it's just the small print

This was fantastic, EBM! You used powerful language and showed a great poetry-writing competency in general (Are you sure you don't write poetry often? Because you should!). I'm going to go in-depth on this crit, because I feel this is something you should definitely come back to.

Somewhere in the narcotic blur between the smoked
oysters, brewed back out in a sea of bile, and when
the tube fell out of my right lung; somewhere

It felt like a word was missing at the end of the second line, or maybe added where it shouldn't be. "And when ... right lung" seems out of place with what comes before it. I'd favor getting rid of the "and", but I wouldn't mind seeing something after "lung" that would finish the idea you started there -- what happens when the tube fell out of your right lung?

S2 is really cool. You pick up a great rhythm with the two/two/too's and everything moved forward perfectly. The only line that seems off is the first one, mainly because of the "sometime then", which I don't particularly understand.

S4-5 are especially powerful, and your imagery here is perfection. The napalm like mint candy and gum on the pavement images were especially powerful. Punctuation wise, in S3 L2 I would use a comma, while in S3 L3, I'd change the second comma to a semi-colon.

The one big thing I have to say is that I wish you had made a stronger connection between the first two stanzas and the last two, besides a couple of lines tacked on to the end. Right now the meat of the poem seems to be in the last two stanzas about the Viet Kong, and by the time the reader reaches the end, the first two stanzas strike one as superfluous. If you could maybe link to the Viet Kong subtly in the first two stanzas, or maybe even pare down what you have at the beginning a little bit, your poem could be much stronger for it.

Thank you for the read -- I enjoyed it immensely.

Until next time,
Skye

Thanks for the input. I really didn't think I could write poetry.

I added another stanza that hopefully ties in to the beginning. I also fixed a bit of the punctuation and added/deleted some lines to keep the flow right.

I love it! However it seems to me quite a bit more like poetic prose than poetry, if you will. I would go over this and figure out how you could make it more like poetry. But don't change the words, because then I might have to cry.

Hmm... change it to be more poetic, but don't change the words... that would be interesting.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed this, EBM! Well, maybe enjoy is the wrong word... but I admire that you wrote it, even thought you say you're not much of a poet. I liked that it was prosaic to a certain extent, though, because that's how all my poetry seems to turn out, and it was neat to see it done really well.

This bit was cool, and maybe one of the less prosaic in the piece:

When I wished a God to blame for my congeniality,
something beyond frozen chromosomes and effect,
cause, effect, cause.

All in all, a very interesting poem... nice work, EBM.

EDIT: I also really like the title. It's provocative in a non-emo, non-LOOK AT ME! kind of a way.

If you don't mind, I'll come back to look at this new version when I happen to have time.

*Will edit crit in here*

Somewhere in the narcotic blur between the smoked
oysters, brewed back out in a sea of bile.
When the tube fell out of my right lung while I was
a prisoner pent up in the walls of hell.
Somewhere in the expression, in-between pleading her to
drink, gather friends, be well,
and of course, to be happier than me.
To not waste life in the shallowed gloom of the bar.
When I wished a God to blame for my congeniality,
something beyond frozen chromosomes
and effect, cause, effect, cause.

He gave, sometime then, a two-year warranty,
stainless steel staples fresh in my chest.
Two years for two lungs and too many holes,
old cracks sealed shut with laser putty.
Next time, he said, they’d have them
melted to the wall with some agent, more painful
than gallstones or migraines or pregnancy, bullet wounds.
But I'm used to bullet wounds, aren't I?

And I imagined those children in the Viet Kong,
dynamite strapped to their bare chests.
The soldier up above taking their
term of endearment too seriously.
Above, dropping barrels of napalm like mint candy,
the little boys and girls screaming like
they just cracked open a pinata,
until their tanned skin melted
and they fell silent to the earth–
looking from above like gum on the pavement,
to those soldiers that forgot why they were there or who sent them.

And then their little chests exploded,
just after they stopped wondering why,
the little boys and girls, they were ever there,
glued to the earth, crying, napalmed.
And I wondered what it would be like,
when my warranty ran its course,
and the bubbles began to pop! pop! pop! on my lungs again,
like the burnt corpse babes of Vietnam,
ticking like a minute hand,
like the beat of my heart,
metered routinely just two years ago.

Some would say I'm the lucky one.
I'm not the one glued solid to the ground
with a frozen expression on my face.
I'm not the gum on the pavement,
I'm not the one on the History Channel documentary,
running around naked, yet motionless.
I'm here, in the age of technology and mechanical nightmare;
bombs piled high with a hint of biological warfare.

If you excuse my nomadic nature, I'll ramble on,
picking at the staples in my chest and plugging up the holes.

____________________________________________________________

There, I changed the spacing a bit to make it more 'poetic'. The flow seems better now, but I'm not sure which one I like the best.

By the way, I'm repaying you gals with one critique (most likely poetry).

I think the second is much better. Like you say, it's more poetic and easier to read. Your vocabulary is wide and you have some strong, dramatic sentences in this piece. To be honest, I can find very little to fault so well done!

*whistles* Thank you, EBM. Poems like this give me hope that even though YWS is being overrun by talentless n00bs, there's still a solid base of good writers here. This really is fantastic--your imagery is vivid and original, or at least expressed in an original way, and I love the whole concept of the poem. I really can't find any criticisms.

Personally, though, I preferred the first version. Read aloud it just has so much power.

Wooooooooooot!
Impressive piece of poetry. I really enjoyed it.
Awesome imagery, and use of vocab.
The only little thing was in a couple of spots, the flow of the poem was interrupted by a line or two, and it the rhythm fumbled.
For example:

and the bubbles began to pop! pop! pop! on my lungs again,

Other than that, no problems for me.
Great work!
8.5/10

Tennis.