Pain and Love

Dear Beloved, I feel replaced.
He is a much better person, obviously, because you stare into his eyes, when you look not my way.
What has he that I have not?
Do you really love him? Does he really love you? Can I really care for you the way I wish?
Oh, but you do not see your mistake. One day, you will wake up next to him, wondering, 'What was I thinking?'.
My heart has been ripped out, and the pitiful, tattered thing has been smeared across the walls of my soul.

But please, no pity. I don't want it.

Signed,
One Who Can't Love You

umm...what was this suppose to be?

It looked more like a letter.

It is nice,but this isn't poetry.
It is like a letter.

Cheer up

anyways it had feelings into it.

My heart has been ripped out, and the pitiful, tattered thing has been smeared across the walls of my soul.

I think this is probably moving into the realm of overstatement.

This is a really interesting letter. Emotions are abound, makes me think that this comes from a personal experience. I have to agree with Rigel though about that one line being overly stated.. it's kinda got a bit too dramatic for my taste. Other than that, this is good!

Hey Kingdom,

Sorry to be the odd-man-out, but I liked this quite a lot. It has a lot of potential. ^_^

While I do think that the format has to be changed around a bit for this to truly be classified as poetry, I will have to disagree with some of the previous comments as far as the level of drama goes. I actually think it fit quite well. To me, it seemed like some modern throw-back to England's romantic era, where all the poets died from broken hearts and all the lovers were so distracted by their ladies that they grew thin from not eating and nervous from lack of sleep. ... or maybe that's just AP English talking, I'm not sure. In any event! The drama does it justice - don't feel that you have to edit it out just because it's taken some liberty with hyperbole. One man's extreme is another's constant state, after all. It's not as if the prospect of lost love treats its victims nicely, after all. It likes to sink its teeth in.

Some thoughts, below.


The Positive:

You open by addressing your audience - in this case, the one who left you, the one whom you can no longer love - with 'beloved', a nice contrast to the closing line, a bit sorrowful, a bit bitter.

The sixth stanza/line was interesting. The concept of the rejected pity coupled with the repeated wondering if the recipient truly does love this other fellow, if she'll realize her mistake, if she'll wake up regretting her choices, etcetera suggests that you're less upset over your loss than you are concerned for her happiness, which makes the sentiment and emotion of the poem so much more sincere.

Line five was beautiful.


Things You May Want to Look At:

In the second stanza, you need to complete the comparison. The tone is unfinished, it's not a logical sequence: So obviously he is a much better person. Obviously. And why? Because she will look into his eyes. ... so? That piece of information - 'you stare into his eyes' - by itself doesn't matter much, nor does it demonstrate his apparent superiority. In order to give its delivery a bit more of an impact, I would compare that action to a negative. In other words, something to the effect of: 'He is a much better person, obviously, because you stare into his eyes when you would never look into mine' etcetera, or some such thing.

Do you really love him? Does he really love you? Can I really care for you the way I wish?

Here, are you wondering if you would be permitted to express your true emotions, or are you wondering if you as a person are capable of caring as you would like to?

What has he that have I not?

This sentence gets a bit tangled up with itself. Try for something simpler, and if you still want a slightly archaic bent to it, go for 'What has he, that I have not'...

I found the dramatic aura of this piece was somewhat ruined by the 'What the HECK was I thinking' line. In a poem otherwise carefully-crafted and relatively eloquent, this line seemed out of place, amateur. It might be less of a foreign remark if you italicized the emphasis rather than capitalized it - I'm a caps-Nazi, what can I say ^_~ - and scratched the 'heck'. In this situation, if you're going to say it, it's better just to say it than to dance around it, submitting less drastic substitutes for the wording. Remember, your heart has been ripped out and smeared across the walls of your soul, you're in pain, not thinking "Well maybe 'hell' is a little strong..."


--


Again, the format doesn't work as 'poetry', strictly. But in all reality, that's just a matter of more linebreaks, fewer stanzas, and attention to the flow:


Dear Beloved, I feel replaced.
He is a much better person, obviously, because you
stare into his eyes. What has he that have I not?
Do you really love him? Does he really love you?
Can I really care for you the way I wish?
Oh, but you do not see your mistake. One day,
you will wake up next to him, wondering, 'What the HECK
was I thinking'. My heart has been ripped out, and the pitiful,
tattered thing has been smeared across the walls of my soul.
But please, no pity. I don't want it.
Signed, One Who Can't Love You


... or something to that effect. Nothing written in stone, after all. Do what you're comfortable with.


--


Overall, I enjoyed reading this piece and I think you hit the tone very well. I hope some of the comments are useful to you - I look forward to reading a re-write, if you decide to do one. ^_^

Yeah, it was supposed to sound like a poem and look like a letter-well, not really. I really just wrote this in my free time.

Thank you, Dream Deep. While many people focus on the negative, which can be harmful, or the positive, which can be useless, you seem to find a healthy balance. And you always tell me what I need to hear, not necessarily what I want to hear. I'm gonna quickly revise it.

This is better. That last little line has some power now, and the thing flows better as a whole. I'm not really into emo stuff, so I have to say that the things you're expressing here, however powerful they feel, have been expressed before by millions of other teenage poets in the exact same way.

Ooh, I do like this new version much better. The flow, the mood and the tone has been improved twice over. Really wonderful work on the rewrite.

Haha, and you're very welcome for the crit(s). ^_^