Eating Worms

later, there was a child born there.
he lacked a name, but he was cute,
so the doctors didn't kill him;
and his parents held him enough.
his hair was thick and black, and
his eyes were a deep green
that month, the moon was orange,
and all the dogs were quiet

his first steps were on fire ants,
but the bites weren't that bad,
so the doctors gave him medicine
and told his mother to watch him
more carefully.
his eyes were watery, then,
and his voice hadn't taken shape yet

his first day of school, the big kids
kicked him and made him eat a worm;
the teachers pretended not to notice
because it was after school, and they
were off the job.
his cheeks were red then, and he
didn't know how to fight

in the heat of the spring
his father held him closely
and breathed on his neck.
he felt like crying but knew
that if he said a word, everything would
fall apart, and it’d all be his fault...
So he kept quiet while his father
hurt him and drank his tears with
each empty kiss

early that christmas morning, his
glasses fell from his nose, breaking
on the hard, cold floor
so he didn't see when he opened his
first writing tablet, but he wrote a poem
anyway, and it was about bullies;
his mother was worried, but
paid it no mind, because
it was normal for him

in the middle of summer, his car
hit a tree, and he crawled out with a
cut on his face that left a scar;
all the girls were scared, and
they left him in whispers and glances.
that was when he found his skin,
slipping apart by the seams, and
he smiled as he painted a pretty
picture in red

later that winter, with smoke
in his teeth, he told the doctors they
could take their prognosis to hell
and they said he was too sad,
and made him take medicine.
for the love of his mother,
he swallowed each capsule
and chased them with fire.
that was when he stopped feeling,
and knew he would die someday

at no time in particular, he
tripped on his hatred and fell from heaven;
his clothes were torn and his hair was messy
and his eyes were never quite bright
enough to sparkle anymore.
and his hands were always shaking
so he began to write again;
and the words poured out like rain
and his fingers didn't tremble when
holding a pen;
and his eyes seemed to sparkle
only a little bit
when he stared into his ink

before he fell asleep, he gave
his lover his breath, and asked her
to read him to sleep;
so she began to tell him stories
about bullies and medicine
and painting and death
and when she was done,
he called her a liar
and asked her if the
ending was happy or not...

the next morning, she had
no answer for him
and his eyes were sad when
she left for the last time, leaving
him with a scar and a pill bottle;
and, with a voice without shape
and bites on his toes,
and a worm in his belly,
he swallowed another,
and another,
and another,

but this time,
he didn't chase it with fire
because his bridges were burning,
his world was burning,
his eyes and soul and world were
burning alive.

Wow. I really, really liked this. I love how you went through each point of his life, then followed through with a summary of it at the end. It made for a very powerful effect. The little lines, such as, "his first steps were on fire ants" or "he lost his mind and fell from heaven" are beautifully portrayed. The only thing I could tell you to do is add punctuation other than a comma. You may have wanted it all to be one giant run-on sentence, but it's just as effective with more halting punctuation.

Hope I helped, and definitely keep writing!
-Sam

You capture a melancholy rant through time jsut perfectly. Each and every time you switch scenes you end on a character defining moment. This portrait is really amazingly well done. The desperation, between the worms, the rain, the way she leaves, it doesn't feel... panicked so much as depressed. Lost. Your character just walks and rambles in a world of walking rambling monstrosities.

The way the voice is dettached really adds to this feeling of... robotic behavior, as if all of this had no meaning, and then it ends, on precisely that line, given by the only person with credentials to doom him.

So, wow, well done. It's articulate, it's chosen, it's precise, yet it rambles, and it feels natural, and real, and vulnerable. It's painful, and not because I've experienced similar experiences, but because you dispaly a truth universal enough through it that MOST can catch it, bit like a shiver from the weather, something of that sort.

One thing. tiny little thing.

Last stanza, do without the withs. Just "a".

Hey, man.

Well, I didn't really like this. And the problem is that I didn't like it in form or in content, so I'm going to address both of those factors.

