Afraid that I might love again
A spark that has yet to dim
But move on is what I do
'Cause I can't handle this simple truth--
Untouched words they’re out of mind
In this social world I fall behind
Trapped behind my own design
I’m sad but I just live a lie
She’s a scavenger and suddenly she lusts
With mascara and a crush
A place where she put her mask
By the banister where the actors cast
What a mess when she undressed
Went to bed but didn’t rest
And I’m captive to this very thing
Encaged in my own defeat
Trash talk that she couldn’t fill
With drugs in the form of happy pills
"Excuse me but this love is gone"
Oh lovely, I just moved along
And I write it but it’s all gone wrong
So I just dreamt along
To this pathway of moral hygiene
And happiness everywhere I’ve seen
Cause my friends aren’t here to wallow
Or if they were, I’d be esteemed
And I’m ecstatic that I’m living
But I’m so dead that it’s a dream
I’m a train wreck to this story
And this whole thing was just a lie
And this life just got so deep
I’m surprised that I want to be alive
I won’t cap my thoughts at rational
And face mediocrity
I’m a stranger to this defamation
So I keep it where it oughta be; away
But now that I'm estranged
What if dreams are for the rich?
And if this life is just a fight
And I really have no gift?
I can’t help it, I’m just bitter
I can’t find a reason not to be
When she left without hesitation
I could have changed undoubtedly
And it’s not that I am crazy
I’m still the boy that she loved
But one day no one cared
And I changed up who I was
It’s just like a book of a tragedy
But it hurts so much more when it’s real
And every time I read that book
It’s a cycle not a wheel
It’s out of sight and out of time
I make a point while I draw the line
She's just a stranger that I pass
Though, this feeling I cannot grasp
So she throws her face in makeup,
Dies her hair that nasty color
Those boys might like her fake
But honestly, she’s not better
A million friends can’t quench it
This feeling because she’s all alone
She’s gonna smoke and drink all day
And not even realize that I’m gone
So I guess it’s just a habit
And I’m 'bout to freaking break it
And she'll never realize the pain
I’m just happy if she fakes it
I’m not about to cry for help
Cause she wouldn't hear a sound
I've lasted all this time
It's time I take it to the ground
And so I’m a boy of all smiles
Hair slicked to the left
I’m a stranger to my friends
And all the people I ever met
I said forget it to the rest
Cause every Sunday I’m a mess
I can’t change this story line
I just know you were the best
And this scene is left to die and wither
Composed not of ashes but a smile
Callous thoughts just break me down
So I've been dreaming all the while
While her fingernails crawl like the sky
Her lips are static, her touch is blue
Across this bridge like leaves we lie
A clever hook but just a dream
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137,660 Literary Works • 672,057 Reviews
I love this one
Its a bit long and but its really good. I liked how you used words in your poem that people don't usually use, its pretty unique your style of writing. I wish I could write like you 
but I don't have the patience! 
xxxx, Claire
"She’s a scavenger and suddenly she lusts
With mascara and a crush
A place where she put her mask
By the banister where the actors cast
What a mess when she undressed
Went to bed but didn’t rest
And I’m captive to this very thing
Encaged in my own defeat"
this was my favorite part of the whole poem, I love how you talk about the character, really made me curious about her. Keep posting
[Deleted]
Hi Hero!
Okay, so I'm still very much a poetry novice, so this review won't be as thorough as it should probably be, but I'll give you my general impressions.
I started reading this out loud, but I couldn't find a rhythm to settle into. The first two lines of the first stanza had a good rhythm, and I expected the rest of the poem to follow the same beat but it didn't, which left me feeling a little lost.
The poem is quite long, and I find that long poems can sometimes be more difficult to understand and often not as good as shorter ones because you need to sustain an image or theme for a longer time and keep the reader fixed on the one idea for longer, which is hard. You get wobbles in the middle.
You mention actors, makeup and dreams, which makes me think this about insincerity, and the mention of "this social world" makes me think of the internet and Facebook and how easily modern networking breeds fakery. So the "she" could be an actual, tangible she, a real person who left the narrator, or "she" could be the whole world. But because the poem is so long (well, not epic length, but still pretty long) the theme (if that is the theme) gets tangled up with a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm not sure about, so I don't fully know if that is the theme or not.
Basically, I think this could be condensed. Personally I prefer short poems because they're easier to take in and easier to remember, and they're often more pithy because they have to be. And if you have so many big stanzas, it makes me wonder what I'm missing, but I don't know what that is because I'm lost in verbiage.
