i am a fraud.
the days keep coming to pile on my emotional tax evasion.
my pleasing lies keep slipping as i assure everything is okay.
authenticity is when you're convinced
by your own unconvincing lies.
i even lie to god for i can't face the truth of my own wickedness.
the hot air leaves me in thin steam swirls
and it forgets where it came from.
i wish my words were a syrup concentrate,
but it had to be watered down for the accessibility of others.
i have nothing to offer, but ask and you shall receive
my half-baked reassurances that are mere homophones.
i'm purely here for lip service.
~
i am a broken toy.
i should be thrown out before i accidentally cause more damage
than what fun i had to offer.
nobody wants a broken toy, anyway.
my depression cripples me, yet i am not a part of the lame.
they don't go through the mental gymnastics so of course it is a game.
if life is all just a game, i want a new character to play instead
of developing what i wake up to every day.
i am a special type of person which is to say:
"i'm like everyone else, but worse."
my mother is my imperfection and my father is my sin.
come together, and i am the most unholy creation possible:
a person.
~
i am a walking contradiction.
physically i am here, emotionally i am overwatering a dead plant.
kill me once for my body, kill me twice
for the false promise that i could have changed.
i chew my words over and over like hard gum,
and i hope to find a sweetness i lost a long time ago.
neither hot nor cold i am always in the middle of the road,
tempting the fate to get run over.
so why don't you hit me already?
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hi FireEyes, congrats on literary spotlight! I found your poem there, that's why I am reading and feel the urge to write something down!
I love your structure! Three parts, with the first two being 13 lines long and the last with 9. If we take the symbolic meaning, I can find some direct relationship to these numbers. For instance, the number "13", usually thought to be a harbinger of bad luck symbolizes death, a pretty common motif in your poem "thrown out" "dead plant" "kill me" and rebirth, which is also identified here "kill me once, kill me twice" "if life is all just a game, i want a new character to play". And the third stanza has 9 lines. 9 represents self examination, wisdom, enlightenment, pretty fitting for a conclusion.
I enjoyed reading about the three perspectives! Oh sorry, identities: the fraud, the broken and the contradiction. "emotional tax evasion" is one of the greatest metaphors I have heard for a while now.
The broken toy identity seemed to me to be the most fleshed out, out of the three. Something about it felt ... complete. The way you talk about it being damaging and not needed resonated with me and it actually made sense. I am not a fan of you overusing the word "my" in the line that says "my mother is my imperfection and my father is my sin." You can say "my mother is imperfection, my father is the sin" and it wouldn't feel that heavy to read.
The contradiction identity on the other hand feels the most incomplete. Sorry but apart from the "hot and cold" part I couldn't find something related to that.
Overall, great work, good luck in your poetry journey. I hope I'll be seeing you this NaPo!
Hi FireEyes!
So wow, this poem hit hard </3 You seriously managed to capture such strong emotional thoughts and feelings; this was really heart-wrenching and made me feel for the speaker all throughout the poem. And the ending?
Is so powerful. I've always felt ending a poem with a question in the right context is impactful, and placing a rhetorical question for the reader to process here worked very nicely.
Something that's really noticeable in your writing style is a present theme throughout the poem, which I appreciate as a reader in identifying the overall tone and message of the piece. I think that is a great strength in this poem!
Also, I thought there was an interesting abundance of imagery here! It seemed to range in description quite widely; namely, I saw allusions to religious imagery scattered throughout, and other various descriptions interspersed. With that said, it almost felt difficult to grasp at times? Going line to line, the imagery varied and switched up quickly, going from one idea to another with not a great meaningful connection between them. That made it a little hard to hold onto a single image for long. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if the slightly scattered imagery focus was desired in assisting the overall message of the poem? Just thought I would point it out, because there is some great imagery throughout the piece but some parts feel a little less cohesive.
I would say thematically, each stanza hones in on its own sort of topic and subsequent imagery, kicked off by the "i am" statements at the beginning of each. But there were a few points at which I was struggling to connect the significance between widely ranging imagery (eg a dead plant and chewing gum in the third stanza).
Among your imagery-packed lines, there were quite a few rich lines that I loved! These were some of my favorites:
Also, I liked the start of each stanza leading with "i am ___". While it's simple, that makes it much more forthright and strong, almost? Anyway, I think the way you formatted it this way was effective! :]
I think those are all the thoughts I have off the top of my head! Hopefully this was helpful in some way, and of course feel free to disregard any of my feedback, as they're just some ideas should you want them~
Anyway, thanks for sharing your poem and take care! <3
Thank you so much for the review! Thank you too for pointing out how some imagery lines could have flowed better, it's always something I want to work on, but it's almost been adopted into my poetic style.
Thanks again!
I really like it; you have some really nice lines in there.