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Young Writers Society



Society Killed the Teenager

by BlackWidow


Don’t romanticize illness;

Don’t romanticize self-harm.

If you lost all of your control,

would you then be alarmed?

It’s the coffee every morning

that keeps you here, you find.

The rest of the time you’re crying

but it’s tears that are making you blind.

You have a stack of blades

hiding underneath your bed.

Today could create world peace

and you might end up dead.

Down the hatch go twenty pills,

so I’m unaffected by their drama.

Then you start to see flowery hills

but it’s likely to cause you trauma.

You stare endlessly at your blank wall

trying to find some glimmer of hope,

and nobody’s there to watch you fall

as you tie off the day with some dope.

Snap out of it, they say.

You wish they could get that it doesn’t work that way.

And that they could understand the hurtful things they say.

Parents don’t communicate

as their child grows,

and people tend to inch away

from a man in dirty clothes.

A woman talking to herself,

a young child points out.

A child who knows no evil,

just wonders what it’s about.

The mother makes something up

and the child thinks it’s true.

How shocking to the mother

when the child grows up to be you.

© Black Widow 2017


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75 Reviews


Points: 2162
Reviews: 75

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Sat Mar 25, 2017 2:42 am
SilverBerry wrote a review...



Heyo! Silverberry here for a review! I actually really love this poem, for mental illness in teenagers is suddenly becoming much more common (which is terrible) and I see it so often. Your meaning was really clear and strong and I think it's so important to cut down on thise people who are (as you so wonderfully put it) romanticizing mental illness and who aren't taking it seriously, and how parents don't always understand that their child isn't indestructible either. Anyways, that was a long talk about your message so I hope you can see that I liked it. I thought you have your message and symbolic part of your poem down really well, which (in my opinion) is the most important, but you could probably work on structure a little bit, which is what I'm going to talk about.

First of all, stanzas. They aren'tcompletelt necessary, but since you have such a long poem and you took the time to structure the rhyme scheme, I think stanzas would have made it easier to read and would separate your ideas in a good way.

Next, I'm going to go through the rhymes. I absolutely love that you chose to do a rhyme scheme, and I'm impressed that you did it with such a long poem and continued it, so good job!

"if you lost all of your control,
Would you then be alarmed?"

Okay so this is going to sound weird, but I think you should change it to "would then you be alarmed?" I know the grammar there isn't the best but since it's a poem you can play around! Something about "would you then be alarmed" sounds awkward to me, and I think it has to do with the stress of your syllables. By itself the line sounds alright by with the line before it the flow breaks a little. You don't have to change it but I would suggest playin around with your wording (throughout the entire poem) until you get it to sound right.

"that keeps you here, you find.
The rest of the time you're crying
But it's tears that are making you blind."

So the first line line is a little awkward and sounds a little forced but I think it'll be okay as long as you fix the third line here. "Are making" is a little wordy and you suddenly switch to imperfect tense, so I think "that make you blind" would sound better, but that's up to you.

"Today could create world peace
and you might end up dead.

I like the meaning of these lines here and I appreciate that you're contrastive, but I think you could make that more clear. Especially since you use "and" here, the sharp contrast between how the day could go becomes a little more dull. I would consider saying "but you just might end up dead". Of course that's your choice but I would consider playing around with the second line and changing "and" to "but".

snap out of it, they say.
You wish they could get that it doesn't work that way.
And that they could understand the hurtful things they say

Okay so these lines are really important (in my opinion), and there are some things you could work on. So first of all, this completely breaks your rhyme scheme, and it's a little weird that you start it up again a little later. Also, the second and third line here are too big, which breaks the flow.
THAT SAID, this could be really awesome if you broke it off. Another reason you should have stanzas is that this could separate the two parts of your poems by having a stanza with three lines that doesn't rhyme. These are important lines to your theme, and I think since you suddenly make the snap out of it line a little shorter, it makes your next lines even more dramatic. While consistency is really important, I think you could keep it like this with the inclusion of stanzas.

I don't have much else to say since I LOVE the end. It's dramatic and realistic and you get your meaning across and it's wonderful, so good job! I thought the whole poem was good and you have a nice writing style and had a great meaning. I think it's impressive that you kept your rhyme scheme as well! You could maybe tweak the poem a little construction-wise, but it's still good! I hope I helped and keep writing!




