When I came to and thanked the paramedics, however, I felt it was my duty to warn you that you are straying very, very deeply into the dark side of poetry: beware the cliche! For phrases such as "waking dreams" or "waking nightmares" are so overused they can cause experienced poets to feel nausea at the mere sight. People are going to look badly on the poem from thereon in, simply because your title is the other side of nasty.

So, t3h nextness!

I lay my head to rest
sleeping
can caress my sins away.

Right in the first three lines we introduce a problem that will continue to haunt you throughout the piece: your use (or lack thereof) of punctuation. If I wrote "I lay my head to rest sleeping can caress my sins away", the next person to read it would think "um... there really ought to be a comma or something in there somewhere..." Of course, the problem is magnified by the fact that you've got extra line breaks in there; in fact, you could either read it the first way I've described, or you could read it "I lay my head to rest. Sleeping. Can caress my sins away." As you can see, neither one works pretty well, but that's how punctuation and grammar work - if you're going to try and use line-breaks as stopping-for-breath moments, then they have to all be that, so you'll be pausing quite a lot. If you're not using them that way, then you'll need extra comma, colons, semi-colons, etc., etc.
There are plenty more examples of the same thing: without punctuation, your poem just runs together in this kind of torrent of confusingly connected words, leaving the reader unsure about the meaning and where to draw breath. You need to get those commas and the rest that I mentioned before into the poem; read through it as a series of sentences, see where it naturally breaks, and insert what seems appropriate there. Eventually you'll get some sort of feel for how to stick them in naturally.

Which brings us nicely onto the next topic for discussion! Your line breaks.
There's really only one question to be asked here: why have you put them where you have? Apart from wanting to break up the sentences so it looks 'like a poem', do the breaks there serve any sort of purpose? Do they draw attention to certain words or phrases? Do they conform naturally to a rhythm and meter that makes the poem flow well? Because personally I can't figure out why they're there; it's a pattern I see plenty, of course - people think that random line breaks make a piece of work 'poetic'. Alas, it is not so! Before you do something in poetry, you need a reason - ask youself "why am I doing this? What effect will it have? What will it make the reader think?" and you are much closer to writing good poetry.

Now, your imagery: how do you express yourself? What are the prevailing themes, images, trends and so forth.
Well, woah - you've certainly slaughter the demon of depression and sacrificed his virgin daughter with his teeth or something, cause this one's hitting shades of black I haven't seen since *high school*.

*ahem*

Sorry, that was rude.

Anyway, in all seriousness, you're going to have trouble making anyone who reads it care about a poem like this, for one simple reason: it's been done and done again and done to death (no pun intended). There is so much poetry about death, depression, pain, darkness, dreams, etc floating around on the internet, and the vast majority of them containing excessive amounts of words like "pawns", "night", "chaos", "violence", "grief", "blood", the vast majority of them containing themes like love/heartbreak/pain, struggling with your past, not fitting in, being 'different' and oh God but the list goes on.
What I'm trying to tell you, in my greviously underaffectionate way, is that you just ain't going to sell this to anyone who's anyone. And when I say sell, I mean get to read. Because it is nigh-on to a carbon copy of a thousand I have seen on the Internet since the day I signed up to my first writing forum, and will see till the day I clip my webwriting wings or death do take me - it's everywhere, my friend, and anyone who has been around for a little while learns to hate it with a passion, very quickly.

If you've made it this far (which I hope you have, 'cause this is the disclaimer for several pages of pure vitrolic critique of evil), you're probably feeling not so great; don't worry about it. I've said almost exactly the same thing to most beginner writers than I can honestly remember; the ones that got stressed out and angry stayed around and sucked for a while, then left; the ones who took on board what's been said stuck around, learned from people and now they write things that are a pleasure to read. I can't tell you exactly how to write a great poem (if I could, I'd be rich and stuff by now...), but there are lot of good people here, and between them you've got all the help you need to fix any poetic technique problems you have.
What I'm basically saying is that this was horrible, but we all used to write horrible stuff (well, except maybe Brad, but he was born with fountain pens for fingers or something).

Your wishlist!
- Get your punctuation sorted; it'll help your work become massively more understandable.
- Learn about rhythm and, later on, meter: this is so you can figure out where those line-breaks should go, and get your poem flowing well.
- Find something original to write about! Personal traumas, self-hate, darkness/blood/doom/blah/blah/blah just doesn't cut it, hasn't done for a long time. Being original isn't as tough as it sounds just look around you.

