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Young Writers Society


18+ Language

To Beat His Weary Drum Today

by BarrettBenedict


Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.

I saw little baby Jesus in the rearview.
We both flicked our cigs at the same time.
I punched in the coordinates for a distant star,
and the world both sped up and stopped.
We locked arms and touched heads,
as the vortex of time swallowed twice.
But as we prepared to enter the Kingdom of God,
he looked at me and he said,
"Fuck that man, I ain't going back.
I've only ever seen Sirius from above"
"Well then," I said to little baby Jesus,
"It looks like we'll have to sin."
And with nothing but a solemn nod,
he began to load the musket.

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504 Reviews

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Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:54 am
Kafkaescence wrote a review...



I saw little baby Jesus in the rearview.
We both flicked our cigs at the same time.

I actually really like this opening--the irony of Baby Jesus smoking is striking and compelling. It's allegorical without being patronizing, sensory without being over-the-top. I do think it's a bit choppy, though. Smoother would be "I saw baby Jesus in the rearview/and we both flicked..." which removes the redundancy of "little baby" and uses "and" to better segue into line two. You could even add a semicolon at the end of line two to replace the period and link it more strongly to line three, though I don't know if you'd be into that.

Really, that's the only thing I need to nitpick, because honestly the rest of this piece needs to be totally reworked. The divergence into si-fi felt out of place and almost overbearing, at times; "the vortex of time swallowed twice" seemed to be trying to say too much, while "we locked arms and touched heads," felt shallow. There's something to be said about the lack of variety in sentence structure and the placement of line breaks, as well. A lot of it, particularly those middle lines, seemed like nothing more than a collection of stunted, disconnected ideas. They sound nice on their own, but they felt foreign in the microcosm of your poem.

The dialogue and the successive final lines were great ideas, but they felt much too prosey in juxtaposition with the rest of this piece. Consider the line "'Well then,' I said to little baby Jesus.'" It's saying absolutely nothing. It's just wasting words. Part of the beauty of poetry is in its economy; consider that in future revisions.

Don't get me wrong, I did really like the ideas behind this poem. It's the presentation that I think needs work.

I hope this helped.

-Kafka




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Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:59 pm
dogs wrote a review...



Hello there Barrett. Dogs here with your review. To start, I liked your avatar, I found it funny. Ok, back to ze review. To start, this is an interesting piece, you have some good imagery here but I find that your biggest problem is that your writing is obscure, which can be good and effective for some pieces, but in this case it's so obscure that the meaning is skewed. Let's dive in now shall we?

"We both flicked our cigs at the same time."

Try not to abbreviate words unless it adds to your writing. Say "cigarettes" instead of "cigs."

"I punched in the coordinates for a distant star,"

This line is confusing because you never describe Jesus getting into the car or whatever transpiration vehicle you're narrator is using. Maybe describe that transition as Jesus climbed into the car, you could even use that as a beginning instead. Whatever works.

"as the vortex of time swallowed twice."

This line is confusing because you never describe what it's swallowing. And why twice? Maybe edit this line to something more like: "as we were swallowed by the vortex of time."

"But as we prepared to enter the Kingdom of God,"

Try to omit all useless words whenever you can. Keep your writing short and to the point. Try saying: "but before we entered the Kingdom of God"

"I've only ever seen Sirius from above"

I don't know what to make of this line. Absolutetly no clue, my only thought is that you meant to say: "I only seem serious from above."

"I said to little baby Jesus,"

How is baby Jesus now? You described him as Jesus before, unless he did some magical transformation without us knowing.

"he began to load the musket."

Not sure what to make of this last ending, it leaves the reading saying; "what?" because why a musket instead of a gun. Why a musket at all. Why does them not going into the gates of god and deciding to load a musket indicate sin? Too much confusion. Fix up those ambiguous points and you'll be looking good. Let me know if you ever need a review. Keep up the good work!

TuckEr Ellsworth :smt032





It's a pity the dictionary has only one definition of beauty. In my world, there are 7.9 billion types of it- all different and still beautiful.
— anne27