Published May 2, 2009
Illuminating stars reflect off the wings
Of a big ugly worthless old crow,
As he soars through the night watching beautiful things
That he sees on the ground down below.
Swift is the river, bending and turning
As it wraps around hills like a vain.
Adrenalines building, his stomach is churning,
To the point of unbearable pain.
He tucks in his wings so they press to his back
Then plummets head first to the stream
As though he were making some hate filled attack
And pierces the sky with a scream.
The black water shines with the glare of the moon
Its beauty; a steel iron fist
Grabbing and pulling the crow so he’d soon
Fall into the unknown abyss.
With each precious second, that slowly goes by
The river grows larger and larger
Along with his burning passionate cry
To be part of the cool graceful water
The rapids grow closer, it splashes his face
As the crow takes his very last breath
And breaks through the water with unimpaired grace
To face his most wanted wish; death.
But endings like this only happen to those
With the greatest amount of luck.
He washed up on a bank where nothing grows
Where he found himself breathing, though stuck.
Between the two branches the crow sat and cried
Finding himself in a mess.
If he fell a bit faster he just might have died
In the beauty the water possessed.
He sat and he sat til’ eventually time
Took the crow’s frail tortured soul.
His disfigured body, now covered in grime
Surrendered itself to death’s toll
The stream is still moving with rhythmic flow
Still bearing the glint of the sky.
Unaware, unaffected by the old wretched crow
And the way that he wanted to die.
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140,165 Literary Works • 673,032 Reviews
this stanza does not have the same rythem as the rest. your abab thing is still right but your words seem to chopy and dont flow together like the rest of the poem
The Title wasnt very interesting, you should know that.
Oddly enough I think it was its banal nature that attracted me in the first place.
anyways, other than a few awkward phrases and the afformentioned punctuation errors, this was a decent peice.
I liked the opening "Big Ugly" line concerning the crow.
threw me off a bit with the line about the river but I realized you were going for a progression of feel and sensation, well done.
Well I'd have more to say but I'm not feeling good at the moment.
Forward me another peice of yours and I'd be happy to give it a bigger review.
Exe's and Oh's, Eraqio.
I thought you did really well with the description and setting the scene. The rhyming was really good, too. sorry, i dont have much to say other than that XP
Nice. And here we go:
'big ugly worthless crow.' Naw. Too blunt and childish. You can do better, my lad.
I like how the crow's sorta giving up, though I think that semi colon should be a colon, not sure though.
The end packs a punch, it's sad, but not like 'oh the poor thing' in an overdone way... It's genuine pity. You feel for the little guy.
I also like how he's graceful in death, and you can see him hunched over, like an old man, waiting to die.
'Swift is the river, bending and turning
As it wraps around hills like a vain.
Adrenalines building, his stomach is churning,
To the point of unbearable pain.'
The river is swift would work better here. Also, vein. (:
Second two lines don't 'do it' for me, however, they're a bit blunt.
'He found himself breathing, though stuck'. Nah, drop that. Too harsh, forced with the luck, breaks it up. You can, again, do better than that.
But yeah. S'all got potential and whatnot, good job.
Hello! Before I get into the review, I need to point out that you only have one review; please do another so you can keep up with our 2:1 ratio (post two reviews for every work of your own). We do want to keep the site running, no?
Anyway, I absolutely loved this, and I'll tell you why in a second, but first I noticed a couple of things that could be reworded or are typos. So.
I know you need a certain amount of syllables for each line, but all the adjectives here kinda clutter it up and it reads weirdly anyway.
Should be vein with an e.
Either get rid of the 's' on adrenaline or use an apostrophe.
Headfirst is one word; also, I think it should be into instead of just to. If that's too many syllables, you could delete the the
Hate-filled, with a hyphen. Also, I don't really like the as though in the beginning. Because it's not LIKE he's attacking, he IS attacking, right? He's angry that he's ugly and wretched and basically attacking himself in the stream.
What might be cool is if you mentioned that he could see his reflection in the water and hated himself and so had to tear it apart with his talons or something. Just an idea. ^__^
Ditch the comma.
Now take the comma from the first line and put it in between burning and passionate.
I know the 'it' is referring to the water, but it sounds like it's referring to the rapids, in which case it should be 'they' so perhaps you could say waves splash or something, replace the pronoun with an actual noun?
Love this whole stanza EXCEPT the repetition of 'where'. You could replace this one with 'and'.
Period at the end.
So, again, I loved this. I love the story; it's so cute, and I feel so sorry for the crow, and then there's the horrid river, which you described very well, and the rhythm worked, and the rhyme worked, and it was very well done. All I suggest is some serious editing, aided by the points above, because this poem is too good not to make it perfect.
Keep writing!
-Mars