My overall impression is that this is good, and I like your use of language, which is confident and colourful, but I wonder if you need so much of it?
PM or Wall me if you have any questions!
-twit
Hi there!
Sorry about my first post. I didn't mean to hit the submit button.
Anyway, this is my real review:
Comments/Suggestions/Critiques
Overall I give this a 5/6. You've got some great parts in here, but other spots where I'm confused. Some spots also seem to go from one thought to another without a pause. I would like to see more punctuation used and a variety of uppercase and lowercase letters. With the punctuation you could really play with the flow of your poem.
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Didn't mean to hit the submit button yet... -_-
Hi! So I just had a quick skim through the reviews below as I don't want to be too repetetive and I have to say, Karzkin has really hit the nail on the head. Some parts of this are great and print such vivid images in my mind, but there's twice as much again that feels surplus to the poem. I'll try to point out those sections as I go through. First though, have you considered trying this as lyrics? It has a looser form than the average poem and might adapt well to being a song. The addition of a chorus would also help with your tendancy to go off topic, just a thought ^^
If you just had another line after the fourth one, then you'd be good I'm sure.
If you can't find a word that fits, try a half rhyme instead or look up synonyms. I do like the line 'But I'm so dead that it's a dream' but none of the rest really grabs me. I've heard train wreck too often and the later lines feel like empty sentiments. Where's your imagery gone? The mask and the mascara, the banister. That's what made the other stanza work so well.
Specifics
Stanza One: The second line is too short which really throws your rhythm off and this stanza in general isn't doing it for me. It doesn't actually say anything. You've got a lot of words and some distant emotion, but there's no solid imagery to tie it all together and I can't pick out any phrases which really grab my attention. It feels like an empty way to start the poem and that's a shame because you've got some powerful lines later on.
Stanza Two: Lovely! The first two lines of this are part of what makes me wonder if it shouldn't be lyrics because they have a beautiful, very lyrical flow. The only thing I'm unsure about is that line 'where the actors cast' because you don't say what they cast and it doesn't flow into the next. It feels very much like you've chosen the word cast to fit the rhyme! You need to be more subtle than that
Stanza Three: I don't like the 'this very thing' as it's too vague and I've no idea what this thing is. I'm also not sure about 'encaged', it's a little awkward sounding. Also the rhyme of fill and pills is very forced and those lines feel repetetive. Describe the drugs as happy pills straight away. Don't tell us 'she took drugs that were happy pills', simply say 'she took some happy pills'. Some of the phrasing feels awkward as well; this stanza isn't working for you.
Stanza Four: These friends suddenly come out of nowhere and the stanza doesn't feel connected to the previous one. Your rhyme's also feeling forced again, 'esteemed' is badly used and we find out why when we come to dream
Stanza Five: I love the first line of this and I like five and six but I'm not a fan of the others. I think you could scrap those and put in some solid emotion or images instead, to tie these three strong lines together.
Stanza Six: This was a rather bland stanza and there's nothing that hasn't been heard before. She left me, now I'm sad and I'm a different person. You need to put a new spin on the old words!
Stanza Seven: I'm not sure about this one either. What do you mean by a cycle and not a wheel? The words feel empty because they're not backed up by imagery or explanations.
Stanza Eight: The first two lines are good! But I'd suggest 'shade' instead of color because that would have a stronger sound and flow. The rest of the stanza is a bit weak again.
Stanza Nine: I'm not sure where you've got to by this stanza, whether this is about getting over the girl or getting back with her and pretending everything's okay? I'm not sure, you've lost me a bit.
Stanza Ten: Sometimes it's 'she' and other times 'you'. I think that's part of what makes this confusing, the pronouns seem to change, or there are three characters? I think you could lose most of this stanza, though I'm interested in what makes Sunday different, why every Sunday? Because he doesn't have work/ school to distract him or for some other reason? That might be an interesting detail to put in here.
Stanza Eleven: I like the idea that her touch is blue, though it would have been better if you'd connected that with something else to explain what you meant by it.
Overall
Okay so I haven't much more to add, my main advice is to take that strong imagery you had in the second stanza and recreate it throughout. Remove some of the fluff, decide what your storyline actually is and make it clear and impressionable.
If you've got any questions, feel free to ask!
Heather xxx
Hero, I'm finally here. Sorry it's taken so long.
