Those Games We Play

A kiss.

..........Pretty please?

That look...

..........Don't you love me?

The hurt in his eyes.

..........How can you say such things?

His back turned to me...

..........Do my jokes hurt that much?

He walks away.

..........Did I go too far this time?

A deafening silence...

Despite its almost list-like qualities, something about it brought me into it. I suppose because the way you write it, I could have been the main character.

I only have a few problems with it.

1. I think you should work on bringing the feels out a little bit more, give it some more omph, so to speak? Make it more emotional (but do it good!) and try to make us (the reader) feel more of what you are feeling.

[s]2. Your spacing. From one side, I could see a purpose behind it: each line being apart from every other line visualized the distance you feel with the other character in this poem. But then the other side, is that it is unusual to set up your poetry like this. Was it intentional? Is there a better way you could set it? Most poetry is in verse, and this leaves it for each line to be verse; but is the whole poem one verse together? You understand what I mean, do you not? So, you might want to think about your poem and whether the whole thing is one verse (meaning, remove the spaces), whether there are verses, meaning certain sections should be on there own (choosing where you place a verse, and how long your verses are can have a large impact on how one views the poem) or if the spaces, as it is, was intended/you could pull it off like it was. As I said I could see it visualizing the distance.[/s]

3. " Did i go too far this time? " never never NEVER forget to capitalize the pronoun "I". Isn't it the most important thing ever? Try to be sure you capitalize and punctuate properly, and use good grammar.

Other than the notes above, I liked it. Keep at it!

In reply to the new edits you made with indents, since you told me you intended to do that, but didn't know how...

It reads much better. Ignore number two above. As for everything else, it stays the same. The spacing is good like this; it's very meaningful.

Wow, line up the lines. It makes it hard to read. And set it up into stanzas. The way you have it, it reads too broken up.

The statement/question set up is interesting, but would read better if it were set up to a rhyme scheme.

I'd like to read more of this, so add to it. I'll come back and really crit the snot out of it if there's more. ^_^

eh. not my favorite one. it's ok. seems like it needs something...else to it...

this is really good. and really true. but it starts out so suddenly it took me a reading it a couple of times to get it.

It's fun playing with indents, but I think that it would work better if you made it more of a dialogue. I mean, right now it's sort of like a dialogue (his body movements being one of the speakers and the narrator being the other voice) but I think that you can cut a little bit more out of to make it less wordy and that it would be better because of this.

So make it more like a tennis match, I guess?

It looks like you followed most of Clau's suggestions--my work here was done before I even got here! As it is, I'm not a huge fan of the whole indentation of lines in poetry thing--but here, it works quite well. It might have gotten a bit confusing if you hadn't structured it as you did.

It could use a little more work. It is a nice idea an is is nice to explore new ways of typing, but there is something missin in this that can make this a great poem.

It might just be the title, but this reminds me of William Finn's song "The Games I Play" where he's comparing love to a chess game and saying a lot of the same things. Sorry, I'm a broadway freak. I know it's a common theme.

ooh, I like this very much! Something I didn't care for as much though was the constant questions of the indented lines. It just made them seem... one dimensional, flat, to me. While the un-indented lines ("style one" I shall call them for all intents and purposes) are short, but work very well as they give insight to that person. "Style two" (the indented lines) however, asks questions in response to style one's actions. Which is fine, but while style one both responds to style two and progresses things, style two just responds to style one, making it seem like s/he could be anybody [this related to/is Snoink's "tennis match" analogy]. While taken alone, style one can say alot by itself, but I don't think that the same applies to style two.

I think the last line is lovely, the way it trails off unanswered, and I think that here, the ellipses are very useful. On the same note, I don't think that the previous lines ("that look" and "his back turned to me") need them, as it diminishes the effect of trailing off for the last line. Personally, I'd replace the first two with commas, or even go punctuation-less.

PM me if you have any questions
-Amelia

I didn't much like how you structured the poem, I must say. Why did you do that? The lines and indents make it seem broken and when it is read through, the rhythm goes all jump frog.

I also disliked the amount of questions that you inserted into the piece; it seems over-done. When you have too many questions, it, in turn, confuses the reader and makes it a lot harder to read. Almost made me feel uncomfortable reading it.

Needs a little bit of improvement, but I liked your idea.
GingerLove

its not bad, but as some of the others said it seems to be lacking something, could just be me though. but its seems a little, done, it needs something to make it stand out more.