Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for mature content.
Hydraulic Nightmare
The scent of Petrol is her gospel
She tunes her ears to the pulse of the throttle
The daredevil downs another bottle
Before rampaging through the streets like an EF-5 tornado
This batshit bitch is a friction addict
With a lust for speed, she is so reckless!
But the adrenaline she cannot resist
For it allows her to forget
The death of her innocence!
You cannot hope to stop this drunken punk
Her soul is rotting in her car's trunk!
Her engine's clogged up with some gunk
But still she floors the pedal and zooms through the dusk!
Mommy and Daddy, you'd best be scared
Of her hydraulic nightmare!
She's tried to free herself from these blackout burnouts
But that smell of smoking tires she can't live without
Trapped within her own head, she turns the ignition
And sets out onto the tarmac of destructive combustion
This chick is insane, just stay out of my way
For I'm vaguely afraid of the zombies in her brain!
And I don't want her to hurt you
For what they put her through
The death of my innocence!
You cannot hope to stop this drunken punk
Her soul is rotting in her car's trunk!
Her engine's clogged up with some gunk
But still she floors the pedal and zooms through the dusk!
Mommy and Daddy, you'd best be scared
Of my hydraulic nightmare!
She's slowly spinning out of control
But I struggle to care
The transmission shifts into reverse
But she struggles to care
This is the raceway road rage that is our cage
Please free us from these chains!
You cannot hope to stop this drunken punk
My soul is rotting in her car's trunk!
Our engine's clogged up with some gunk
But still we floor the pedal and zoom through the dusk!
Mommy and Daddy, there's no reason to be scared
Of our hydraulic nightmare!
The shifts between first and third person are deliberate, not typos/mistakes. That's all I'll say on that.
Written by DoormanDan on January 19, 2017.
P.S. Sorry about the spacing issue. The website is being uncooperative with me today.
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,781 Reviews
Hey! Shey here for a review! I'm just gonna jump into it.
Wow. Dark, but really fun to read. I almost imagined it as a rap, because of the character's personality.
My one minor comment is the line:
"Struggles" makes it seem like she's trying to care, but can't. However, this poem makes her out to never care about anything, and so this line seems to break her character.
My real comment is on the ending. I have honestly no idea what happened. I can't figure out why it switched perspectives so abruptly. My guess is something of Stockholm syndrome, but it's just a guess.
You did mention this story had an implied rape, and I can assume said implication ocurrs around the end of the poem. Yet the narrator also says there's no reason to be scared, so it seems like they have taken a liking to the main character and are defending them. That's what makes me think of Stockholm syndrome.
My only suggestion would be to make the end a bit more understandable. I understand you don't want to just give us all the info, but the point of being mysterious is for people to figure things out themselves. If people can't figure it out, then it loses its function.
Overall, awesome poem/song. Bravo! I look forward to seeing more of your works! Adieu!
-Sheyren
Hey there Sheyren. Sorry for the late response and thanks for the honest review! To address your points, the whole point of the perspective change is to refer to a split personality. The narrator here is the "good side" of the personality split (aka the person the girl was before the rape occurred). The parts where she is speaking of herself are parts where she is reclaiming herself briefly, only to lose herself again in the destruction forming within. The whole point of the there's not reason to be scared line is to imply that she has accepted that she has nothing left to really live for, so she is no longer afraid of "Hell". I hope that at least partially clears up that part.
The rape is implied all throughout the piece, both vaguely and more specifically. The line "the death of my innocence" refers to it, the line "her engine's clogged up with some gunk" symbolizes herself becoming a wreck because of it, and the line, "for what they put her through" is yet another reference. I hope everything makes sense now, but if you have anything else you want to point out/ask, please feel free to do so!!
Ah, I understand now. Thanks for the clarification!
Hi there DoormanDan! Niteowl here for Team Pencils and Swords this fine Review Day!
Overall, this is dark but I liked it. The change from first to third-person is interesting...it leaves some ambiguity to me. Is the speaker one person with some sort of split personality or are there actually two people?
You said this was a song in the description, in which case you could move it to Lyrics. It definitely has the structure of a song, but when I read it out loud, it felt a little awkward where I would expect lyrics to have a stronger rhythm. However, this could be just a pitfall of not having the music/melody to go with it. That can make lyrics tough to review sometimes.
A quick note about line spacing/formatting: Yes, it's a pain. I typically use Method #1 (html editor) described here: viewtopic.php?f=153&t=103016/. It's kind of annoying, but it works.
Overall, this was good. Keep writing!
Hey there, thanks for the review. I'll admit, when I wrote this, the method by which I was writing beats was generally just write it to the beat of the song that inspired it (never for selling, of course), but I've just recently decided to ditch that approach all together and just focus on syllable count from now on. Anyway, you are on the money with the split personality portion, so well spotted there! Once again, thanks for the review, and thanks for the suggestion for the formatting!!