First of all, the content (which has the possibility of being fixed by the form, but should be addressed itself as well). It's not really engaging. It's the story of a guy told in pretty words that talks about how he was beat up, and it was bad, and then he was still bad. It was bad, it went to bad, and it went nowhere else, and that's not interesting. Nothing really interesting even happened to him. Maybe it's because it's easy to become desensitized to angsty poems if they have nothing new in them. I liked the connection to writing and the way you described some of the feelings, but in general, it didn't connect with me.


The form is really dull in most places (see below for exceptions). It reads like a story and not like a poem, and if this were a story, nothing would be new, so I wouldn't even want to read it. Even in narrative poems, something has to be different. You have some differences. I guess this is just not to my taste. But one thing is for sure...

they avoided him like the plague

That cliche has to go!

It's hard to really pinpoint what put me off about this poem, actually. Here's another thing:

his cheeks were red then, and he
didn't know how to fight

The whole series with the parallel structure to this... I didn't like it at all. It seemed like putting in annoying words just to make the syntax recognizable in the next sentence. It was as if you were warping something just so that you knew to warp other thing when they came later so they were tied together instead of letting them fade into normal sentence structure. I don't think you need that! I think you can find a way to connect these phrases because, through this boy's life, they are connected already. I guess if you wrote those phrases normally, they wouldn't grate on me nearly as much.

Also.

for the love of his worrysome mother,

You don't need that adjective. It's annoying. We already knew she worried about him in an earlier stanza.

I don't like talking about eyes sparkling. I just want to know this person, and I think I'm really frustrated, because you won't let me. You keep me at his eyes, and his throat (swallowing), and the scar on his head and the boys that made him eat worms, but he's never in this poem. He's not in this poem at all. I think it would be more powerful if he were. Why write about him and keep him out in the cold?

Ugh, I think I finally found the problem.

So, that brings us to what I did like. There were sentences in this poem that were unarguably good. For example:

his first steps were on fire ants,

and a worm in his belly,
he swallowed another,

and his parents held him enough.

later that winter, with smoke
in his teeth,

These are good. Only the last one really even pretends to know this boy, but they're still good nonetheless.

Basically, all I'm saying is to GIVE me this man rather than SHOW him to me.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. Sorry this is so weird.

-Hannah-

(Oh, but if you meant to do what Hypo said, then that's okay.)

That is so good. You are a true-born author. Just reading this makes me think of three words:

Proffessional
You
Rock

Very nicely done. Impressive.

Hello there, Sunstar!

I really liked it. The concept and the idea of your poem was totally unique. There are just some things that made me disturbed. One, rhyme scheme. I didn't know if you're rhyming at every last word of each line, some are rhymed well while others are not. Second, "Eating worms"? I'm not referring to your title but the way you describe it to the boy. I don't know how to say but it's kind of... an exceptional to hear that. Anyways, I really liked the poem.

Keep up the good work!

Peace out!

Hey there, Lumierre!

I really liked this poem (I *liked* it on Facebook ). I like how it's sort of like a timeline, going through different times of his life. I actually got really sad half way through and felt sorry for the boy, so this poem is definitely awesome. Not too many poems can do that to me. I just have one question: why would the doctors kill him when he was born?! It's probably something obvious that I'm just not getting . Just a curious question.... I'm sorry I can't really review this! I'm not exactly the best at poetry. But good work!

~~Lee-Anna

I looked at this from a Gregory Corso point of view - and his poems are often long and meaningless and rambling, much like life itself, so I'd have to agree with Hypocrit here - despite the ridiculous length of the poem, you captured the idea well.

