Verdant Fiery Eyes

I see ovals, lush and green, in my teacher’s verdant, fiery eyes;
He’s no tyrant, really, just an old, lost soul deprived of love.
He wears a plastic name tag, and on each hand a leather glove
To stop us seeing his red, rheumatic hands; so duty-rotten they’re covered in flies.

And in his eyes we children play, and grin, and laugh all day.
Painless, graceful and muscular like untroubled youthful gods;
Cussing and pissing in free air, making up words, and evading the rods
Of unjust cruelty that jar human hearts and drive sunny smiles away.

He whirrs away, too busy today, to change the world and let us play.
But we catch him staring at the spring sky, glistening and longing;
He wants to be like us again, to cultivate the illusions of belonging
That stem from the fields of utter youth, and slowly decay.

I did enhoy this poem quite a bit. I appreciated that the abba ryhme pattern was at least a little more creative than the aabb or abab pattern that finds its way into most youth poems. Browinie points for that! Now onto the poem itself. I like it quite a bit! I'll give you some examples of things I thought were fantastic.

He whirrs away, too busy today, to change the world and let us play.
But we catch him staring at the spring sky, glistening and longing;
He wants to be like us again, to cultivate the illusions of belonging
That stem from the ovals of utter youth, and slowly decay.

The last two lines especially I thought were wondeful, how you brought around the theme and finally gave a poignant ending to it all. I was very impressed with the puncuation, it was well put together. I also loved just the idea of the poem, it was an intersting take on an old steryotype.

Now...for a few critiques..

There were a few places in the poem where I found that the flow was just a tad choppy.And I found that the syllable count was just a little off. ex.

I see ovals, lush and green, in my teacher’s verdant, fiery eyes; - 17 syllables
He’s no tyrant, really, just an old, lost soul deprived of love.-15 syllables
He wears a plastic name tag, and on each hand a leather glove-15 syllables
To stop us seeing his red, rheumatic hands; so duty-rotten they’re covered in flies.-20

When I read it, I thought that last line was vert akward there. And, in my opinion, poems read easier when lines have syllable counts that are within one or syllables of each other. Also, I think in some places your lines are overly internally punciated. What I mean by that is if there is too much puncuation. like commas inside a line of poetry it may read choppy. Try to shorten lines and readjust the ryhme scheme.

Great job! Keep writing!

Hiya Katharsis!

I'm Kamas, here to be your reviewer today.

Now this is really a poem that impressed me. An adult longing for their childhood/youth.
Very well done, I must say.

One quick suggestion though: you repeat ovals three times. And there is no particular pattern to the way you repeat them so it gets redundant. Try another word for eyes.

Some good examples would be -spheres -peepers (I just enjoy this word ) -orbs

And on, I like to keep my handy dandy thesaurus beside me when I write poems. But otherwise you language is really great.

Keep writing!

Kamas

Hey I really liked this poem.
The imagery hear is nice and greatly conveys the emotion the teacher is feeling. I think the word choice
was not only on cue but also poetic, everything sort of came together nicely here.
If it were my work, I would of not had the reflection or longing from the teacher at the end. However, as a piece of yours, I would not want you to change it.
This is good, continue.