The Peculiar Red Ball

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There's a ball in the distance.

I think to myself,
Why is it getting bigger?

It's red, and it's small.
I'm pondering the meaning of life
like every teenager does,
and staring intently at the ball.

I wonder if it will pop
if I stare at it hard enough.

I hope it will,
but it won't.

I still question
why it's growing.

It's enlarging in size:
still in the distance,
but the size of my thumb,
instead of a pinprick in the sky.

Now it's the size of my hand.
All I can see
are the ridges and crests
that give it grip.

This makes me wonder,
Why is this ball getting bigger?

And then it hits me.
Last edited by icanbefixed on Sun Sep 18, 2011 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The hardest mountain to climb will have the greatest view. Everything at a different angle: memories serve as double vision, a view from the valleys as well as the precipice. But everything that goes up must come down.The descent from the peak will be twice as graceful & three times as difficult




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Hello there! First off I'd just like to say that your poem made me laugh. I was reading it and I didn't understand what was going on until I read the last part. When I understood what had happened, I started laughing. I mean, I think everybody's been hit in the head with a ball before, right? Well, at least I have, plenty of times. That's probably not a good thing, because I really need whatever brain cells I have left, haha. Anyways, nice work. You made me smile.

The poem's right on the edge of being overly simple, but I actually think that the style you wrote the poem in goes along very well with the story. Therefore, I can't say that I don't like how simple the poem is. I like it. There is one spelling error; it's in the 3rd line of the 3rd stanza. You said 'ever teenager' and I think you meant to say 'every teenager.' There are a few punctuation issues scattered throughout this piece, but a little revising would take care of those.

All in all, great work! Thanks for making me laugh!

Keep writing! :)
“...it's better to feel the ache inside me like demons scratching at my heart than it is to feel numb the way a dead body feels when you touch it."

-Brian James




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Well, I'm not really sure if the red ball is actually a red ball or if it's something else, but I LOVE the double entendre of the last line, "And then it hits me." Hilarious.

There was one typo, you said "ever teenager" when you clearly meant "every teenager," so you should probably go change that.

Other than that - I thought it was kind of weird that the narrator hopes the ball will pop. Why is that? Also, even though I loved the double entendre and hope you'll keep that, I can't help but wonder why the narrator didn't realize the ball was getting bigger because it was getting closer. (I mean, presumably it was getting closer, since it hit the narrator in the end...) The narrator says the ball is not getting closer, just bigger, but what caused that thought? It's a little confusing. Try to rectify that, and you'll be golden. The last line makes this poem. As I may have mentioned a time or three.

~Blue



Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.
— Poe