I could do a stanza by stanza analysis, but I don't think I'll bother, since you seem to know what you're doing here anyway. Okay...so maybe I will, since I enjoyed it, and I want to do it justice:

later, there was a child born there.
he lacked a name, but he was cute,
so the doctors didn't kill him;
and his parents held him enough.
his hair was thick and black, and
his eyes were a deep green
that month, the moon was orange,
and all the dogs were quiet

I like the non-capitalisation - sort of seems more homely, brings us in a lot more, even while you are simultaneously doing a distancing act by not telling us his name, and chilling us by the 'doctors didn't kill him,' - makes it seem like they should have. The clinical hospital image was softened by the use of colour, which I liked to see, and sounds. Plus, the 'and...and...and...and...' makes it flow better, but also gives it this feeling of 'don't-take-everything-I-say-for-important' - a bit more of a nonchalant feel, maybe?

his first steps were on fire ants,
but the bites weren't that bad,
so the doctors gave him medicine
and told his mother to watch him
more carefully.
his eyes were watery, then,
and his voice hadn't taken shape yet

'Fire ants' an 'voice hadn't taken shape' was what jumped out at me, plus the gradual degradation - physically - of the character from the outset. Even so, I see where Hannah is coming from - I don't know him yet, and I guess that's because his character is too young for me to know - I only observe as an outsider in his life would, as his mother might, and I feel vaguely sorry for him.

his first day of school, the big kids
kicked him and made him eat a worm;
the teachers pretended not to notice
because it was after school, and they
were off the job.
his cheeks were red then, and he
didn't know how to fight

The only part that struck me as necessary here was the bit about him eating worms. The rest was a drag, a cliche. Didn't enjoy that.

in the heat of the spring
his father held him closely
and breathed on his neck.
he felt like crying but knew
that if he said a word, everything would
fall apart, and it’d all be his fault...
So he kept quiet while his father
hurt him and drank his tears with
each empty kiss

I'm sure this could have been more delicately pulled off. 'All be his fault' is cliche again, 'kept quiet' is just urgh - so submissive - the guy seems spineless; here I didn't feel sorry for him, but disgusted that he would put up with something like that and not make a fuss at all - 'drank his tears' is so gory, by the way.

early that christmas morning, his
glasses fell from his nose, breaking
on the hard, cold floor
so he didn't see when he opened his
first writing tablet, but he wrote a poem
anyway, and it was about bullies;
his mother was worried, but
paid it no mind, because
it was normal for him

I liked the glasses falling off nose image, in xmas, of all times. I don't really like writing 'poem' in a poem, so I didn't enjoy this so much - and the bullies just seemed cliche. Why would he write a poem? It makes him seem like even more of a wuss. He's looking more and more helpless as this proceeds. If I saw him at school, I'd probably avoid him - but I reckon this was the effect you were going for, anyway. It just would have been nice to have been able to empathise with him at one point in time.

in the middle of summer, his car
hit a tree, and he crawled out with a
cut on his face that left a scar;
all the girls were scared, and
they left him in whispers and glances.
that was when he found his skin,
slipping apart by the seams, and
he smiled as he painted a pretty
picture in red

The transition from spring to christmas to summer to winter is getting really obvious now. Do something about it. Make it less obvious. We KNOW you're pretty much recounting his life story - no need to slap it in the face like a wet fish. Again, out of the whole stanza, only the 'painted a pretty picture in read' got to me - I think it was in blood, yes? You captured the detachment of the girls - and everyone else - perfectly. No one wants to be friends with him, so no one does.

later that winter, with smoke
in his teeth, he told the doctors they
could take their prognosis to hell
and they said he was too sad,
and made him take medicine.
for the love of his mother,
he swallowed each capsule
and chased them with fire.
that was when he stopped feeling,
and knew he would die someday

Here we see a bit more of him - 'take their prognosis to hell' was good. 'For the love of his mother' also revealed a bit more about him. 'Would die someday' was another cliche in a poem about one great bit cliche.

at no time in particular, he
tripped on his hatred and fell from heaven;
his clothes were torn and his hair was messy
and his eyes were never quite bright
enough to sparkle anymore.
and his hands were always shaking
so he began to write again;
and the words poured out like rain
and his fingers didn't tremble when
holding a pen;
and his eyes seemed to sparkle
only a little bit
when he stared into his ink

