Don't Look Away

Hello - This my first submission. Comments and helpful critique appreciated. Thanks for reading.


Don't Look Away

Blue eyes shed a crystal tear,
Hardened by a small girl's learned hatred.
Her bones and flesh torn by
Monsters she doesn't understand.
But these secrets lie within her
For if she outs them
It will be her skin that's burned,
Her bones that are broken,
Her body that's bruised.
Wings torn by the lack of humanity
She was born into.
Reasons beyond her comprehension.
But tonight will you hear her desperate cries?

Green eyes grow a width to be described,
Only by the vastness we cannot realize.
A question mark comes up several times,
Only once to receive an answer.
The aching hunger won't go away.
And it's unknown to the crowd he's drowning in,
Too busy to notice the protruding sticks,
The gaunt color,
The tortured stare.
He'll go to bed with a stomach empty
As his hope
Which we can't give him.

Brown eyes mask the constant anxiety
As the powder conceals away the bags in a hurry.
Life passing by furiously on the highway,
Relentless to let emotions catch up.
The colors of the cloth outside the window
Become etched in her mind in confusion.
A hero to call her own,
But her wondering,
When will he come back home?
Tears coat her hair as it faces night.
Stars she will wish on for him to be safe.
As he fights for a country not knowing even his name.
And when you ask,
She's doing just fine today...

Hazel eyes adorn a desolate stare,
With a need for them back so dire.
Gone in seconds after living for years,
But it just wasn't enough time
To equal on his tears shed.
A day without them is simply a haze.
But how should he know
Why that drunk grabbed the wheel
And in a blur they were gone.
His fury a height nothing else can reach.
It needs not to have happened,
A senseless tragedy.
But he puts flowers on the stone
Which under his little girl lies.

Eyes once beaming,
Without an instant hesitation.
But that joy has been forgotten
As the clocks keep ticking.
Peer into their eyes,
The tangled message of one reflection.
A voice too afraid to fall on its knees
And beg for help to understand this world.
Why do you not run to their aid?
Out of a million cries can you not hear one?
Don't look away from these figures in the shadows.
If you do, will you ever be able to look into their eyes again?

What I like most about this is that it's evident you've put work into this poem. I see some solid attempts at unifying it into a theme, and articulating the powerful emotions you're only hinting at. It's not that great, but I'm confident that this can be improved and that you will improve it. Usually I'm a little more pessimistic about how things will end up.

I had a couple reoccurring problems as I read it. First and foremost, the theme of eyes can be more effectively expressed. While putting it in the first line of each stanza certainly makes it apparent, it's not particularly interesting, or even eye catching (haha) because you start to gloss over it. Instead, take my drama teacher's advice and deepen it. Instead of referencing eyes in the beginning, weave references to them throughout the stanzas, so that they become the fabric of the poem, and not just a heading.

Point two is that the language clashes terribly in some cases. I had a problem especially with the first stanza, where some lines (learned hatred) just sound awful. Ditto with (... flesh torn by - Monsters she doesn't understand...). There is also a lot which could be stated in a nicer way, (protruding sticks) is such an awfully elementary image, I wished for something more, because I'm not sure it does justice to the problem. Similes are you friends, use them.

The overarching deal with this poem however, is that it needs to be condensed. You've got some nice points in here, but it too much telling, too much editorializing. This isn't in the traditional sense, but you need to cut down each line that starkly states the situation again.

Consider Wallace Stevens

The poem is brief, almost to the point of incomprehension (in some cases, beyond that point in my mind). But look at the way he conjures up images with just three lines.

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

Woah, suddenly, we imagine twenty snow mountains, trees, a sky, a brisk wind, the cold, and in the middle of it all, the eye of a blackbird. We don't need to see the blackbird, we know what that looks like. We fill it in when we look at the blackbird's eye. There's a great sense of motion and expanse painted in three lines.

So this is what you need to do. Your images should be and could be powerful, but condense condense condense. Let me try to give a meager example:

Green eyes grow a width to be described,
Only by the vastness we cannot realize.
A question mark comes up several times,
Only once to receive an answer.
The aching hunger won't go away.
And it's unknown to the crowd he's drowning in,
Too busy to notice the protruding sticks,
The gaunt color,
The tortured stare.
He'll go to bed with a stomach empty
As his hope
Which we can't give him.

Becomes...

Lost in a grey crowd
walks a little boy
out of sight, out of mind
whose taut skin
highlights every rib and joint
and only through his gaunt stare
can we see his empty stomach
digesting the last shreds of his hope

With respect, I took incredible liberties with meaning and such. And I'd be the first to tell you that what i just wrote isn't that great. But I hope I conveyed what I'd like to see, draw scenes out of snapshots. I never say he's hungry, but it's obvious. I allude to the eyes. And can you come up with a scene from this bit? I think of the scene from the end of the (great) movie Unbreakable where Bruce Willis sees those who have committed crimes in color. The one adjective for setting is "grey" but that has so many meanings that it opens the whole thing up.

I dunno, take my advice as best you can, and send me something if you don't understand.

Thank you for reading and reviewing my poem!

I do understand where you are coming from and I do intend to use of all your advice. I hadn't edited much and knew it needed work. I am glad you came because you seem to have experience and I like your suggestions.

Thank you very much!