They told me you were spread on the ground
beneath a forest of trees where the leaves resembled photographs
and flashed my face at you in the breeze,
and the grass made of careful cursive brushed across your marble skin,
and the birds sang out in my voice,
chirping tones of joy and adventure and love
while others screamed hoarsely of despair.
We could have walked there together,
and then the trees would have been trees,
the grass would have been grass,
and the birds would have been birds
But instead you walked alone,
so that it all became me.
I should have let you leave me alone.
Now there’s nothing more to say,
nothing to alter,
but only time to walk alone myself
and try to heal:
In my heart,
you were already dead anyways.
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140,179 Literary Works • 673,037 Reviews
Haha, thanks.
And I like most of it the way it is, myself, but I do find others' opinions helpful.
Oh my god!!!!! Wow wow wow.
but I'm struck speechless!!!
Ok, so this was amazing. I don't get everyone else's problems.. I mean have they READ this genius?
You are a really good writer, I hope you know that.
I don't have time for a real review
Hi BlueAfrica -
First comment: I vote for a title change. This piece is exceedingly enchanting and the blatantly obvious title you've got up there does it absolutely no justice whatsoever.
That said, your enchantment wears off throughout the piece distinctly unsatisfactorily, and there are very simple ways to edit this so they don't. Let's take a look at it, shall we?
Wonderful opening line. Arresting, saying everything and nothing at once.
I have the same difficulty as Jagg here. Forest of trees - one can, I suppose, slur-read over that line what with the flow you've got going here, and ignore it entirely, but this is a poem to be read and reread, yes? So there must be no redundancies like this.
Here are the sores in the smooth skin of your poem:
(1) The unnecessary 'trees' - trust me; your flow will not be lost if you remove this word: allow me to suggest the following change - 'a forest of leaves like photographs scattered' (and note how you still maintain aural flow with the assonance of 'graphs,' 'scattered' and 'flashed').
(2) Something about the 'breeze' irks me and I think it is the fact that forests, trees, breeze is such an obvious association that it's cliché. I mind clichés less when the flow is good – like it is here – but I hate how people use the word ‘breeze’ instead of ‘wind’ in an effort to be more poetic…and it is this very obviousness of the effort that throws its poeticism out the window. I think the poem would read just fine if you had ‘wind’ there instead.
(3) Ah, I must echo Jagged. ‘Marble’ is out; a rearrangement to that third line, and it will become as beautiful as the rest. Currently, the words get whooshed over – also not doing justice to the image. Here is the smallest change I could think of: ‘and the grass a careful cursive brush across your skin.’
Trees, wind, grass, birds, joy, love. The reader can only take so much of a cliché. Either throw something poignant and inventive here – something the reader actually needs to imagine; like those photographs, for example, which you used earlier (but don’t repeat that here) – or, if you can’t think of something tasteful and distinct to bring to the piece, then nix this part entirely.
It’s not bad per se, but it could be a lot better.
I rather liked the intensity of the focus you had between the two characters – a rather global, all-nature-encompassing sort of feeling, like they were the only two alive – than what you bring in here. Mention of the ‘others’ intrudes on this moment of personal reflection and experience.
No complaints. I like the imagery-less-ness. Perhaps that, then, is the issue with some of the above parts – they could do with a healthy dose of literalism, although I daresay that might destroy the lyricism to the poem somewhat.
Something I’d like to say here: anything I suggested above is a small fault, just a miscalculation here, a blemish there. From this above quote onwards, it’s much larger, the problem.
There’s nothing remotely enlightening about ‘trees would have been trees’ etc etc etc. There’s nothing striking about it, or emotional, even – it’s there for the sake of being there, filling up space; it does nothing – actually, it does worse than nothing: it is shattering the confident poetry you had before. The reader has, at this point, lost all faith in your ability to tell a meaningful story through your poem.
Remove, replace. I want to see more of that delicateness you’ve got at the start, not this childishly sloppy ‘this would have been this’.
Just so you know: I do see the metaphor. ‘If you and I had been together, then you and I and the world would have been distinct entities; but you died, so the world became me and I became the world and I was swallowed up in sadness and the world.’
I just think it hasn’t been handled very artfully in the ‘trees would have been trees…’ part.
Sure, there’s still potential for this metaphor – I advise you to keep working at it, keep rephrasing it so that not only what you’re saying comes across, but, somewhat more importantly, it comes across more pleasantly in terms of how you say it. It’s just meh right now. You can do better than meh. What about playing with the theme of distance and closeness, like you’ve hinted in the photos? Something like, ‘We could have walked there together / skin bridging the gap from ground to sky / points of touch in vastness / but you walked alone and I / am left without the blur of the horizon, just / galaxies crushed in dirt.’
A suggestion, is all. Probably too abstract for my liking, even, but I hold out hope you will improve on it.
This means nothing precisely because it tries too hard and too desperately to mean something. Don’t murder your style here, at the very end, with teenage-diary sentimentality; you’ve shown a certain sophistication earlier on and you would do well to keep to that, since that is what the reader essentially enjoys. End it earlier and spare us from this, if there is no way to continue the metaphor you had before.
