Young Writers Society

Strollers come to this cobblestone walk to trample over my pebbled eyes,

too much have I glimpsed only shadows of him, in sunlight absorbed by me.

The avenue boils up heat until they say you can fry an egg: sunny-side-up,

a misnomer, since there's that same dull pupil staring right back at me, yellowing.

A branch bends to stab it, soaking in the warm yolk that drips out goo,

because the dead chicken inside cannot shed any tears.

Nor the smooth stones by the riverbed weep,

nor the crumpled snakeskin by my feet feel, nor care, nor love—

because these are dead, inanimate, or decayed inside,

like the me, hollowed out and dried. Draining, soaking, anything to stay alive.

I really liked this poem, made me think But keep up the good work, this is exactly the kind of poetry i like!

I like this mainly for the sole fact that you did not conform to the greedy chains of rhyming! I hate it when a poem looks forced and awkward, due to the fact that they were trying so hard to rhyme their words together and create a flowing rhythm, and then wind up with something that completely lacks poetic substance
Anyway, this was lovely regardless of the fact that no, it did not rhyme, nor did it need to. Keep writing, free-thinker! Beat down the ways of conformity

Well, the poem itself is certainly (de)composed well.

Some quick notes on things that jumped out:
- "much" in the second line does not particularly work; grammatically it is fine, but only on second and third glances can this be ascertained - perhaps amend it to 'oft' if you wish for more clarity there. Nothing major, however.

- Technically, the eggs people eat are unfertilized, so there wouldn't be a dead chicken inside, although I can understand your use of the expired poultry as a symbol.

"nor the smooth stones by the riverbed weep,"

- Perhaps add 'can' after "nor," again just to clarify the grammar a bit.

- Mind your formatting. I find double-spaced poetry painful and clumsy to read, and I'm never entirely sure that it's not all a work in one-line stanzas. Probably the biggest of all these little details.

- Speaking of formatting and stanzas... I wonder whether this might not work better as prose poetry. The line breaks are great, but given their length and the stream-of-consciousness-evoking feel of the piece, maybe you should try writing it out as a paragraph (or two or three or however many) and see how you like that. I've read a few pieces over the last year that did something of the sort, with a similar almost matter-of-fact tone, and I found them excellent.

- Overall clarity is very good, although as aforementioned the slight imperfection/lack of it boosts the tone's might. However, I found it hard (even after reading the spoiler) to gather that it was about a 'decomposer', just that it was about a ground-based object. Incidentally, the bit about the branch bending to stab the egg was kind of trippy. One of the bits most suited to stream-of-consciousness, giving me comfortable images but in unusual setups. Very nice, although I couldn't quite puzzle out what you really meant by it.

A great poem, best I've read in a bit; keep writing! =]