Broken Bottles

The demons in my head wait,
Lurking in the shadows above and below,
Waiting for the time,
The time to strike
With broken bottles.

Their bloodshot eyes,
The alcoholic aroma in their breath,
The knife in hand and pills open they teach me
To kill off my life and soul
With broken bottles.

They scratch and feed,
waiting for the maggots to expel.
Their squirming bodies kill me off slowly,
The way life works to kill off others
with broken bottles.

The pleasure in the crimson rivers fade.
The roads of veins,a map of my life.
They slowly leak and break
and work their way down my arm
with broken bottles.

The pills flow down my throat
They slowly choke me
The wonderful drugs make me weak.
They brake me down
With broken bottles.

With liquor and bourbon
To drown out my sorrows
My demons scream and scratch at my insides
Killing me off slowly
With broken bottles.

This was an interesting piece. The emotion was powerful, and I can tell that there is a defined idea you're trying to get at, but I don't know if the repetition of "with broken bottles" is the best way to get the message across. It makes a great title, i will agree with that, but it doesn't make much sense as the closer for every part. I can feel the emotion, it's right there, but I think a good re-tooling could really bring it to the surface and project your message directly to the reader.

Heya! Welcome to the site!

Check out the rules. The one I'll mention now is probably the most important as it keeps the site running: keep a 2:1 ratio of reviews to works posted, so that everyone gets a review on their stuff. It'll also make others more eager to read your poetry; what goes around comes around.

Anyway let's get started.

The demons in my head wait,
Lurking in the shadows above and below,
Waiting for the time,
The time to strike
With broken bottles.

This is a very very interesting opening stanza and I like it a lot, especially the last line, because it conveys such a strong image. Broken bottles immediately makes me think of violence and sharp things and coupled with the demons, I get kind of a hellish picture.

However, I don't like the repetition of 'the time' in the third and fourth lines. Repetition can be effective, but here I think it only weighs down the stanza. I'd rework it - maybe even cut out a line - so it's not the same. But that's just a suggestion. ^^

Their bloodshot eyes,
The alcoholic aroma in their breath,
The knife in hand and pills open they teach me
To kill off my life and soul
With broken bottles.

I actually have a couple issues with this. I'm glad you continued with the imagery, but first of all, it's a little hard to read because their bloodshot eyes, the alcoholic aroma on their breath, the knife in hand and pills open they teach me to... isn't an actual sentence. Don't get me wrong, one of the wonderful things about poetry is that it can bend the rules; but in this case, it hurts the flow of the poem.

Also I'm not sure what 'pills open' means. Hands open, maybe?

They scratch and feed,
waiting for the maggots to expel.
Their squirming bodies kill me off slowly,
The way life works to kill off others
with broken bottles.

First of all: gross! But in a good way, of course. :p

Second: So...you keep repeating this phrase 'kill off.' Maybe try some other synonyms? Wound, injure, murder, annihilate, whatever. Otherwise you're just repeating yourself.

The pleasure in the crimson rivers fade.
The roads of veins,a map of my life.
They slowly leak and break
and work their way down my arm
with broken bottles.

I love love love this stanza. Because here is where the reader finally gets exactly what is happening, but you didn't come right out and say it. So very well done on that. Space between the comma and the a in the second line, though.

Also, I understand that the repetition of 'with broken bottles' is the backbone of the poem, but it makes absolutely no sense here and weakens the stanza. I'd cut it.

The pills flow down my throat
They slowly choke me
The wonderful drugs make me weak.
They brake me down
With broken bottles.

Brakes are what stops a car; it should be 'break'. Otherwise I like this one too...I was skeptical of the pills you mentioned before because it seemed too disconnected from the knives and broken bottles, but here you've gone back to it so that it works.

With liquor and bourbon
To drown out my sorrows
My demons scream and scratch at my insides
Killing me off slowly
With broken bottles.

And a nice ending.

So, I very much liked this, as you could probably tell. It does need some polishing though so PM me if you have any questions or need anything else! And welcome again.



-Mars

Hey there, welcome to YWS! I'm June, your reviewer for the moment.

Before I begin, I just want to let you know that YWS has a 2:1 ratio policy, meaning that before you submit one of your works, you should complete two reviews by someone else.


Onto your poem:

At first, I had low expectations of this. I was thinking it would be another depressing poem with very little to it.

I was quite surprised; I thoroughly enjoyed this. It carried strong emotion from start to finish. You've got some repetition here, which can be argued as annoying or bothersome, but looking at this as a whole, I think you have a really great poem here.

Every stanza in this was perfect. I like your end-stanza repetition "with broken bottles". You've done an amazing job with that, because we usually find that people just throw words together to make another stanza. Not so here; everything fit perfectly.

A good poem here, dear. Welcome to YWS!

Juniper

I liked the emotion in this poem, but I don't see why it is rated R. Over all it was a good poem.