See what I mean about the time transitions? Too obvious. 'At no time in particular' etc. I like the idea of one tripping over one's own hatred, but it was still rather cold and senseless - didn't make me feel much. 'Stared at his ink' was interesting too.

before he fell asleep, he gave
his lover his breath, and asked her
to read him to sleep;
so she began to tell him stories
about bullies and medicine
and painting and death
and when she was done,
he called her a liar
and asked her if the
ending was happy or not...

the next morning, she had
no answer for him
and his eyes were sad when
she left for the last time, leaving
him with a scar and a pill bottle;
and, with a voice without shape
and bites on his toes,
and a worm in his belly,
he swallowed another,
and another,
and another,

but this time,
he didn't chase it with fire
because his bridges were burning,
his world was burning,
his eyes and soul and world were
burning alive.

Okay, since it's late, I thought I'd do the whole lot in one go - where did his lover come from? I'm pretty sure she wasn't introduced before. And it seems weird - he is made out to be like a ...gosh, he's like a worm!!! So...when you have done such a fabulous job of setting him up to be pathetic, a wuss, a weasel, a nobody, a rascal and whatever, it seems weird that he has someone who he calls a 'lover' - a word that seems too lofty, too almighty to put in a poem of this nature. I don't like the idea of him recounting the story to her, either - seems like a repeat of the whole life, which we've just seen.

'Burning bridges' was yet another cliche, and the ending lines weren't particularly enlightening, either. So...you've have the story - he was born, life sucked, then he died. So what? What do I care - there's plenty of people like that. Here's the reason why I think the uselessness of life that Hypo hinted at didn't work - because there was no reason for the reader to actually care about the character. I didn't know him (intellectually), so felt nothing for him (emotionally) other than the things I'd normally feel at someone of this type. It's like a huge cliche within a cliche - why do I read poems? To find something different - either an entirely different thing, or, failing that, something that is old but described in a newer way. In that respect, the poem just wouldn't stand out at me as anything terribly worthwhile - you describe the experience, but what did I gain from reading about it? No intellectual stimulation, little emotion, and no new insight.

So...think about why you wrote this, and what more you might want to encompass than just the experience of 'life.' A motif might be in order.

PM me if you have more questions, or would like me to look at a rethought copy of this.

I have to say I sit with Hannah on this one; I didn't like it. I didn't hate it, or anything. These are one of those situations where I tend to fall off on the other end, "It's not my kind of poetry." Lots of people like it, obviously, but it's not for me.

You do very well at the droning, monotonous voice that gives the sense of repetitive, boring life. Good job. But that's about all I can praise in this poem. Hannah said give him, don't show him, but I'm going to say the opposite - show him. Because, as it is, you only tell us about him and don't really show much of anything. I didn't feel anything for the character, there was nothing for me to be sad about. I couldn't relate to him, I couldn't react to him, and I couldn't care for him. You began an awful lot of lines with "and" which I didn't like much, either.

I don't think it's an absolutely bad poem, it's just not for me. I like to feel something when I read a poem, and I just didn't get hit in the face or even lightly tapped by anything in this poem. The narrators drowning sense of "this kids life sucks!" seemed to overwhelm any possibility of communicating to the reader just what is so bad about it, and why they should feel the same while reading it.

Of course, when we discussed, you said this was catharsis. I can't really go about judging catharsis. But I'm the kind of person that believes if you're writing personally, for yourself, and only that reason you're probably not going to come up with much. I take the stance that if your reader cannot be included, best not give the poem to anyone to read. When I have written personal poems, I've had to step away from the content after getting down my real thoughts. I have to say, "Will me reader feel what I feel? Will they know what I'm trying to get across?" and if I've drowned it in more my own emotion than any conveyance of the emotion, it's not worth my working on anymore. Catharsis is lovely, but yes, I'm repeating myself. It doesn't always come up with much.


But - other's liked it. So what does it matter what I think? Best of luck.