Good luck with edits. PM me if you have any questions / comments.
Navita
i personally like this, it makes me think of past time and i like how you decribed. It would be much easier to read in stanzas but over all i like tthe work.
I didn't read anyone's comments, expect like, the first two, so if I say anything repetitive, I didn't know.
Anyway.
I. loved. it.
Now, I loved it until a certain part.
For me the beginning was amazing and it really drew me in.
Just the imagery in particular at this start is gorgeous and I really enjoyed it. Especially the line about the grass relating to cursive. Fantastic.
I like this, too. It was a good relation to the beginning, kind of circling it all up to make it make sense. It adds more depth to the poem as well.
Now... this last part is where you kind of fall apart. I believe someone else said something about this as I scanned through comments on my way down, but it felt like something was missing.
Suicide's a hard topic to write about because it's a very common topic. It's usually filled with pain and despair and depression; lots of imagery of tears and blood and such.
Yet I love how you make it out to be so... pretty in the beginning, as weird as that sounds. And how it doesn't directly come to the narrator, but more like, "They told me..." And this was unique and different to me.
But these last parts (quoted above) weren't just working for me... It kind of got boring and unoriginal. You had such an independent piece going, but the end just fell apart, because you used lines and such that are commonly found. "...only time to walk alone myself...", "...try to heal...", "...in my heart..." and, "...already dead anyways": These were all very bland and boring. They didn't seem uninspired. Now, I know I have no idea about your life or how you may have been inspired to write this, so I don't want to sound rude or anything if it's something you can actually relate to, it's just my opinion that it became a little artificial around this point. And perhaps it's just the chaos of trying to wrap up a poem in the end; I know finishes can be hard to deal with. Perhaps you could try spicing it up some more, or twisting it up to give it a new feel than the normal you see with death, and sadness, and despair, and such.
Other than that, you really have a good poem, I do believe so. I liked it a lot, like I said, until that point. So that would the only thing I would advise to fix it up and consider carefully on how you decide to finish the poem. The end needs to be just as strong as the beginning and leave a mark on the reader. Whether it actually ties things up, or leaves the reader wanting more, or leaves them in midst of a thought process that intrigues them.
Sorry if this was all crappy advice... I don't know what else I can do to advise you... I mean, you're the poet so it's your poem and you can do whatever you want with it.
Just thought I'd have my say in it. : )
Hi Blue!
I like the way you began this, the images of photographs and cursive are lovely. I like the flow, that was great. There are a few places with redundancies, but those are easily fixed. While you had the images from the beginning, "marble skin" kind of...stuck out. I'm not sure how to word it, but I didn't like it because, honestly, it's hackneyed. Next time, break the poem up into stanzas to get rid of that pesky wall-of-text effect.
I love this. Except it's "anyway" rather than "anyways."
Good job!
~Spork
Hey Blue,
First thing I saw, and was an instant turn off. It's obvious, it's redundant. Take off the "of trees" and keep "forest", it'll be more than enough.I like the images you've developped at the beginning of this--the photographs, the writing: they're a nice way of showing the "past" aspect of it. Watch out for repetition though, as you undermine yourself a couple times through it:
The wording here is too clunky. Something like "the careful cursive of the grass" would flow better, IMO, and add to the image. Also, and this might be a matter of personal preference, but "marble skin" is a very overdone image--change it?
The idea here is nice, but the first three lines are again very repetitive/obvious. Try reworking this part to make the transition smoother and lighter.
Contradictory: the problem seems to stem from the two people to have been apart, so that the speaker should have let the other keep a distance sounds strange, to say the least.
I'd suggest making this a period: it's more final, and the colon is not very appropriate.
AHH! Chunky! Space out your writing a little better. I liked it though, I really did.
This part made no sense to me, what so ever.
I'll admit it, I started to tear up here. But it's anyway, not anyways.
Thanks for your comments.
Yes, it's depressing, but...well, I went through a phase for like...*cough cough* all of high school. Now that I'm in my second year of college and removed from the things I was going through then, I'm a much happier person. (It doesn't hurt that I also like myself now.) But yeah, most of the old poetry I post is going to be depressing, unless I post REALLY old poetry - which would be bad instead of depressing, so I probably won't post that stuff unless I ever get around to editing it severely...
^_^
~Blue
Hi there, BlueAfrica
That was good. I liked it. Yes it's depressing, but honestly, what isn't depressing when you're a teenager? I loved the way you wrote it. The emotions were touching.
I have to agree with the other two who reviewed. Breaking it into stenzas will help the flow. But appart from that, it was awesome.
Keep writing!
-Other One
My nitpicks are pretty much the same as wickedwonder's. Aside from that, it was a pretty good poem.
TIGERSPRITE
Well, that was really depressing.
But, I've noticed, you sometimes take the depressing route with your work.
i really have nothing too critical, except, to break your work up into to stanzas. Easier to read, and it gives it a nice flow.
Thats it! Nice job, keep working
~WickedWonder