Confederates

[Obviously this isn't directly referring to the Civil War...I'm not sure how much I like this though...]

You have peeled me apart.

I am the onion peelings, lying unraveled on
your smooth, unblemished linoleum floor.
And here is my record, blank except for your mark.
I am bound eternally by silver the chains of servitude.
Four score and seven years is a long time to wait for justice.
Justice is only an abstract idea.
We cannot hallow this ground; let spilled blood do that.
Conceived in liberty, for all of masculine persuasion.

It’s the North and the South all over again.
I knew Unions weren’t meant to last. We can’t agree;
You wish to enslave me, and I shall never be yours.

You have peeled me apart.

This is violation of the worst sort.
Rape would be more tolerable than this.
Oh, Confederate, confederate! My sweet soldier,
off to bloody your hands, so I may
remain forever in bondage to you.
Oh off to war, off to war! Here, we'll bash each
other upside the head with sticks and such
to prove how very masculine we are!
Oh, sorry, I'm incapable of masculinity, aren't I?
Damn this cruel, cruel twist of fate!
Never mind I have another trick to astound
our enemy by. Here's the cleavage! See?
Have you ever seen such beauty?

I told you I was onion peelings,
there are layers and layers of me, none of which
Your eye shall ever see. This then is the cleavage...

I am split. I am split right down the middle,
and I'm unsure of which way to go. For liberty,
a romantic lie, worse than that of a Union everlasting,
or of this bondage. I am perpetually trapped
beneath the shadow of this golden ring.
Call me a border state, if you will, for I'm
just hanging in the balance...

Damn the Confederates! Damn the Yankees!
Unions never last anyway! This is what's left of me-
you have unraveled me as you promised,
and left me behind. You are off, fighting some war,
whilst I am the onion peelings decorating your linoleum.

We are all damned anyway, whether we are
Confederates, Yankees, or
onion peelings. We’re all damned to serve
our sentences in the much-thought of Sheol.

Where the heck are the critiques on this? It started out really well and ended well also, even if it did descend into abstract apostrophe in the middle.

You have peeled me apart.

I am the onion peelings, lying unraveled on
your smooth, unblemished linoleum floor.

This is a great beginning, though you might want to change "peelings" to husks or skins or something similar to limit repetition.

And here is my record, blank except for your mark.
I am bound eternally by silver the chains of servitude.
Four score and seven years is a long time to wait for justice.
Justice is only an abstract idea.
We cannot hallow this ground; let spilled blood do that.
Conceived in liberty, for all of masculine persuasion.

The first line of this section I like tons; the "silver chains" of the second = kind of an overused image. How long is eternally? [it seems to be a concept that gets thrown around in poetry but not thought about as much... all of eternity as huge implications and if you're going to mess with it, show them a bit more.] The 'four score and seven years' is an interesting reference.... but because of the punctuation of this part, it feels disconnected from the rest of the stanza. almost every line ending in a full-stop gets stitled and awkward by the end of this part. Consider connecting ideas to images more strongly here, like you did with the onion peels. "hallowed ground" and "spilled blood" are decent places to start; do more with them.

It’s the North and the South all over again.
I knew Unions weren’t meant to last. We can’t agree;
You wish to enslave me, and I shall never be yours.

You have peeled me apart.

The third line in this part is a bit blunt, especially with 'north and south all over again'. I think the Civil War metaphor needs to be connected more strongly to peeling apart. in the war two sides of the arguement - you and him - are peeling and pulling apart, but how does one side get pulled apart from itself in such a conflict?

This is violation of the worst sort.
*cue whole stanza after this that takes up too much space to quote*

This part gets a little blunt and ranty and I don't think you need much of it. Those ideas are reflected later on, especially with the peeling apart/splitting some stanzas down, that was an excellent connection. but the stuff here, though filled with that sort of rightous anger, is getting a bit superfluous. This stanza would be more effective if condensed.

Here's the cleavage! See?
Have you ever seen such beauty?

I told you I was onion peelings,
there are layers and layers of me, none of which
Your eye shall ever see. This then is the cleavage...

I am split. I am split right down the middle,
and I'm unsure of which way to go. For liberty,
a romantic lie, worse than that of a Union everlasting,
or of this bondage. I am perpetually trapped
beneath the shadow of this golden ring.

I liked all of this a lot. Only this is that there's a lot of "I" -- though the poem is focused on the speaker all the I I I one after the other gets repetitious and can be a bit grating. Have the speaker focus elsewhere, at least in sentence structure.

Though there's definately work to be done on this piece, I was impressed.
If you've got any questions or anything, drop me a line

-B.