from the heart to the lips

by Dreamwalker

Published May 17, 2012

In poetry (relatively current)

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my nerves are flayed and bursting blue
and red an green and yellow
splattered colour. melted globs of paint
that shoot from veins
i watched it drain like blood
mixing murky brown for all the world to see
 
i think how awful colour is
to be so cruel and limited when skin breaks
and intensity shatters shards of
tempera, warm
and cold and deep and lovely
bottled up inside my head
but spilling bland across my page
 
i tear harder
a web of lacerations
 
it’s a wonder i never drowned sooner
sputtering madly
cerulean and gold that turn to brown within my throat
a choking hazard of what once was
till everything is covered in sepia
 
and the wounds i’ve dug myself
are caked in rust
Comments & reviews · 2
CrossingFlower wrote a review Review · Aug 11, 2012

Very nice poem.

As I was reading through, I noticed that you were not capitalizing your 'I's.
It was a little hard for me to read, because there was a lack of comma's. I
couldn't tell when I should be pausing, so if I were to read it out loud,
my breath would run out quickly. For me, when I place comma's on the end
of a line, it helps me catch my breath, and make the poem sound a little more
interesting. To me, with very little comma's, it seems kind of dull. It is a lovely
piece of writing, and I enjoyed it still.

I would recommend that you shorten your sentences as well. Long sentences
are harder for me to understand, as well as other readers. I learned a
technique last year, and I hope it will help you as well. Take a sentence, and
count how many words are in it. (I'll use the one before this as an example.)
There are eleven words in the sentence. Take that number, and subtract it
from 100. The answer, is 99. So, 99 % of readers understand that sentence
perfectly well. But, if you had a sentence with 50 words, (not likely, but just
an example.) then only 50% of your readers can understand and read the
sentence perfectly.

Don't forget your periods. It was pretty hard for me to read, because I didn't
know when to stop and take a short break. I was going back and trying to
figure out when I should be stopping or slowing down to catch my breathe.

You don't want to over-do comma's or period's, because then it still won't
seem as interesting. When I read sentences with to many comma's, then I
get kind of bored. You want to place them were they need, but not where
they get in the way or make you pause in the middle of a phrase.

I hope this helped with some of your writing, and I'm sorry if it did not help. :)

User avatar
ForsakenAngel
Review
ForsakenAngel wrote a review Review · Jun 24, 2012

Hey there, Dream!
This is, by far, one of the best poems I've read today (and I've read a lot.) The thing that bugged me the most, and always does, is the fact that the letter "i" alone signifying yourself, should always be capital. (Yes, I did just use a fancy way of saying that you need to capitalize words :3) In all seriousness, though, this is really amazing, and very deep. I've read a lot of poems and such about things like this, and your's is the first I've read to describe it like this. It's unique and in writing that's important. I'm sorry this isn't longer, but if I told you just how much I loved this and how much it spoke to me on a personal level, it would never end :) This is seriously really good and I'd like to read more, so if you have anything in mind that you'd like for me to read/review, shoot me a PM and I'd be more than happy to take a look at it. Until then, keep up the good work and I hope to read more from you!

--ForsakenAngel



they say money can't buy happiness, but what they don't realize is that money *can* buy novelty socks.
— blueca