You know man, I'm really ambivalent about this one. I just can't decide. I like it, I don't like it, it's good, it could improve, etc etc. I'm torn. The thing, I think, is that you're hit-and-miss. I checked out your other stuff, and some of it is great, but some not so much. The same goes for this one. Some lines are bloody awesome. For realz. Some lines fall flat. For example;
Yes. This is where it's at. Lovely stuff. But then;
Bleh. Doing nothing for me. So we have good bits and we have bad bits.
How can we improve? Start by getting rid of the bad bits. Read the poem again, and cut every stanza that isn't 100% vital. Then read each stanza again, and cut every line that isn't 100% vital. Then read each line again, and cut every word that isn't 100% vital. Trim away the fluff. There is beautiful rhythm in this poem, it reminds me of The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. But there are too many occasions where you've tried to jam a rhyme in, and butchered a line in the process. The meaning and content of the line is more important than anything. If you can say exactly what you need to say and still rhyme, cool. Go for it. But if you have to sacrifice either rhyme or content, the answer is always sacrifice rhyme. A lot of poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries doesn't rhyme because poets realised that saying something important was of more value than writing a pretty rhyme. Poetry is a high art; what you say is way more important than how you say it. Keep it real, even (or especially) if it's ugly. So here's what you need to do: edit hardcore. Be merciless. Cut everything non-essential, and change everything else that sucks. And as always, read read read. Read a whole stack of poetry. You have to develop good taste, learn what good is. Edit this, and I'll have another look if you like.
Le K.
This poem is now one page shorter after my last revision; please feel free to comment and/or review it again.
Hey! Here as requested. First, here are some edits for you:
You could just use a colon here, you don't need the dashes.You need some punctuation in here. A comma after 'words' would be nice.
I'm not sure you know what 'lust' means. It's misused here. So, different word choice needed.
I'm assuming the actors are not, in fact, separating themselves into Hindi societal classes here. Therefore, the word you're looking for is "cast", not "caste".
Dear sweet grammar, how I love thee. "Everywhere I seen"? You can do a little better than that, my dear. "I've seen" would be appropriate.
What is 'cos'? I assume you meant 'because'. Stay away from txt lingo! If it's absolutely necessary to shorten it, use "'cause".
Again, stay away from shortening words like "want to". If it's necessary for effect, then fine, but it's not necessary here.
Again with the "ought to". I understand it needed to be shortened here to keep your metre consistent, but that's still not how you spell it. "Oughta".
You need some punctuation after 'it'.
It’s just a form of knowing how to read? You misuse ‘literacy’. Different word needed.
My eyes just melted from all the feels pouring out of my brain at this. “Feeling”. “ Feeling !” There is never an appropriate situation to shorten a word like this is literature.
You can’t really own irrational. It’s something you can be. Therefore, it’s horrifically misused here.
‘Refute’ is awkward when used on its own. Usually it’s used like “Refute it/this/that”. “Argue” or “debate” would probably be better here.
This makes no sense. An aspect is a feature or part of something. While I suppose they could love a (not ‘the’) part of being mean and arrogant, you’d have to tell us what the part is. You don’t do that or anything like it, so it’s just misused.
“An”. “Unfixable” starts with a vowel.
“About”, not “of”.
What do you mean by “center formed”? I don’t think that’s a phrase.
Do you mean ‘left’? Because if not, this is an even worse misuse of the word ‘lust’ than earlier. If you’re not positive on what a word means, use a dictionary.
I have nothing against profanity when artfully used, but the fact that you have had very PG language up until this point makes “whore” stand out like a red mark. I would reconsider that word choice.
I guess you could mean that you hate the slander being spread about you, but it’s very awkward here and it seems like you misused it even if you did not.
‘Cycle’ and ‘wheel’ are too similar to be contrasted like this.
“Draw.”
Now this is just lazy. “ Though .”
I’m laughing so hard at the idea of someone throwing their face in a pile of makeup that all effect this line might have had is lost.
‘Quench’ isn’t exactly misused here, but it seems awkward. You really need a reference to water or thirst before this for it to make sense. A different word would be better.
‘Cos’ again? Really? And you couldn’t even capitalise it. Tsk.
Well, here’s a random group of strange and ineffective metaphors if I’ve ever seen one. This is really vague and wannabe artsy, and does not fit in with the rest of the poem. It just seems weird and sort of juvenile.
