Loss

Tears prick my eyes,
Pain crushes my heart.
I can't live on like this,
With you so far apart.

The night that you left me,
Was the night that I died,
And every night since then,
Is a night that I've cried.

I cut myself and burn myself,
I starve myself for days.
I've thought of how to kill myself,
In all the different ways.

I've gulped down vodka, smoked a pack,
Almost every week,
I've been without your light.
They're the only refuge that, I ever seem to seek.

I've let myself be beaten,
Overlooked, abused,
And through that time of darkness, I,
Love, hate and pain, have fused.

And now I'm here, left hating myself,
My each and every breath.
But I will continue to hate myself,
Until I force my death.

But until that day, I'm left alone,
With all these feelings trapped inside.
I don't have anyone I can really trust,
With no one, can I confide.

No one really understands,
So no one tries to reach,
Over the iron preset bars,
That they will always teach.

I hurt too much to live,
But no one really cares,
Every day of loneliness,
Lacking you, my soul, it tears.

Wow I think it is really cool how well you vividly paint a picture with your words. It really speaks to the reader. In the end of the eight verse I don't get what you mean by teach? I could just be understanding it wrong but I don't get how bars teach. I understand that you are trying to rhyme but you might want to try and find a better word.

In the sixth verse you might want to take the my out of the second line that makes it seem like there will be more when there isn't

Cheers:)

Oh, um, in the eighth stanza, the word "they" is not referring to the bars, but to people.
Thanks so much for the review.

Hi, Game changer! June here!

It's an okay poem. I honestly didn't get much for it other than a person speaking of the aftermath of a heartache of some sort.

It's not terribly horrible, but it needs work. It seems to be pulling at the audience for sympathy when it should leave an impact on the audience without making us feel like we have to feel sorry for this character. Here's why:

I once mentioned that poems written in first/third person often have a better effect on the audience than second person poems, and they do. However, at one point here, you do talk in second person, using the you message. It's kind of a throw-off for the audience, because it feels like you're talking to us. (Although in this case it's implied that you're talking about someone else).

I don't especially enjoy the mention of all you've been through in this poem. More often than not, I say, when you give us an event, stick to it. Don't stray too far-- if you're writing a poem about someone who died, focus on one part: The Death, the aftermath/how you felt, or the funeral. Jamming all of these events that happen over a range of time makes a poem feel rushed, makes it feel like you're shoving us this information. And more often than not, we choke. We cannot swallow too much at once.

I also think that you sacrificed your message here for rhyme. It's a restriction, because more often than not when people write rhyming poetry, they assume that they have to follow a strict scheme-- and if they start out that way, they do. One of the rhyming poems I wrote took me three weeks to write, because I needed a word to rhyme that fit. I had a word that could work, but it wasn't overly fitting, and it needed to be perfect.

So here, you have to repeat yourself. You have to go back, reimply, or jump to another idea to keep this rhyme alive, and you shouldn't have to. You should let the words flow, let them make the poem. Write first. Put structure and rhyme later.


As I mentioned early on, I felt as if this poem was pulling for sympathy. You've given us all of these tragic events of this character who has trouble coping, and we're not sure what to do. We'll lend our sympathy, yes, but give us something more.

If I said to you, "My hand is bleeding," wouldn't you want to know how it happened? You'd probably give me your sympathy first thing, and if I told you that someone threw a knife at me you'd be able to sympathize more. But if I said, "I was bored and I wondered what it would be like to have a hole in my hand!" you'd think I was ridiculous, and your sympathy wouldn't be worth it.

Poetry is a lot like this! We need to know what happened, or have a perfectly illustrated situation in order to sympathize, because poems about pain -- emotional pain, moreover, love, and the likes just translate as angst. Give us a reason to understand your angst.


I hoped that helped some, Changer. If you've got any questions, comments, or if I was too harsh on you, drop me a PM. Anytime.


Keep writing!

June

Hey Changer!

I'm with June on this one. This kind of poetry can be intensely personal, and I hugely appreciate the therapeutic value it can have, but it leaves the audience feeling cold.

Why? As June says, this is real in-your-face, grabs-you-by-the-throat poetry. This divides readers, because on the one hand, you want to sympathise with the speaker but you can't because there is no sense of drama - and, after all, this is meant to be dramatic poetry. Drama is storytelling, and what we need here is a real story: something to put the speaker's contempt into context, so we can begin to understand it. This means your poem needs images! Imagery (and decent images, at that) are great because they defamilarise the subject matter, thus forcing the reader to unpick the meaning, rather than having it spoonfed to them in bland statements like: "Oh, God, I so hate him, I want to kill him." Images allow writers to be much more subtle and attention-grabbing at the same time. Additionally, your direct address to the audience can feel intimidating and limits their ability to empathise. If we replace the 'you' with 'he,' say, the poem sounds a lot less like a rant at the reader, and gives them room to respond emotionally.

Technically, the poem is fine, although the rhyme scheme has a tendency to waver a bit from the fourth stanza onwards. It appears as if you're trying to fit the words to suit the mechanics of the scheme - as June neatly observes, you seem to have "sacrificed your message for rhyme." If this is a real problem, I suggest playing around with free verse. I use it all the time, and it can be really helpful if you're stuck in a rut with rhymes. It allows you to let go a bit, and gives you room to express your message the way you want. Alternatively, if you implement some of June's suggestions as well as mine - put your ideas in context, add a dash of conflict, throw in some visceral turns of phrase - you can turn a relatively simple poetic form into something extremely powerful.

OK, it was a good poem, I liked it. I like how you described the feelings and the actions. It gave me an image, even somehow like a painting or something. The emotions were always present in the actions, but as as said with the image, it gave an imge, not a clear one. I would like to see it like a clear painting and I would also like to feel something towards the character. I liked your character though.

I've gulped down vodka, smoked a pack,

Almost every week,

I've been without your light.

They're the only refuge that, I ever seem to seek.
I noticed you're using rhyme, you used rhyme form the first stanza to the third one, because I sincerely not see it in this one, the fourth stanza. And from that on the rhyme really didn't lok that good. I also noticed a bit of change in the poem's the course putting all of these actions together.

But... I liked it, with a little bit of changes it will be perfect, because it's already good, it's more than good.

Hope you keep writing.
Pudin

Wow.... That was so heart felt.... You could really tell what the character was feeling, for the loss of their loved one. It was so easy to relate to in some ways and I loved how you could connect an emphasize with the character.

Truly amazing, it made me almost teary eyed!