Suicide's Son

The sun. Harsh and cruel it shone through my window, magnified.
It awakened me to your betrayal.
Yes a betrayal! You ate them up, one by one, little white pills popped into your quivering mouth.
Did you crunch down? Did you taste the bitter chemical?
Or did you drown them out with sorrows and little reassurances?

I found you, slumped and dozy in your chair. An aged king, too old to carry the crown.
I observed with a ravens eye, the damage done.
I transformed there and then. No longer a boy of fourteen.
I was now a grotesque monster,sighing and sobbing.
Mourning the sleeping king.

I placed an ear to your chest and faintly I could hear.
Your soft hum, a heartbeat.

She wept and wailed for her Judas man.
She cried for her spoilt children.
I lay nearby, holding the remains.

I watched her, your youngest victim.
She sat on your lap and held your hand, whispering to you.
Beauty waking the beast.
Your hands were like sand, slipping through her fingers.
As she played with her drugged up doll.

I will never forget that day, when you stole my youth away.
I never even knew I had it, till I found its corpse.
Sitting smugly in that armchair.

Hey,
this is a good piece and it creates a good image such as 'I found you, slumped and dozy in your chair. An aged king, too old to carry the crown' this reminds me of youth that has died away, if thats what you're trying to get at -
overall, it's a really good piece and you can tell you took a long time to pick certain words, it's crafted to a certain style and when you write like this, you write at your best
well done!

Your piece seems to exhibit a poesy rather rare for writers our age (I'm 16 too). I find it emotionally arousing, as this is a good example of words being carefully crafted. Kudos to you recognizing having to play with words in this manner as you did not choose a particular meter for this poem, nor is there a regular rhyme scheme. I am really impressed by your usage of words.

Hey!

I liked it, but, as you wanted an opinion here is mine.

The use of addressing the reader as the person in the piece does not work here I feel. I would do it as if you were sat talking to someone about it, and make it a lot more emotionally attachable for the reader.

And here comes my poetry scales! I say every amazing poem is like a set of scaled perfectly balanced. And, my friend, this is quite good, but not quite. In my head I had imagined the room, I, had imagined it. I don't want to, I want you to tell me. It falls flat on the description in my opinion. You have good oppurtunities to say what things look like, but you don't, which is a shame as you have some excellent emotion.

So that's my review! I did I like it however and remember they are just my opinions, do with them what you will

Keep it up and PM me for anything.

~Retro Disco666

Hey Matt,

I really liked this, especially the emotion. Whenever I read your poems, I get this sense of someone sculpting, steadily building up this fantastic work of art. Or threading at a loom. Every single one that I read I just feel incredibly grateful to have been able to experience the art and thought that you put into your work!

I don't know if that makes sense at all, and I can't offer a critique, but I have to say, I found this very...eye opening.

It is just purely epic. It carries the emotion all through it, and even more it builds up as you read along.
The scenery and atmosphere just carry you away to the scene , where the words just make you get lost in the powerfull emotions it brings up.
It's not like it's directly addressing to me. It's like telling a story to an audience , not really caring if it is interested or not. I really loved it.
Keep them coming.

Hello. Here as requested.

Firstly, your title. It should be "Suicide's Son." Otherwise, the title is grammatically incorrect. This is rather irking, as it gives off the impression you didn't take the time to write this poem. Whether or not this is true, such a typo acts as a real turn off to potential reviewers.

Onto the actual poem.

Each line is self-contained, making your poem rather bland, structure-wise. The self-contained nature of each sentence also makes for a jumble of metaphors and line-lengths.

By jumping between line lengths, you not only create a poem that is visually displeasing, but jumps around in mood without much reason. Short lines can draw emphasis to a point, but because your lines have self-contained sentences (that don't flow down to the next line) the emphasis is moot. A short punch would work best when the lines and sentences are longer, to create the most amount of contrast. Short punches also work best later in the poem, when we've had longer lines/sentences to compare the short punch too.

For your content, you could work on making your metaphors/similes a lot more constant. Right now, we change imagery every line. This is pretty jarring to the reader, and makes it hard to get any sort of clear picture. It also makes the poem very one-dimentional because it looks like you used whatever image worked with each emotion, instead of looking at how one image worked with a whole host of emotions. While the former (changing metaphors) is easier, the latter (using the same metaphor) produces a much more unified product and is generally better quality.

This jumping between metaphors also makes them look unfinished. You don't get an introduction to the metaphor, nor do we get a resolution. We simply get a single image that quickly switches to a new image. Introducing and concluding an image is important, because readers don't get different images sprung on them out of nowhere. This can be very jarring. The most glaring is here:

I found you, slumped and dozy in your chair. An aged king, too old to carry the crown.
I observed with a ravens eye, the damage done.
I transformed there and then. No longer a boy of fourteen.
I was now a grotesque monster,sighing and sobbing.
Mourning the sleeping king.

You have three metaphors in five lines, and whatever isn't a metaphor is blatant language that robs the metaphors from actually being effective. Metaphors are used in poetry to create an image, and to say emotions in a subtle way. By mixing metaphors (which are, admittedly, weak because they are so obvious and short) with blunt language, there is no subtlety in this poem.

This lack of subtlety made this poem fall flat for me. You could actually do something with several metaphors, and weave them in throughout the poem, but instead you focus on picking the most obvious metaphors for each image, without really considering how to unify the poem. For me, half of a poem is appreciating the wordplay and images. By not working at your metaphors, you've mostly removed the ability to appreciate this poem.

This poem could cause some stirring reaction if more emphasis was placed on structure, poetic devices and punctuation. By focusing a lot more on the foundations of poetry, and what each little thing can mean, you can create something that lets the reader come to their own conclusion about the poem without being so blunt about it.

The reason I'm being so harsh on this is because poetry is all about saying more with less. You'd think that cutting to the emotional chase and saying everything in the simplest terms possible terms would be beneficial, but oftentimes it's not. As I mentioned above, poetry is also about wordplay. What's not said directly is often the most powerful. By having both wordplay and implied strong emotion (ie- showing the emotion instead of telling it) readers are more likely to step back and see multiple levels in the poem. The poem becomes something to revisit, because you didn't get everything the poem was trying to say the first time.

This is a good thing. Revisiting a poem means it was remembered, and being able to appreciate poems on multiple levels can lead to readers thinking they found a literary gem. Such a quality is one to strive for, because it means the writer has created something that is truly complex.

Hope this helps. PM me if you have any questions.

~Rosey

Oh... My... God. This is quite possibly the most epic poem I've ever read on here! It's dark, emotional, and addictive unto itself. I love this so much! Please, for your readers' sake, write more- you are very very very good!