My retort.

Dear Anarchy,
your buildings are burning.
your razors are melting,
labeling a message, that cut me deep,
engraved as an anarchist.
I give you up.
-
As I fall, through near descent,
the wind hitting, slapping me to wake,
embers lighting the sky, as our souls cry:
"Find me, please, save us, please.
Our bridges collapse and our people die."
Dear Anarchy,
the rules and suffrage live
through the coarse hands.
-
As my own hands,
smolder to what little is left,
the charred remains longing
for a new purpose, a healing of scars
and a scouring.
Anarchy,
I wish to live.
So I am rebelling to your conspiring ways,
I am living by my means.
-
An anarchist to Anarchy,
I walk your ruins, alone.

There are several reasons I like this poem.

One is that the title doesn't seem like an afterthought. It adds to the experience of reading the poem. Just the title alone, "My retort." with the period gives me this sense of bitterness, sarcasm, conclusion.

The subject matter as a political and social philosophy is so unique. I love it. I love how you're directly addressing anarchy. What it means to be labeled as an anarchist. The imagery of fire and razor blades. A healing of scars - a searching for a new ideology.

The ultimate rebellion is rebelling against psuedo-"rebellion". Anarchy never made any sense to me, I saw kids wear it like a trend. And this poem just spits in the face of that kind of unoriginality. It boasts maturity and free-thinking - try everything, every ideology, see if it fits - and if it doesn't work for you, give it up. That's the only way to find where you stand, you know?

I might be reading too much into this but it absolutely delighted me. It reads very nicely out loud, too.

Criticism:
"your razors are melting,
labeling a message, that cut me deep,"

Shouldn't it be "cuts" me deep, since razors or plural?

"As I fall, through near descent,
the wind hitting, slapping me to wake,
embers lighting the sky."

Did you mean this to be an incomplete thought? I ask because you capitalized the first letter AND used a period, so it reads awkwardly since it's set up like a complete sentence and yet isn't. If you're using this as a tool, I would not use the period, so the train of thought kind of fades into the rest of the poem and seems like it fits more... If you know what I mean?

Brilliant, regardless.

Thank you, I ended up forgetting a little piece, I added a nice "as our souls cry" cliche, to the seocond stanza, after embers light the sky.(I think) Lol.

Dear Anarchy,
your buildings are burning.
your razors are melting, < Capitalise the Y here.
labeling a message, that cut me deep, < I don’t think you need “labeling a” here. I would argue that you can just say “Your razors are melting; message cutting deep.” You’re in present tense anyway, so it can fit and I think this way has a little more drama and a firmer meaning.
engraved as an anarchist. < Again, here I’d suggest rearranging the words to present tense, or perhaps “Anarchist engraved,” I may have twisted around the way your lines should be read, if that’s the case, feel free to ignore me.
I give you up.
- < You don’t need these tabs.
As I fall, through near descent,
the wind hitting, slapping me to wake,
embers lighting the sky, as our souls cry:
"Find me, please, save us, please.
Our bridges collapse and our people die."
Dear Anarchy,
the rules and suffrage live
through the coarse hands.
-
< Okay, the entire stanza above is weak. You’ve already shown you can write simply but evocatively, but you’re losing it here. I’d like to see you condense this entire thing to a simple idea “I fall, and the world comes with me” or whatever it is. From there you can expand. Right now you’re using words that you don’t need, and it feels like you’ve picked them because they sound good and ignored the meaning.(I’m sure that’s not the actual case, however.) The “Dear Anarchy” should go entirely. You’ve started your letter, you don’t need to remind us who you’re talking to, just keep your theme firm in your lines. I do like the dialogue from the souls, it’s cute and it works. I would have a full stop after the first “please”. Right now some of your lines don’t make sense. “The rules and suffrage live/through the coarse hands.” < What coarse hands? You don’t’ tell us what this is referring to. Perhaps “the coarsest of hands” added to this, “The rules and suffrage live” is weak. What rules, what suffrage? If you merely deleted the “The” the line improves.

