A/N: The full stops between stanzas are just there to keep the formatting right. Otherwise, ignore them.
____________________
We were drumsticks, in hindsight.
.
There is euphoria in certain types of pain.
Hitting your head against the wall 'till
you're dizzy breaking bones to feel the rush
banging your fists in time with your
heartbeat.
It's an addiction that creeps up your spine when you're too numb to feel anything.
.
You were about control.
Calculated jabs and prods, missing the
arteries, and biting your check. You were the
dominant hand.
.
We'd hit in time but not the same. You were
straight lines, I was a slight quiver in the
blowback. But in the end we made beautiful
music, and I won't apologise for that.
.
We'd wait for the hit, and embraced it like a
lover, because it felt so good when it
stopped. We would dance like fire in the
recoil.
.
Eventually we became a car crash- hitting
the ground so fast we jumped like the street
was made of rubber. Hit hit hit. We were
most passionate before we burned out; an
effort to keep the taste alive in our mouths
so we could taste in on bleak days and say: 'I remember being on fire.'
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125,028 Literary Works • 672,774 Reviews
Hello. Just a few criticisms from a friendly poet
Don't stop writing!
In relation to your title, I love the first sentence. Its edgy and gets me ready for what about to go down.
In the first stanza I found your rhythm scheme a bit off putting. Specifically putting the word heartbeat on its own in the middle. In one way it makes the word stand out like perhaps a drug addled persons heartbeat would, but it makes it harder to read. Then the following sentence I felt could have been split in half.
Its an addiction that creeps up your spine
when your too numb to feel anything.
It hits a little harder home because when you've got that long sentence by the time you get to the end it really hangs off a cliff and doesn't punctuate you with the full effect of what it is saying!
I also wonder if you meant biting your cheek instead of check. I also think
this:You were about control.
Calculated jabs and prods, missing the
arteries, and biting your check. You were the
dominant hand.
Could have been changed to:
You were about control.
Calculated jabs and prods
missing the arteries, and biting your cheek.
You were the dominant hand.
Its just a little cleaner, a little easier to read. Sometimes its a writing style or done for effect so I don't want to pick it apart too much, but that's just my preference.
In the last sentence, I found it weird that you likened a car crash to hitting the ground, which it never does. Maybe some other kind of accident? I also would have preferred the word "bounce" to the word jumped as it is more passive. Jumped is a little too active for the winding down part. The last sentence, where you say "so we could taste in" Did you mean taste "it"?
I like how you describe "we would dance like fire". I think this is beautiful piece of imagery. I don't think the last sentence works in relation to this though, perhaps something more like "we could taste it on bleak days and say, "being on fire used to taste this way" or something.
All in all a very intense piece of poetry, very stop and go and it leaves you wanting more
Hello Hightop! Indie here for a review.
I feel like a little punctuation would do you good in the second stanza. The second line to the fifth just make me grimace – clauses, so many unaccompanied clauses..
I’ve always been taught to use enjambment intentionally. Little words like articles, prepositions and possessive pronouns at the end of a line take up a spot where you could really pack a punch for more emphasis.
Did you mean cheek?
Wow. This is lovely and ambigious. I really like this phrase here. Flows nice into the next stanza, too.
Comma splice!
Oof. I like this too. Makes my heart sink in a good way.
The fifth stanza feels out of place. If I were you, I’d either remove it completely or play with its location a little.
Eh. This is a little self-explanatory already.
The semi-colon here grammatically does not fit, as the clause that falls behind it is not complete.
The repetition of “taste” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. But otherwise I like this ending a lot!
Hello, HighTop.
This is a good piece. Well-written but you kind of lost me at some places. You would explain the feelings and be really emotional but you didn't leave enough room for interpretation. In stanza 5 you explained how it felt so good when it stopped but the piece is all about anxiety and the rush in activities so why would you want it to stop? In the last part of the poem you stopped the expressive word play and got emotional and it clashed with the theme.
Overall great work and keep it up!
This poem isn't about anxiety (not sure where you got that from, to be honest). It's about drugs and relationships, how they intersect, and how they are similar in stages (come-up, peak, sharp come-down.)
This was an interesting piece. I found your choice of line breaks particularly intriguing. The way they were seperated by the thoughts flow into each other. It's seems like it was written in prose, espcially considering where your punctuation was, but it was put in poetry format. Having the line breaks didn't break the flow at all, actually, but it did put emphasis on certain things. Over all the poem was interesting to read, and had a beautiful message that seemed both clear and vague at the same time.