My Shoes

This piece is dedicated to all of those who think that they're life is hard. It is meant to be read exactly how it's written. The punctuation marks are put where they are supposed to be. I was trying to make a poem that didn't use a traditional rhyme scheme so I did threes. Here it goes... enjoy



How I would love to walk a mile in your shoes.
Not because I want to know
Your life, but for you to know
Mine... I'd love to show.
But I'd rather see
The moment when we cross the street.
I wonder how it would be
When you see my warning smile.
Your mind skips while
Trying to figure out how
You got yourself into this.
Untying our laces,
We exchange looks on faces.
Handing off our kicks.
Confused about my wits.
Ready to have a fit.
Before your questions arrive
I'm on your side
Of the rollercoaster ride
You call life.
No choice but to reach my border;
A place called my corner.
Over there things aren't in order.
Not like over here;
Domain that you hold so dear.
Where you can listen with both ears and hear...
Nothing.
Just like the pain of what you sing.
You live a life of faking and thinking
That your existence is hard.
With my shoes you only feel a shard
Of what I go through daily.
The colors on them have gone hazy.
How have I not gone crazy?
The cracks split them in the side walk.
People spit acid on them when they talk.
From your side I stalk.
Watching as you trip
And tumble along your trip.
Looking ready to quit.
Now, because of you, my shoes are torn
Again after only eight blocks of being worn.
Earlier you could've sworn
That your life was worse,
That you had the curse.
Now so embarrassed that it hurts.
To me you become rude.
Your words now crude.
After simply saying, "If only you could walk a mile in my shoes"

Your poetry always seems to come off not as poetry but as spoken word or as lyrics. It had no real poetic form other than rhyme. And you didn't keep a consistent rhyme pattern, sometimes you rhymed, sometimes you didn't. The lack of verse makes it even less poetical (though some things are read better without verse) but this is too long to be a whole block of text.

The topic was okay—it meant well but didn't come off as such. Like I said above, it just comes off as a lot of talk. I get no feelings from it, I come away with no emotions, I have no new thoughts to think. Because you just told us a story. You can't really tell someone "Walking in my shoes is harder" without giving us a reason why, just saying the basic facts.

The colors on them have gone hazy.
How have I not gone crazy?
The cracks split them in the side walk.
People spit acid on them when they talk.

But what makes yours worse than the other? You give the impression that the other is a whiner.

Just like the pain of what you sing.
You live a life of faking and thinking
That your existence is hard.

But still you provoke no feeling in me; its been said before. The walking-in-my-shoes in no new topic to take on. You tried to present it anew, and though you did not fail entirely, it wasn't the best thing either.

You need to make your reader feel something. People read poetry to relate, to feel emotions, to come away with a new impression of how to think about life. Here, you just give us one thats been said too many times already. "Someone else has it worse than you, get over it."

I do give you credit for the effort, this could have been 1000X worse but you some-what pulled it off

I would very much like to see an alternative to this poem where the other person's life turns out to be worse. I think that would be very unique among the arrogance of today's people, just some food for thought.

Jimmy makes an excellent point! An ending like that would be much less expected and therefore, more effective.

"Before you insult someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. Then, when you insult him, you're a mile away AND you have his shoes!"

Colleen

"Watching as you trip
And tumble along your trip."

While reading this, I couldn't help a little smile because of the "rhyme". I don't know what it was supposed to be, though.

These lines were nice:

"Now, because of you, my shoes are torn
Again after only eight blocks of being worn."

I don't know what was in them that got me liking them. And I agree with Suzanne, your poetry is actually more like something else, but still... there's something about them that gets me all hooked.

Keep on
Demeter

I liked it in the sense that it's something a little different. The rhyming was a tad off to me, and like the others have said, it almost doesn't sound like poetry.
In the very first stanza, the part where you say "Mine....I'd love to show." just doesn't really fit. It sounded almost like you just used those words to fit a rhyming scheme, no other reason needed.
Great idea, though, and I can't wait to see what'll come if you work on it a little more!

Cheers!

~ Eden

I very much liked how you started off at the beginning. The unusual structure is quite promising and you handle it well, though it is a bit messy and off beat at times. The structure sometimes seemed a bit rap-ish, which I personally don't like in poems, but that is a matter of taste I guess.

When I started reading, I expected the other persons life to turn out to be worse than the narrators, which would have been a fresh turn and (to me) and much more meaningful than the old "My-life-is-so-horrible-just-be-grateful-you-don't-have-my-problems"-lament.

Even though my review sounds like a bit of a rant, I generally like the poem and think that you have talent. Once you sorted out the rhyme-scheme issues and drop the "Poor-me"-thing, your poetry will be much stronger.
I am not much of a poet myself, so take the above with a grain of salt.

Good luck with your writing