As my own hands, < Move “smolder” to this line before the comma.
smolder to what little is left, < I’d change this and the next line around a little, perhaps to “what little is left longs” The “charred remains” is fairly unnecessary, you can keep it if you like, but then you’ll have to edit the second line. We don’t need both descriptors; the little and the charred.
the charred remains longing
for a new purpose, a healing of scars < Again here, I’d muck with the line structure. Depending on what you have your other lines do, these next two lines are a little too dramatic with too little explanation. “longing/for the healing and scouring/of new purpose.” May suit your needs a little more than what you have.
and a scouring.
Anarchy, < Make this your next stanza.
I wish to live.
So I am rebelling to your conspiring ways, < Lose this line and the next, we should know this by your previous lines (we do).
I am living by my means.
-
An anarchist to Anarchy, < Switch this line with the next. “I walk your ruins alone,/anarchist to anarchy.” I’d lose the “an” and the capitalized “A” in “Anarchy.” Place the comma that’s after “ruins” to after “alone.”
I walk your ruins, alone.


I do like this poem, I love the subject. You approach it well and the voice and tone are fairly excellent. I do have nitpicks and I have larger suggestions, all noted above. I hope it helps, don’t let anything discourage you. As always, if you have questions just come find me.

*Hearts* Le Penguin.

Hey There.

I enjoyed the concept of this poem, as the subject is admirable. Your cliches are well-placed to effect as opposed to being a problem and I think the structure is well thought out.
My favourite bit was the ending, and the change of tone. I think this carried the biggest bag of affect:

An anarchist to Anarchy,
I walk your ruins, alone.

This paints me that image of the lonesome, the voice and the tone that is coming across it's all in these two lines. I'd remove the comma in the last line though. I think it works better.

My nitpick would be with the start of your poem. Personally I feel that it didn't really portray the images that captivated me. This might be down to my own taste, or perhaps its due to the structure repetition portrayed with these lines:

your buildings are burning.
your razors are melting,

It seems somewhat desperate.

Anyway, I think that you're poetry is excellent so keep it up.
Love the originality that forms with you Eddie!
~Ben

Hi silented1,

One thing that I have liked about your poems on your blog is the raw, kind of bleeding intensity that they portray - unbridled emotion, a fast pace. I've found that in some of my poems as well, which may be the reason that I'm partial to such works. But this has a tone of a third-grader. By all means, it's emotional and that's good, but the words construct an immature voice, a "rebel without a cause" that I do not think you intended.

silented1 wrote:Dear Anarchy,
your buildings are burning.
your razors are melting,
labeling a message, that cut me deep,
engraved as an anarchist.
I give you up.

I was going to talk about the random inclusion of "razors" as an image, but you did back it up a little bit by building a web of the same description in different ways in your other lines. Cut, engraved, etc. What you need to do now is to tie all three parts of this image together - meaning, figure out what razors have to do with anarchy. Maybe mention the hooded anarchists in the streets with blades in their clenched fists, I don't know. You need to have a beginning, middle, and end for an image in general if it's going to be a broad one. There are two types of descriptions - simple ones that are basically one-liners designed to give a quick picture in the reader's head, and longer ones that reach across the lines. The razors you have are the latter, so do refine that idea.

As I fall, through near descent,
the wind hitting, slapping me to wake,
embers lighting the sky, as our souls cry:
"Find me, please, save us, please.
Our bridges collapse and our people die."
Dear Anarchy,
the rules and suffrage live
through the coarse hands.

Suffrage? The right to vote? I think you mean suffering, because the word you used up there doesn't make any sense in context.

Hitting and slapping isn't really something that the reader can attach his emotions onto. I mean, yes, I can envision a person slapping, but... wind? You need to do more work here to convince us that this image is possible. I have no doubts that it is possible, but you haven't done a good job of showing us that.

As my own hands,
smolder to what little is left,
the charred remains longing
for a new purpose, a healing of scars
and a scouring.
Anarchy,
I wish to live.
So I am rebelling to your conspiring ways,
I am living by my means.

This is the part where the narrator starts sounding like a child throwing a tantrum. "Conspiring" is a word thrown around by many these days, usually fringe theorists who know that using such a charged term on their subject will make it artificially interesting and mysterious. You haven't gone into this aspect of anarchy yet. Yes, you did refer to it making people suffer, but that's about it. You don't have a plank on which to stand and describe something as "conspiring" in this poem.

The entire "I wish to live... I am living by my means" is very anticlimactic, compared to the great imagery in general that you had elsewhere in this piece. Those are very bland statements, and you could probably condense them into one line with some metaphor.

An anarchist to Anarchy,
I walk your ruins, alone.

Not bad of an ending. Gives the silent impact of desolation, which speaks louder than any cannon shot. I did notice that you capitalize "Anarchy" and not "anarchist" when you're referring to yourself. Keep that, it's a good subtle sign of your meaning.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

Thank you for your comment. =] But I am going to lock this.