There's an ugly side to you

[pre]there’s an ugly side to you
and I’ve noticed your shame
you shy away
from reflections
you cast

in my blood
shot eyes

I’ve been crying more than you think
And I don’t feel the need
to suppress it
Just ‘cause you say
A rebound girl
wont substitute me.


so how many times
did you
have to
do
the dirty
with her?
Yeah?

i want to pin point the exact time you climaxed
so I can know if I was crying while you did it

or if I was laughing at a joke

or if I was self righteously punching in
that plastic delete button
on all your cowardly remorseful emails.

I know I’m crying a lot,
and im judging you a lot
There’s that ugly side to me
You must’ve noticed by now

blood
shot eyes
shallow puddles
dirty mirrors

I can see
my reflection
in all these things

but I can also see us together again
and I can see we’re okay that we’ve been tarnished by the experience.[/pre]



c. 2007

This was good. Though, I was confused about your rhythm; some of it seemed kind of off. The last two lines, for instance. Otherwise, I found this to be nicely done. This one stanza confused me:

so how many times
did you
have to
do
the dirty
with her?
Yeah?

I understood it until you added the "yeah" part, and the two words per line didn't really seem necessary to me. It would probably fit very well if I could hear the actual poem, but it just looks a little... awkward.

Nicely written. Best wishes!

~*Syd*~

You need to keep in mind that a poem isn't about the speaker (or the poet) but about the audience. Write for your audience. Make me feel your depression and your pain--instead I'm just wondering why this is so long.

This is more like a journal poem. It's for you to help you. It's not for me, your reader, so why should I read it? There is a big difference between poetry written for the writer, and poetry written to be read.

Also some of your line breaks were outrageously short, like here:

in my blood
shot eyes

and

blood
shot eyes
shallow puddles
dirty mirrors

and

so how many times
did you
have to
do
the dirty
with her?
Yeah?

Also, "the dirty"? It seems real immature to say that, IMO.


Why not pick up a book of poetry and spend some time with it? Longfellow is great.

I agree with Silly Sydtix that it sounded kind of off. Even though it was, I thought it was pretty good. I liked it.

I usually don't read poems because I am not patient enough to read poems for some reason, but this poem, as soon as I started it caught my attention.

Keep writing!

being that poetry is my minor at uni i have read quite a few poetry books; at the time i wrote this we were reading a lot of poetry in this similar style- experimenting with rhythm. so theres nothing actually ouragously short about it. but i understand how it reads 'off'

i understand what you mean about writing in a diary though- i actually wrote it in about 2 minutes and then pickied the rhythm to keep it in context with the tutor's marking criteria. i wish i went simple


chosing the word 'dirty' is part irony/ part nastiness. for me. rest assured im old enough to use the f word, but i chose not to. to be honest, australians in their early to mid 20s talk like that when theyre jibbed. probably.
:p

miaow,


This is an overdose of emo "sensibility" with less-than-striking rhetoric resolved into a jumbled mess on my computer screen.

I see in S3 that the technique that says "shorter lines make it more forceful" is still adored by amateurs who clumsily misuse it. Surely the poetry class you are taking didn't have you read the garbage on www.Poetry.com for inspiration?


Best,
Brad

dear brad,

as i was raised in the 90s, i have completely missed the 'emo' craze and also your arrogant 'tude' . lucky for me.
take it easy with that misplaced authority in your tone.

best, mia.

Hello, new member! First off, let me welcome you to YWS. You may not have known, but there's a 2:1 rule here. That is, for every piece of your own work you've posted, it's requested that you critique two things by someone else. Share the joy of receiving critiques ^^


This seemed clumsily executed, jumping from one thing to another and not staying anywhere long enough to make an impact.

i want to pin point the exact time you climaxed
so I can know if I was crying while you did it

or if I was laughing at a joke

or if I was self righteously punching in
that plastic delete button
on all your cowardly remorseful emails.

I know I’m crying a lot,
and im judging you a lot
There’s that ugly side to me
You must’ve noticed by now

^ things that I like are in bold, things that I think are superfluous are in italics. To the "If I was..." statements, I think these could be more concise. I don't think that the repetition every time a new phrase is added to the end of the "If I was" is necessary. It would make a stronger impact if it was more concise. To the "I know I'm crying a lot...", seems a lot of ~throwing things out there, just to put them somewhere. And that makes things seem more like notes for a poem than a poem itself. Seems overly emo, too. I like the "self righteously punching" because it's more descriptive than anything else in the poem. Little things like that are wonderful because they do more than a million "I know I'm judging you a lot" stanzas. Similarly, the "you must've noticed by now" line. It's a line to inspire guilt in the person the subject is angry at, and I think it would be effective, if it hadn't come at the end of such a bland stanza.

I’ve been crying more than you think
And I don’t feel the need
to suppress it
Just ‘cause you say
A rebound girl
wont substitute me.


so how many times
did you
have to
do
the dirty
with her?
Yeah?

After the "A rebound girl/won't substitute me", the stanza that follows is redundant and too rant-like. I understand that it's a rant-like/-worthy subject, but that doesn't mean that the actual words have to be as such.

blood
shot eyes
shallow puddles
dirty mirrors

I can see
my reflection
in all these things

This does nothing but list things, and while listing things can be effective, it just seems sloppy here. I vote to get rid of it.

The last two lines were a let down. Yes, they're two ugly-personed people who, I suppose in that sense, seem to go together, but there wasn't any forgiveness. I see, I suppose, that that's the purpose for the reflections and mirrors and such in the previous stanza (I still think that could be cleaned up rather a lot). But at the moment, it seems like neither a commitment or a straight breakup (poetic-wise, not story-wise within the poem, that is). This last stanza could benefit from imagery and careful word choice (as could the rest of this).

In general, do more with the ugly idea. It begins with "there's an ugly side to you" and includes "there's that ugly side to me", but there's no connection between the two, and I think that could serve as some nice unity in this poem.

P.S. please, I shouldn't have to say this, but check your grammar. Put apostrophes into contractions and capitalize words like I (I'm sure this isn't a stylistic choice because it wasn't consistent throughout the poem). If you don't even care about your poem, there's no reason for us to either.