Eating You Alive

( I know this needs some serious reworking, but for some reason I can’t get certain stanzas to flow no matter how hard I try. Suggestions?)

Your eyes are bloodshot
Your skin sickly and pale
The drugs are eating at your body
My dear, you look so frail.

I want to help you help yourself
But you tell me I have nothing to fear
I can see your body dying
Inside I shed a silent tear.

I saw that needle by your bed
You promise it is nothing
But I see addiction in your eyes
You have to fight the alluring sting.

Your mind had many thoughts to think
Now you seem so occupied
All uniqueness is far away
As you wait for your next high.

Hm, welcome to YWS; you're pretty new, right?

Okai, I liked your first two stanzas the most, as they seem to mantain some sort of rhyhtm and rhyme, but as you get to the last two stanzas, you seemed to have just trailed off with that and followed a different scheme.

I think in your first stanza, your last line of this might fair better with a little re-write. Maybe; "[s]My[/s] dear, you look so frail." Maybe something like this, so that you're getting rid of one of the syllables in the line.

I'm not sure what you could do with the last two stanzas, but I think they need some work; on the rhyhtm and rhyming schemes at least.

I hope this helped,
GingerLove

Nice, that was quite a well written poem but I can see what you mean about having problems with it's flow. Firstly, in your second stanza you repeated the word help twice. Never use repetition in a poem unless you want it for emphasis and even then just use words.

Secondly, I could see one or two spelling mistakes in your poem and they would obviously disrupt the flow of it. Lastly, your last too stanza's seemed to talk about a different subject than the first two, ie the state of their body.
when writing a poem always stick to the same poem and don't suddenly shot off onto a differently subject. Once you sort out those three then you should soon have a pretty good poem.

Welcome to YWS!

Okay, the first think I realized about this poem is that...though the contents suggest dramatic poetry the whole style and flow say lyric poetry. I was singing this. And singing about such a subject made me just kind of forget the words that were in the poem and instead focus on the sharp rhyming pattern. If you've ever heard the song "All the woulda coulda shouldas lying in the sun, talkin' bout all the things they woulda coulda shoulda done." That's the beat that I couldn't get out of my head when reading this. Everything just seems a little too direct, if that makes sense. Here...let me try something. It'll be raw because I'm trying to get an idea out.

your eyes are bloodshot
skin sickly and pale
the drugs are tearing at your body
what's left of you is frail


I want to help you
help yourself.
But "I have nothing to fear"
Images. Your body dying.
I shed a silent tear.

the needle laying by your bed
You promise it is nothing?
I see addiction in your eyes
You have to fight the luring

Your mind has many thoughts to think
all hope becomes obscured
now you just seem far away
and I thought you were cured

**...yeah...I tried. Now it DOES seem less singsongy and more to the point. Now that it's a raw base poem, I see that you need more description. We don't know this person and you're describing them from a far away viewpoint that doesn't really allow us to becomce close to them. Instead I feel like I'm sort of out of the loop and need more information to give a care. I do like your subject, very nice. I'd like to see more...edge I think is what I'm looking for. PM me if you have any questions or need help with anything!

Keep it up!
~Rieda

It might flow better if you rework all the "your"s; they're in just about every line and even at first glance, my eyes got kinda hung up on that. I know you're writing 'to' a person, so "your" is necessary every once in a while, but see if you can distance things at all. By the same note, you might want to think about taking the "I" out of the poem as well, so that the relationship remains between the drugs and the person, not the narrator as well.

I also think that this would do well with a straight image rather than generalities. Speaking generally (look especially to the second stanza and the second/third lines of the third stanza) is fine for a summary, but for the piece itself, there's not a whole lot to sink your teeth into.

You might want to reconsider the rhyming as well; the last line of every stanza sounded overly-rhythmic and forced, as if written just to rhyme.

I think you could have done more with the title; the first stanza states "the drugs are eating at your body" but the rest of the poem seemed more about the outside effects of the addiction rather than something internal.

OverEasy,


What is this, anyway?

It seems like a monologue with so much boring and tired descriptions as to render the whole thing useless. The descriptions the N gives of a drug addict are so blasé as to indicate barely passing familiarity with the junkie.

For the most part, I feel like I just read a D.A.R.E. brochure (the other part is a bit queasy).

In the future, you might start by asking yourself: "What might interest my audience in what I have to say?"


Best,
Brad

Your eyes are bloodshot
Your skin sickly and pale - I like how you didn't say "IS sickly and pale" its annoying when people do that
The drugs are eating at your body
My dear, you look so frail.

I want to help you help yourself - .. huh?
But you tell me I have nothing to fear
I can see your body dying
Inside I shed a silent tear. - Ahh. These two lines don't flow so well.

I saw that needle by your bed
You promise it is nothing
But I see addiction in your eyes
You have to fight the alluring sting. - try to get rid of that "have to"

Your mind had many thoughts to think
Now you seem so occupied
All uniqueness is far away
As you wait for your next high. - WOW. Nice ending.

You could do better with this, as you stated when you said "Help me with this." I hope I did. I didn't read your other reviews ,but I'm sure you got a lot of help. You are an awesome poet, and I hope you keep writing!