And really, really, really:
- Read poetry! Online if you're desperate, but published poetry books are so much better; grab 'em from the library, bookshop, whatever, and devour them. They'll help you more than you can possibly imagine, just to understand the basic concepts.

Good luck! I hope this wasn't information overload (vain hope, I know...) and that you don't feel to annoyed at my evil-incarnate self. If you need anything, just drop me a PM or scream blue-bodyketchup-murder right on back, and I'll be happy to respond in kind...

Cheers!

r

Thank you for your comment your advice is truly noted.
And may i add I'm not in anyway a novice to what your saying, I've been writing for a while not as long as you, or so i would believe with the slight age difference but I'm not a novice or beginner in the least. One reason i posted the poem was because it needed alot of work, so i do thank you for that.
A tutor I had last year who major in literture of some kind told me much to the same as you did, so i guess i need to rework my style alittle *sigh* hahahaha but i guess thats how it goes
Yet I'm very thankful for the comment and all your advice is truly noted!
Alas, the gammer and line breaks shall always stay because it is my philosopy that poetry is not bound by format or rules, I use the line breaks to add an emphasis (that i know can probably be made in another way) normally the words the breaks hold or of corse to cut the readers thought off and go stright to the next line. And I'm more of the type which likes the a reader to have their nasty little way with the poem, meaning that the meaning is purly and almost always up to the reader. Though i guide and give my own hints the true meaning of my poetry normally isn't something that comes to mind easily, like with this one it does sound cliche which i do need to work that out and the title(thank you!) but in fact it has nothing to do with the painful depression of a teen, though one would think it does.

fanatic dadaism--


I recommend you to study how I respond to criticism, because I am a paragon in that respect. I post the most wonderful, imaginative work, that people would know they are privileged to read (if only they had the discernment!). Instead, they find fault and pick holes in my masterpieces. Do I blow my top? Not at all. I give my thanks and say I will consider their unworthy suggestions, which are obviously motivated by pure jealousy.

You may think of it, if you will, as a gorgeous Monarch butterfly (Moi) set upon by ants. We must aim our antennae above the vulgar fray, and remain secure in the knowledge of our beautiful wings which will lift us high into the clouds.

To be more serious, the feedback Bob gave you is a valuable resource. Make the most of it.

As for this...this is boring adolescent rant and woe-is-me stuff. No grace, no humor, no inventiveness in the language, one-dimensional characters.

If this is the best you can offer us, feel free not to share.


All the best,
Brad

In other news, I want to have Brad's babies.

Alas, the gammer and line breaks shall always stay because it is my philosopy that poetry is not bound by format or rules

Bad luck, it means your poetry will always be appalling. Completely apart from the sheer mess it makes of a piece of work, you have never learnt what actually makes a poem effective - more than any words you use, it's the underlying psychological triggers of arrangement, form and structure that affect the reader most. If you "use no rules", people will read your poetry and basically say "whatever."
There are always people who will claim they don't need to use poetic rules and techniques because they want poetry to be "free"; unfortunately, what they don't notice is that the reason it never leaves the internet and onto the bookshelf is because it always turns out badly.

Don't use postmodern junk-philosophy to justify ignoring ways to improve yourself; there are people on this site who try immensely hard both at improving their own writing and that of others through extensive critique, far more than I can claim credit for doing - your attitude is an insult to them and to all poets who actually take the time to learn their craft.

Acctually I'm really sorry about my response I was mad at the time so it came out really well sensitive and bad. Your very right about my style and the comments are both really appriecated. I do need alot of work so again I apologize, I really didn't want that first respounse to sound so hurt and angry I meant it when I said your words were appericated.
And I already started putting them to use so i feel worse now....sorry
Sorry again I made an ass out of myself.

Stress not, what is life for but the making and learning from of mistakes?

Look forward to seeing more of you.

[coughs a little] Brad is just a big diva - ignore him [coughs a little]

Anyway ^^ I liked this, although the structure was just too much. I need verse to work with... stanzas whatever. The fact that it is all just clumped together hurt my head a little, but that can be righted - although I think this may just be personal preference.

You're imagery was okay, along with the flow and when they were placed together it was good and the flow didn't really falter.