If You've Read This: my rant regarding tourettes syndrome

here it is:


"Shit. Shark." I curse.
My body starts shaking:
Large convulsion-like waves
Wrack my core with fatigue.
I should journey
Any number of leagues
If it would allow me
To escape this horror.

What do I need?
Only God in Heaven
Knows what will fix this.
Not all strangers heed
my explanations, I see,
For they gaze

With prying, ignorant eyes
Staring,
With their awkward repiles,
Sometimes stinging
That cling to my eardrums.
Despite my efforts to ignore it,
The monotonous words have an impact
Which I struggle to hide within.

Another wave of shakes
And Shit-sharks sets in.
I feel a wave of liquid sorrow
Engulfing the eternal flame
That burns within my tired soul.

They call it Tourettes.
The name that masks the fact
That this disorder has made
Hell
My next-door neighbor.

I can feel the searing heat
Emitted from the chasm's blood-red doors.
I have yet to enter;
But all that surround me
Fear what is yet to come.

I haven't the slightest
What these maladies
Could deteriorate into.
It is beyond my perception to imagine
What could be worse.

Imagine, for a moment,
Your body being incongruous
With your mental demands;
As it continues to flail
In its barren, redundant movements.

I have Tourette's,
I think bitterly.
As it proceeds to contort my arms,
Abdomen, mouth, and spine.

I don't know
If the ignorant others care to hear
Beyond the superficial, seeming, crude
"Shit. Shark.' of my stray neurons,
But if you have read this,
You have seen the words
Of a writer's soul.


...........
Reviews welcomed, as are comments on my situation. I feel lonely, and my parents are just as forlorn as I so I decided to take out the awful frustrations here instead of in my reality. Makes sense, no?
(sorry bout the capitalization discrepancies, but with my arms jerking like some deranged bird's wings, its hard to type correctly.)
--Voxina

Hi voxina, since your piece has profanity in it, I've given it the rating of PG-13. Please make sure to rate your pieces in the future.

vox nihili wrote:
(Hey there Voxina! I like how you turned a difficulty you face into a poem. Very good. Now, while the poem is great, there's a few things that need fine tweaking. Let's get started;)


here it is:

'shit. shark.' i curse.
my body starts shaking in large convulsionlike waves that wrack my core with fatigue.
i would go so many leagues
if it would allow me to escape
this horror.

(Mmkay, this needs work, my dear. You should use quotation marks ("---") for your opening in stead. You see, you don't capitalize this stanza, but you use capitalization in the stanza below. I think you should pay attention to that and either make it all capitalized or all lowercase. Also, this stanza sort of carries a forced rhyme, "fatigue," and "league". League actually almost has no place in this poem. Remember, rhyme is not the most important aspect of poetry. It's the way the poem is written, thought out, and how clearly the message is conveyed to the reader that matters most. So! We're going to do what I think is best here; reconstruct. Your second line is almost too long; it drags the poem a lot, and takes away from the rythym that you could have created here. "Convulsionlike" is two words my dear; you can place a hyphen to show that it's one term. )

What do i need?
Only God in Heaven
Knows what will
Fix this.
not all strangers heed
my explanations,
And they stare,

(Okay, so I see the structure idea you were aiming for here-- short, simplistic lines. It was a bit off, my dear, because you break it up in awkward places. This almost doesn't match with the above stanza, so you could-- and should, reword this a lot. Watch your caps, too, because in the above stanza you didn't use caps and here you use it mid-sentence. )

empty, ignorant eyes
staring,
with their awkward repiles
Clinging to my eardrums

(Here, I see that you were trying to capture the reaction of others to you, but this doesn't actually convey it properly. How about you say something like;
"Eager, ignorant eyes,
Questioning;
Their awkward replies
clinging to my eardrums."

Even that is off in a sense, because you want to hint to your readers that they are questioning, or making remarks. And how does it cling to your eardrums? Does it cling sweetly and make you happy? Or is it a sting to cling? )

As another wave of shakes
and Shit-sharks
sets in.

(Reword this! You say "as another wave of shakes..." you leave us after it. As it sets in what happens? Do you feel good? humiliated? pain? exhaustion? Vox, dear, you need to clarify this a little bit; drop the "As" if you aren't going to continue on with that point, you see?)

its called tourettes,
but it has now made
Hell
my next-door neighbor.

(You should reword this, maybe to something like;
"They call it 'Tourettes';
but has made
my next door neighbor
Hell."

It doesn't matter how you reword it, but the opening line in this stanza just didn't click well.)

I am not in Hell yet,
but I can feel the searing heat
of its depths.
I don't know what will come next.

(Oi. You need to change this, my dear. Drop the first line; and the last.

"I can feel the searing heat
from the depths of hell;
I have yet to enter;
But I fear what comes next"

Anything to change from that-- I'm not saying use the little stanza I just typed-- please don't because it's poor; but I really recommend switching that up. )

wil i soon begin slapping myself?
i can't imagine what could be worse
than my current maladies.

(Should be "Will". Vox, I understand that this is some thing you face, but I would say to drop this stanza completely. It doesn't take away much, nor does it give the reader much.)

imagine, just for moment,
your body being unresponsive
to your mental demands
even though
it continues to flail
in empty, redundant movements.

(This should be reworded, too; if you re-read this poem, each stanza changes almost drastically from the previous one; it's almost difficult to read.)

I have tourette's, and it doesn't command
my mind. but it won't listen
to my needs or wants.
it makes my body do other things
that may hurt
as it contorts my arms,
abdomen, mouth, and spine.

(This is very, very confusing. Okay, I would suggest rewording this as well; be a little bit more descriptive; use imagery to portray what you're trying to say here.)

but if you will listen
through the 'shit shark'
you willl hear
the words of
a writer's
soul.

(No offense, but this is kind of way out of place in this poem. You need to have something in the previous stanzas that builds up to this and makes this fit with the poem.)


...........
reviews welcomed, as are comments on my situation. i feel lonely, and my parents are just as forlorn as i so i decided to take out the awful frustrations here instead of in my reality. makes sense, no?
(sorry bout the capitalization discrepancies, but with my arms jerking like some deranged bird's wings, its hard to type correctly.)
Cheers!
==Voxina

(Okay, I find it great that you wrote about a challenge that burdens your life. That makes the poem worth reading. It was a bit difficult to read with the changing structure, lack of punctuation, and lack of capitalization-- but your end paragraph explained that to me, so I understand why it lacked it. I think that this just needs a bit of fine tuning and then it would be good. I'm glad that you had the courage to write this and share it with the world.


Good Job; Keep writing!

Hope I wasn't too harsh!

xxJune)

Trident wrote:Hi voxina, since your piece has profanity in it, I've given it the rating of PG-13. Please make sure to rate your pieces in the future.

Am I the only one who sees irony in this?

I'm not gunna criticise this at all- partly because it would take me a million years to work out what's going wrong with a poem but mostly because i think it's so personal and pure honest as to what you're goin through that i don't think i can criticise it.
So I'll let June do the tough stuff lol, which just leaves me to say a big fat 'Well done'