Okay, that took a ridiculously long time. Before I even give the whole review I need to tell you that your grammar, punctuation, rhyme scheme and word use is absolutely atrocious. You misuse words, shorten others unnecessarily, and your punctuation is completely inconsistent. You need to go back and either add a lot or take a lot away. Poems don’t always need punctuation- it’s fine to not use it. However, if you’re not going to use it, that means never ever in the poem. Not sometimes, or it just looks like you don’t know how to punctuate. Your rhyme scheme is… a nightmare. Sometimes you’ll have an unexpectedly wonderful rhyme. For example:
While this stanza is riddled with mistakes, the rhyming is great: ABCBDEFE. That’s really solid, because it’s got a 1-2-3-2-1-2-3-2 pattern. You execute it really well. You metre is off because it’s totally inconsistent: 8,9,9,9,8,7,8,7. There’s no pattern in there. But your rhyme scheme is great. However, then you have passages like:
You sort of timidly approach a rhyme scheme in the last three lines. This is a paragraph that doesn’t really rhyme at all. What is ‘dream’ supposed to match up with? It can’t be a transitional line or anything, because there are no other clear transitional lines. Altogether it’s just a jumbled mess of words.
If you want to write poetry that rhymes, you need to have a tight grip on the idea of rhyme scheme and metre. This means that the words need to have a consistent beat and pattern. You can make up your own, or follow a format like a sonnet. It doesn’t matter so long as it’s the same throughout the entire poem. Here you have absolutely none whatsoever. If the ABCBDEFE scheme works for you, then great! Use that in every single stanza, every single line, every single time. Got it? Because this poem is a disaster until you clean it up to match something like that.
Now, for the review of the content itself:
Once I get past all the mistakes, I just focus on the message itself. The message here seems to be “Some chick was a total b**ch to me and now I’m sad.” Okay. Well, it is called Vent. But it really just seems like a rant. You use the words “I, Me,” and “You” so often that it just seems like a never-ending narrative. Nobody wants to read a rant. If you want to write poetry, you need to use the old “show, don’t tell” rule or else you have a rant. Use creative metaphors to express how you feel. Use language that is comfortable to you so you don’t make mistakes that detract from the poem. Paint us a picture of your unhappiness over this girl. Don’t just tell us that you have lots of feels.
So, I’ve been overwhelmingly negative. Here’re the good parts of this:
1. It’s got random instances of great rhyme scheme, as I explained.
2. It reads a lot like lyrics. You should consider rewriting it as such. The rules of rants don’t really apply to songs, and you can stretch the rhymes in weird ways if there’s a tune behind them. So, that’s a cool thing.
3. You clearly have an interesting story to tell. I really want to know more about it.
Here’s the basic summary of things to remember:
Edit, especially word use and punctuation. Decide on a rhyme scheme and metre. Use them. Cut this in half. It’s so long and uses so much first person that it reads like a rant. Show, don’t tell. Consider lyrics.
You have potential! I hope I haven’t discouraged you in any way. You’re lacking in a lot of essential places, but practise makes perfect. Currently, this is at a stage where it seems juvenile and is very poorly written. Work on it more (a lot more), and you could have something great.
Best of luck, and keep writing!
-Tori
Hey Hero!
~ When I ran 'cos' through spellchecker it didn't turn red, so I suppose it's technically correct; but I don't like it. It's totally your choice though.Here as requested!
~ the part didn't make much sense. Maybe "she's lust"? Just a suggestion.
~ I like this. It gets your meaning across in an unique way, without making we Vypers who eschew romance cringe.
and ~ Don't capitalize "it's".
~ Typo, and, unless the 'so' was supposed to be on the former line, 'to' doesn't need to be capitalized.
~ I'm going in order: capitalize; capitalize and add apostrophe (I'm); refer to second complaint.
~ In order: 1) 'Your' is possessive, your car, your house, your dog. 'You're' is a contraction, you are. Your piece needs 'you're'. 2) This preceeds a word starting with a vowel, so it should be 'an'. 3) Refer to number 1.
~ 'gunna' isn't proper English, but that doesn't matter here; you can get past that in poetry. Here you just spelled it wrong, it should be 'gonna'.
~ 'bout' is a shortening of 'about', therefore the apostrophe goes where the letter was left out, so it's " 'bout ".
~~~~~~~~
Okay! So that got longer than my poetry reviews typically are, but that's a longer poem that most. The main problem with it was punctuation technicalities.
I did really like it! It was a good poem, full of emotion. You used unique word combinations that teased my mind and made it a more interesting read. Great job!
You're a really talented writer, and I'd be willing to review for you again, if you want me to!
If you have any questions feel free to PM me.
Keep writing,
~Shady
I don't have time for a proper review, but this is really good! Maybe a bit too long, but overall a really impressive piece. Well done
uhh okay.
Thanks
Thanks
Wow, this is great!
Thanks