An Obstinate Disease: they call this Tourette's Syndrome

This is an overview, for those of you who have been reading my poems. There is a Before _______ and an After _____ for me....this should clarify. Now I give you Look Back, Fall Down, Look Forwards, Fall Flat On Your Face.
........................
I used to see
How everyone else looked at me so strangely.
For the muted grunts
And frenzied nods that I emitted.
Glares were exchanged in the fourth grade
Over who the rights to grunt were granted.
I won, eventually, having a little thing called Tourette's.
A tic would tock on easily, splendid relief of the built-up urges.
Rarely did the tic hurt,
But not everyone else understood it.

Years passed.
This Touretter grew.
People would once in a while stare
As I ticced,
Satisfying that urge.
Little did I know, the storm that hung upon the horizon's edge.
I would have braced, fled, cut myself and bled
Just to feel the unbroken flow.
There is no way that anyone could have known.

But now I sit here,
Staring into the storm.
Nine days ago, I was so happy.
Then, clutching a delicate silver flute,
My arms began to spasm.
They didn't stop.
Doctors couldn't make them quit their rigors.
Next I began to murmur, within two days,
Different nonsensical things.
Then the curses set in,
Corpolalia, uncontrollable obscene language
Wracked me to my core.
Despite every effort, I still say those things
Seven days later.

I began to walk strangely,
One leg following the other in their twisted, maimed strides,
The muscles contorting in awkward ways
That made walking a chore.
Then, one night in a department store,
I began to squat.
Every five steps, I did it again, crouching
To my heels and rising again.
Next came the falls.
I fell to my knees or onto one hip,
Catching myself with my hands
When my legs disengaged.

Now this lingers,
Both squatting and falling,
Bruised and battered, tired knees
Knocking as I try to walk.
Strangers now gaze
With questioning eyes,
Wanting to know what ails this pale blond girl.
I just cast my eyes down and frown,
Trying to ignore the pain of my vigor,
And the rigor of every movement.

They call this Tourette's,
Named for the man that 'discovered' this disorder.
The one that ails me,
Kills my joints, batters my brain
As the dopamine receptors struggle to maintain control
Of my body
Has existed for thousands of years.
I don't know now
Whether I want to fall forwards into the future
Filled with false hope,
Flat onto my face.
Or if I'd rather
Look back
And just fall down.


It has been so long since
True silence has filled my ears,
Breaths punctuated by the word "hiccup."

Such a bizarre disorder.
Even to me and fellow sufferers.
To think--I've never met another of my kind.
Those of us who tweet, spasm and flap,
Clap, nod, tap and screech
Have never heard anything so sweet
As the tic of another Touretter.
The sounds which I lust to hear--
The tic, the toc, of another heart
That beats to a melody like mine,
A brother or sister Touretter,

Whose sorrows are mine.
We speak the same language,
Whether the mother tongue is English or Dutch.
Misunderstood and stared at,
Feeling like freaks from a backroad circus sideshow.
Every time my heart pounds,
I feel the distant urge,
And know: however far, however near,
There are others of my kind.
We will meet,
Instantly bound together in the nature
Of our shared hurts and fears.
For share the uncertain future,

No one can cure it.
An obstinate disease,
Tourette's, it isn't lethal enough
To be of immediate attetion of the medical community.
But anyone who should fling our whereabouts into the mud
Has something to hear:
We are people.
We hurt as our bodies do will other than our own.
So find us a cure, so we will hurt no more.
..............
Okay, weird poem? but that's how I feel......
Feedback is welcomed.
Cheers!
--Voxina

sorry.

Hey Vox! First off, I'd like to ask you please not to bump your poetry. By "bump" I mean posting after yourself and saying, "I've had no reviews yet!" It's impolite to others because it moves your thread up, and it is spamming. Don't worry, it is just a warning. Reviews take time, and given that you posted this on Christmas day, a very busy day, and didn't even wait 24 hours, you're being impatient for your reviews to come. If you haven't received a review in a week or so, then I suggest you ask some people who frequent the section if they would kindly look at your poem. Be polite when you ask! And you just might get your review. But, please, be patient and don't bump!

Also, before I review the poem, don't take anything I say the wrong way, please? I might sound harsh, but I'm being harsh on the poem, not harsh on you. I have sympathy for you, and a hug you through the internet! But that doesn't mean I'm going to sugar coat my review.

Now! To the review. First of all, this is incredebly long. Long poems aren't bad, but you also scattered your ideas. You have several pieces of this poem:

1. List of symptoms
2. Never meeting others like this
3. "We are people"

Now, long poems aren't bad, but they generally stay with the same theme throughout the whole poem no matter what the length. (See The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Elliot for an example of a somewhat lengthy poem.) You've covered three ideas here. You can change subject - but you need to have one central theme. If you want to write about all these topics, why not have three seperate poems? These are all great ideas. A poem which vividly and with imagery displays symptoms and grieves for them, with which the reader can be placed into yours shoes, the plight of not knowing others like yourself and feeling alone, the great desire to be healed and seen on the same level. However great they are, when they're put all in one poem they crowd each other and aren't allowed to come to their full power. Try to condense your idea into one thing. If you free right, when you're done read it and try to see how many ideas you have in there. You can have many, but they should all serve the same theme. If they don't, perhaps you have two, or three, or four poems waiting for you! It's something to consider. Sticking to one theme and developing just that will strengthen your ideas.

My other thought is that you do a lot of telling, and as it is you're more venting about your condition than doing anything to affect the reader, and given the subject matter, you can cause a huge effect. This could be a tear-jerker, but it's not. Adding emotion to poetry is incredebly hard, but it's doable. (I wrote an article on this a while ago. It might not be that great now, but if you can find it, you might want to read it!) My biggest suggestion would be to read more poetry, to see how other poets evoke emotions. You could start with the poem I talked about earlier, Prufrock, although it is a bit confusing. Think about how the poem makes you feel, and how it does this. An awful lot goes into poetry: word choice, rhyme, rhythm, sound devices, imagery, blah blah blah. If you used these to your advantage, you can bring the reader to tears, or more importantly, you can open them to your world, and through that you won't be alone anymore. It's hard, trust me, I still struggle with these kinds of things, but even getting a small tiny bit better at these sort of things is so rewarding. Poetry is the hardest form of writing, keep this in mind, but it can be done.

If you have any questions about anything I said above, because I did say a lot, feel free to message me! Best of luck.

I thought it was really good, especially in that it does a good job explaining the disease from the perspective of someone who has it. It was well done in that it got your point across (living with Tourrette's) without sounding like a text book. It was easy to sympathize and see where you were coming from. So, nice writing.

I thought that this poem was great! I cannot imagine how hard it must be living with Tourette's, but this poem gives a wonderful bitter-sweet insight into the thoughts of someone with this disease. You got your points across well, without it feeling like the poem was too long.

The only error I noticed was towards the end where you accidentally misspelled 'attention'. Other than that, everything was spot on!

Keep writing!

-Prospekt