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52 Reviews


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Reviews: 52

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Tue Mar 21, 2017 7:27 pm
LeutnantSchweinehund wrote a review...



I'll do my best to give you a solid review. Could miss a few things here and there, hopefully someone else can fill in the gaps if I do.

This was better than a lot of the stuff I read. Not a gem, not perfect, not absolutely awe-inspiring and breathtaking, but solid. Definitely solid.

I like the fact that unlike most people, you attempted to create reasonable rhymes. I know, I know, poetry doesn't have to rhyme, but it just makes it so much more fun to read. There are a few rhymes which seem a little forced, but overall, you handled them pretty well. So extra points for actually trying!

The message is reasonable, especially the first two lines. Far too many works of art nowadays romanticize suicide and depression, neither of which are romantic at the slightest. They're both horrendous things that lurk in cosmic horror, not romantic poetry (unless done right, in which case, wonderful). My respect for pointing that out. Rest of the plot is also functional, and I thank you for not resorting to vaguely slapping together unrelated words. Good use of common words. I love to see other writers utilize sentence structure (as you did) instead of big words, even though both have their place in flowery literature. I myself am guilty of using more complex words and expressions, but that's mainly because I intentionally write in an archaic style. I need to justify myself somehow.

There are some places where the rhythm fails. Too many syllables per line can cause it to drag a bit, but that didn't impede the flow all that much.

Overall, nice. Keep going. Thanks for a submission I not only read willingly, but also agreed with.




BlackWidow says...


Thank you for your honesty. You're right, not all poetry has to rhyme, but I love writing rhyming poetry and song lyrics because like you said, it's just more fun to read. I like for my rhymes to flow well and sound reasonable but I am not perfect at it. Although I've been a writer my entire life, I never really shared my work with the world until now.
I'm just happy to be in a community of writers from all over the world and hearing what they think about my work. That includes hearing how they think I can improve as a writer.
So thank you for your review. It was very, very appreciated.





Aye. Just remember that I am an insanely harsh critic. I point out any flaw I can find, because I hope others will do the same with my work. I think it shows us best how to improve our work.

I too never shared my work up until very recently. It is incredibly useful. Critiques are my absolute delight, even if they end up being more negative than not.

Good luck in your future projects!



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Points: 3566
Reviews: 223

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Tue Mar 21, 2017 12:28 pm
Mathy wrote a review...



Hey there! ZeldaIsShiek here for another over-complicated analysis- I mean, review on some realistic lyrical poetry! I really think that this is a great poem to be reviewing, as I am 14 (Okay, 13.94444) and I see a lot of people going through all of this right now. Even my own friends fall into this category and I really try to help them, but sometimes I just can't and I know I'm not helping. This poem also helped me realize that I am the person who is telling them to snap out of it and not helping. Now, after the longest introduction ever, let's begin.

I really enjoyed reading this poem. It is a powerful message to parents in so many ways that I can not even begin to explain it to you now. I really enjoyed the fact that your poem was centered on issues my friends are going through right now, and I appreciated the important message to both teens and parents all across the globe. Thank you for writing this amazing poem and helping people to both relate with and pity the teen in this poem that is the center of this literary work.

That was it! Do you agree with my analysis? If so, then leave a comment! Think I should of added more? Probably not... but comment anyway! This is ZeldaIsShiek signing out from another delicious review. See you next time!




BlackWidow says...


Let me just say how much I really appreciate this review. When you said it is a powerful message to parents, I love that because that was my initial purpose in creating this piece. There is a whole world of people and at least half of them wouldn't be considered socially acceptable; Like the homeless man, the drug addict, or the schizophrenic woman in my poem. And I feel like parents need to open up the dialect about this kind of stuff. Instead they get caught in public trying to shield their children from people. People who have feelings, some of whom are kind.
Really if parents preached love and tolerance more often this kind of thing wouldn't be a problem.

And yes, I have to say I do agree with your analysis. You're the first person to specifically know the message I intended to present when I wrote this. And I love as much as a person can add, but you left a huge wonderful review and I couldn't ask for more.

-Black Widow


Random avatar
Mathy says...


I don't know what to say... Thanks for your response! I'm glad I could help out.





Love and tolerance in healthy doses, of course! Too much of anything can cause a lot of harm, like loving and tolerating the wrong sort of people.

Very good message though. Just felt like responding to that part in particular.




This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy