Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for mature content.
To my warring contraries, I don't think I was made this way,
I crawled through tissue and blood this way, whole in every way physical,
My missing pieces aching with the craters they leave under my fresh skin,
Leaving me with the hallucinations of how I was fashioned together.
---
A tad seedling of despair that was carved from the branches of humanity,
A tidal wave that crashed into the narcissistic shores of my existence,
A bottomless hole that gifts me nothing, to build into fruition an unimaginable hunger,
A cosmic supernova that grants me no rights to the oxygen I desperately contest for.
---
These thoughts swirl endlessly into the whirlpool that has depressed into my conscience,
My struggle against self-inflicted tyranny rests as the bottom ruling queen,
Throned with steel procrastination, I provide nothing to my subjects,
Dominating with an iron fist I demand for everything, totalitarian, scraps fervently counted.
---
I have been slapped, punched, kicked, sewn, taped, and burned,
With spurious words and lording pleasantries that all bleed the same,
I became the perfect vision of atelophobia, persistent and excessive,
Crown me untarnished, worship me unblemished, bow to me unequaled.
---
Challengers that throw the gauntlet end up bathed in warm blood and cold tears,
Rivers that flow with rage, I will never have to dawn robes of red to cover my skin in the loss I swim in,
And when I search in the mirror to see the whites of their eyes,
I am merely rewarded with the sight of the withered husk of the body I reside.
---
Somedays I wallow in bed, never to leave the desolate home I molded in the blankets that cradle me,
Somedays anxiety robs me of the air I breathe, choking me in love, and caressing me in hate,
Somedays panic riddles and writhes in me, possessing me entirely,
And somedays anger gifts me ammunition to fire upon the undeserving.
---
Every single one of these days I wish to walk to different times,
Losing myself in the things I loved the most but inevitably lost,
To no longer have the urge to erect walls of paper mache, a glutton for intimate punishment,
Waiting passionately to be torn down and built again, ritualistic relief found in the repetition.
---
Torment robbed and rocked my cradle, anguish embraced me as a lover in my years,
May I be Master, may I be Slave, may I be Breath, and may I be Death,
I wholly sacrifice all inhibitions, free-falling to the blood-stained hands and clean sheets,
Stories of my missing pieces bursting through the seams of my skin, combust and release.
---
To my bloodless peace, I don't think I will die this way,
For I still crawl through blood and tissue this way, no longer whole in every way physical,
And my missing pieces no longer ache with the craters that scarred under my aging skin,
Leaving me with the dreams of phantasmatic privileges that i am finally, genuinely, fashioned complete.
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139,372 Literary Works • 672,541 Reviews
Hello, I'm Via and I'm here for a review... so let's get started!
Mood, Tone, Perspective, Themes, Narrative
First and foremost, I love this poem! Like what @Liminality stated previously, there is a strong poetic voice here. All the emotions from anger to hatred for themselves and the world are clearly defined a placed here in this poem.
This line in particular stood out to me and Liminality. Its so perfectly placed and gives a whole new layer of emotion for this poem.
This theme of inner conflict is just so relatable and beautiful, I just can't get enough!
Language, Diction, Style
All of the language utilized is appropriate. I think for a poem like this, there shouldn't be too many intricate words. The simplicity but also the occasional advanced descriptive words are perfectly balanced.
I love your utilization of imagery! Imagery is one of my favorite figurative language techniques and you utilize it well here:
Structure, Flow, Rhythm
The structure is consistent with the length of the lines and stanzas, which I think works here. Giving that little firm structure is just what this poem needs.
I normally don't like such long lines, but strangely here this works.
Your flow and rhythm and enjambment choices are impeccable. Normally I don't see that in young poets, so I think you're amazing.
Grammar
There really isn't much to say about grammar other than my pet peeve of every line being capitalized. If two lines are a part of the same sentence, they both don't need to be capitalized.
But that just might be me being picky
Final Words
Overall, great job! I think this poem is a amazing.
Keep writing!
- Via
Hello, and thank you for your review!
I am glad you loved the poem, and how you perceived the emotions that lay in it is amazing.
