Young Writers Society

Hi Jack, I am Buranko, here to review something intriguing after one long ass break from it. I may misunderstand and maybe miss the point of your poem and if so please don't hesitate to correct me.

At first glance your poem seems to be related to spirituality, to religion and to beliefs. However, after reading it a second time the images it brought in my mind were rather disturbing. I interpreted it as being the words of a distant observer who watches someone, deadly sick or drunk, vomit in a bathroom. The "personal god" you mentioned might be related to some people's perception of addictions, like a destructive god one can't simply get away from.

The words "liquid of the body" are shooting out such a powerful image. They can be developed in a really nice metaphor that explains this liquid as being born from sin, bad choices or negligence. This liquid, sour and bitter, hot and corrosive carries with it all the pain of the observed person.

And further into the poem, you support my interpretation with the lines "Someone was refilled, but not by/a certain grace of a certain god." This shows the idea of a destructive god, object of addiction or personal lack of care or control.

What areas I see fit for improvement are how you present your poem. As I mentioned above, your words can be further developed into such nice metaphors, slightly explained. Furthermore, you should not limit yourself to metaphors but use a larger variety of figures of speech to make the poem stand out and convey a message that can be understood while also admired for the clever play of words.

Lovely poem even if it consists of pretty dark images, your vocabulary is just wonderful and you could do so much more if you used a little more color in your poems (I use the word color to express that thing that would make people admire the poem from an artistical view). Good job!

This poem definitely conveys a lot of spirituality. However, there are some parts of it that I don't understand. Now this is probably because I don't read poetry very often, so don't change everything about your style because some novice poetry reader doesn't understand. With that said, let's get into it.

"It’s the liquid of the body dribbling down
their chin now. Not the bloody grapes
and purposely unleavened breads."

I don't really understand this part. The entire poem seems to have deeply spiritual significance, but the "liquid of the body dribbling down" doesn't make sense to me. What is the liquid? Why is it dribbling? I think this is probably talking about communion in a church service, but I'm not really sure.

The next verse.

"Someone was refilled, but not by
a certain grace of a certain god."

What do you mean by being refilled? I understand that poetry can be vague and mysterious, but I'm completely lost at this point.

Lastly, "Now they're a bathroom preacher." This part seems disconnected from the whole. I thought they were in a church? How are the a bathroom preacher? I'm sorry, I'm probably just poetry illiterate. I hope that this doesn't confuse you and everybody else.