Tend your Flame!

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I feel trapped.
Suffering from a phobia;
Words,
Can’t comprehend.

Am in a world,
Where colours;
Are like the stuttering lips;
Of a lonesome fool.

The people are lifeless.
Dead,
To the very core of their souls.

A crime,
To hear the cry of your heart.
And a felony;
To question your very existence.

I pant after freedom.
Insanity gnawing at my spirit.
But the words I write,
Are my heroine.
And my stories,
Bring glimpses of sanity.

Yet my flame still flickers.
Dancing;
With every sentence;
I conjure.

They try to douse it.
Spitting mockery,
At my ‘’foolishness.’’
But I shall tend my flame.

So, my flame lives on;
With the drugs I render.
Addicted I am,
To the marrow of my bones.
Tend your flame. It's what all we've got.




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I love this! I think we've all been there at one point or another in life, and you really knocked it out of the park! You developed the message very well, and painted a good picture in my head of being an outcast among many doubters. The format in terms of lines was great, and the choppy nature helped develop the feeling of despair.




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Points 2634
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I really like this. Your grammar is good though I think some of your uses of semi-commas don't seem quite right to me. Anyway, they don't stop your poem from being a lovely one!
Keep writing! :)
when she needs to shelter from reality she takes a dip in my daydreams




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Points 23786
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Hey, Temi. Well I have to say, a lot of your lines were quite original. It makes it for interesting poetry. One thing I didn't so much like though was the way it read. This has mainly to do with your punctuation. I have to say I wasn't a big fan of the way you punctuated this, because if anything it more so took away from the actual flow of your words. And when that happens is when I think the impression of your poetry becomes problematic.

Also, I wasn't getting as straight of an idea here by the closing stanza so much. You end it with something insinuating the speaker is addiction to herself and her feelings? Or something along the lines of this. I really liked where you were going with the whole feeling trapped and longing after freedom and originality. It's a really clean approach to take. The ending lines just diverted the slightest away from this in my eyes.

There were a few nitpicks I had, but mainly I've just really been itching to sort drop all these semicolons where they're unnecessary and tend to make your poem sound a bit choppy. My corrections will be in red, my comments in blue. But also, I wanted to point out that as for that capitalizing of every letter at the start of each line, it's of course a preference of style, but also unnecessary for this poem. I think if you would simply punctuate it as if you were writing a sentence or a paragraph, it would also add to the smoothness of how it reads. But anyway, here's how I would have written this with my corrections:

Temi wrote:I feel trapped(;)
suffering from a phobia(.)
Words,(<<Remove comma here.)
can’t comprehend. (I also wanted to make a note that because of the way you had punctuated this, I had a bit of a time trying to figure out how you intended it to be read off. My apologies if this was not how it was supposed to be read off.)

I'm in a world,
where colours;(<<Remove semicolon.)
are like the stuttering lips;(<<Remove semicolon.)
of a lonesome fool.

The people are lifeless(;)
dead,
to the very core of their souls.

A crime,
To hear the cry of your heart.
And a felony(,)
To question your very existence. (There's also no need for the 'And' being placed before 'a felony').

I pant after freedom(;)
insanity gnawing at my spirit.
But the words I write,
are my heroine.
And my stories,
bring glimpses of sanity.

Yet my flame still flickers(;)
dancing(,)
with every sentence;(<<Remove semicolon here.)
I conjure.

They try to douse it.
Spitting mockery,(<<I'd remove the comma here.)
at my ‘’foolishness.’’
But I shall tend my flame.

So,(<<Remove comma here.) my flame lives on;
with the drugs I render.
Addicted I am,
To the marrow of my bones.


So obviously this could have been written or rewritten multiple different ways, depending on the poets style. I think that with all the misplaced punctuation though, you may have been better off not punctuating anything at all, or at least being a little more mindful of how you're doing it. I realize my own punctuation may even have some mistakes, but I was having a sort of tough time trying to figure out just how I would have punctuated this or set it all up, would it have been my poem.

Anyway, I think what you have here is a great first draft. You may need to spend a little bit more time on the approach you take to setting it up though. Nice job, and good luck with all future writing. :mrgreen:

-Smylin'
Paul is my little, evil, yellow bundle of joy.



I don't do time.
— Liberty