demons (prose poem)

(Author's note: Warning intimidating block of words below. This author wouldn't mind if you would be so kind as to drop any feedback at all.)




demons

One of the most gruesome stories to come out of
Chicago during those years was that of the jewelry
shop owner in Lincoln Park; you may have heard
this already but that particular jewelry shop owner
was a former specialist in the United States army
where he risked his own life to protect the freedoms
you and your classmates so candidly take for
granted; it was his job to clear the roads of debris so
that the mobile forces could pass safely, thus
spreading liberty to those less fortunate than
yourself; unfortunately, many of the jewelry shop
owner’s comrades, including your poor cousin
Bobby I’m afraid, were blown into unsalvageable
pieces by booby traps hidden inside of trashcans,
derelict cars and corpses of unlucky civilians; they
died so that you can live in a free country; so it goes
with many of our veterans, the jewelry shop owner
fell prey to psychosis during a time in which our
health care system was ill-equipped to meet the
needs of the growing population, a nation in which
people like your parents don’t want to pay taxes so
that our veterans can get the care that they need;
like so many others before him, the jewelry shop
owner turned to liquor as a form of self medication,
and as your anatomy textbook tells us the human
body metabolizes alcohol into formaldehyde when
we sleep, which in this case caused further mental
deterioration for our poor jewelry shop owner; your
parents should be ashamed of themselves; it was not
long before the jewelry shop owner began hearing
voices in his head, warning him that there was a
legion of demons living inside the eyeballs of his
seven year old son; in his mind our poor jewelry
shop owner was left with the impossible choice:
either remove his son’s eyes with the only tool at his
disposal, a shard of broken glass from the kitchen
window, or take his snub-nosed, thirty eight caliber,
Charter Arms revolver from the cash-register
drawer, place the barrel against the little boy’s head
and squeeze the trigger, thus exterminating the
demonic presence in the child’s eyes and saving the
world, as well as you and your lazy, good-for-
nothing, parents, from complete and utter
destruction.






(Download the attachment so you guys can see how this looks on a page)

Well it LOOKS pretty in the attachment.
I don't know, my friend. It doesn't speak. It tells me a lot of things and at the end it reverts to cheap drama to drag some sort of reaction out of the reader, but it doesn't speak on its own. I wish that I could see the trashcans, the jewelry owner. I know that sounds cliche, but it's something that you might want to consider when writing, especially poetry.
Now, from my point of view, a prose poem is not prose cut up into lines, which is basically what you've provided us with. A prose poem is something heavier and perhaps more plotted than the same story in "conventional poetry form" (whatever that means), but it still has the attributes of poetry.
What's missing most from this poem is imagery. In fact, the only image that really reached to me was something vague that crawled out of the telling of how alcohol turns to formaldehyde. There's some pasty man sleeping it off in my mind, and that's a haunting image: good, to be sure. But you haven't earned the rest at all. Let's look at a few examples.

1. The reference to Lincoln Park
What is the point of placing this story in this specific location. Do you live in Chicago? If you do, why did you avoid bringing any hint of the luxury of Lincoln Park into the personality or at least the location of the jewelry owner? If it's pointless, why include it? Oh, to even out the lines? Don't sacrifice a message in favor of some kind of experimentation.

2. The tone of the first telling
You spit out the information about the character through the voice of the speaker, but the reader doesn't believe the speaker. To make this more effective, try to show some kind of credibility of the speaker, even some kind of personality or show us, for certain, the relationship between the speaker and the listener.

3. The ending, the "choice" of weapon
It's kind of juvenile. It made me roll my eyes when you said he'd take a shard of glass. It's overworked, and it's not specific to him at all. It's another chance to reveal his personality (through hints as subtle as diction, my friend!), but the chance was missed.

Now, your intention may have been to "show the mundane and tasteless life of veterans after combat", but giving the reader a mundane and tasteless poem isn't going to get you anywhere and isn't going to communicate anything.

My main points are to bring out at least a few more points of imagery, consider expanding the characters, and pay close attention to what you ask the reader to believe in relation to the credibility you've built.

If you have questions, feel free to PM me.

-Hannah-

First of all, the poem is really long. I almost didn't want to read it because it looked too long. You might not want to put "Jewelry store owner" so much. I saw 8 of them, yes I did count them. There's too much. More imagery word too.

I also got lost in the poem. I didn't know what was going on at all until the part where the jewelry store owner heard voices. You don't really need the fact that the jewelry store owner lives in Lincoln Park, too.
You don't really need all that background information about the jewelry store owner either. I didn't really get that part.

Other than that, it's not bad. When it's in the download form thing it looks a bit more neater. Keep writing!

I had to read through this a few times before I got the gist of what you’re trying to say. The block of words is admittedly quite intimidating and the first time I went through this, it just felt like rambling to me probably because you used semi-colons instead of periods, but that in itself isn’t really a problem because it’s more of a personal vice.

The speaker here is clearly very opinionated that the American nation is unappreciative of war veterans and not doing enough for them. However, like Hannah has mentioned, you have provided nothing that will convince the reader to believe or to side with the speaker’s point of view. This undermines the impact and the guilt-trip you’re going for at the end of the poem. Furthermore,

…thus exterminating the
demonic presence in the child’s eyes and saving the
world, as well as you and your lazy, good-for-
nothing, parents, from complete and utter
destruction.

“Saving world… from complete and utter destruction”? That’s a gross exaggeration and leaves a giant hole in the speaker’s credibility... unless it’s intentional on your part?

I also agree that some of the details you’ve given (e.g. “Chicago”, “Linkin Park”) don’t seem necessarily. Is there a reason why you chose these specific places?

I like the gruesome image of having a “legion of demons living inside the eyeballs of his seven year old son”, but instead of using a “shard of broken glass from the kitchen window” to cut out his son’s eyes, why not something more related the jeweler's profession? This could help add more depth to his character.

Overall, as a poem, it’s lacking a lot of imagery… it just doesn’t have a “poetry” feel. I think this piece is better off staying as prose – it is a fairly good piece of writing.