I know most stanzas are quite short, but for this, I wanted a sort of buildup that would explode at the end. I imagined it as if I were at the speaking poem clubs, where the person's voice would raise and then waver at the end when the emotion got too much for them to handle.
I am excited that you like my flow and rhythm, and you are the second to say my enjambment choices were impeccable. I have honestly never been complimented on that portion before I got to this website.
Hi there Hawinway! Lim here to review your poem
First Impressions
The main thing that stood out for me was the intense poetic voice. The speaker seems to be someone who is angry, but also more than that, someone who tries to dominate both themself and the outside world. At the same time fitting in with “warring contraries”, they seem to feel that things are spiralling out of control. With the repetitions in the first and last stanzas, the poem also has a cyclic sense, with a feeling of something that goes on and on without stopping. The ideas that come to mind reading this are things like struggle, control and selfhood.
Interpretation
Overall the piece comes across as confessional. I imagine the speaker as someone who is confessing their troubles and feelings about how they fight them. At the same time, they’re not confessing it in a quiet way, it’s a loud declaration, a monologue, so there’s this arc of tension that one might find in a speech. I noticed all the lines are end-stopped (as in, there’s no enjambment, each line completes a thought) and tend to be quite long, which creates this rushing feeling throughout most of the poem. This makes it so that the parts which are lists, such as:
Have a lot of momentum built up behind them. This conveys to me the idea of the individual self as being very centered and all-important in the narrative of this poem. That’s not to say they are “narcissistic” as they claim in the second stanza necessarily, but the theme of selfhood comes across so strongly because of the intensity of the speaker’s voice here.
There’s a bit of loneliness that comes there as well, especially with the 6th and 7th stanzas where the speaker reveals a more uncertain side to themself.
Details
In terms of poetic devices that stood out, I liked the repetition of “this way” and how it was used in both the first and last stanzas. Cyclic structures and book ends are always a fave for me! That aside, it’s also positioned in a way that intensifies the emotion of the poem and carries the reader’s gaze on to the next part of the line. I can’t help but notice the occurrences of “this way” kind of make a little diagonal line across the stanza.
In terms of stuff that was more in the background, I think the use of “I” bound the whole poem together. There’s a lot of different images that come up in each stanza, almost like we’re flicking through different scenes of someone’s life and thought process, such as “wallow in bed”, “challengers that throw the gauntlet” and “torment robbed and rocked by my cradle”, but they’re all unified by the ‘I’. For that reason, I thought the second stanza, which uses ‘I’ the least, felt a bit out of place.
And more on the second stanza: I get the idea of using this repeated “A (something) that (something)” structure to show how the speaker is struggling to describe themselves, or maybe listing out how other people have described them. I had trouble on my first and second reads trying to link it to the first stanza’s “hallucinations”, though. I think the sudden launch into “A . . . (image)” kind of felt too abrupt for me to process.
One more thing that I liked was the rule of three in:
I like how much each phrase ‘matches’ the others, like they all have to do with the point of view of a monarch, and also have a word that starts with ‘un-’. It kind of reminds me of that one house in Game of Thrones? The one whose House Words were ‘unbowed, unbent, unbroken’. But the rhythm in this line made it stand out to me, so I spent some time focusing on it, which is what gives me the impression that the speaker is trying to dominate, rule or control themself and their circumstances in a way.
Overall
I thought this was a poem that resembles a drama or play, very monologue-like, with its ups and downs of emotion. It portrays a speaker who is complex and intriguing. And its set sort of on the inside of one person’s head, so the intensity of the images related to their life like the “challengers” come across as the central focus. Aside from the second stanza, I liked how the poem flowed – there was a good balance between portraying the chaos of the speaker’s mind and keeping things tied to their experience and coherent.
Hope some of this helps, and keep writing! (Feel free also to ask me for any further feedback or if you have questions about something I said)
-Lim
Hello and thank you so much for your review!
I love how your first impression was formed.
When it comes to the "hallucinations", I had it in my mind to throw out what the hallucinations were of how the person in this poem was created in a sense. It was, in my interpretation, a list of supposed rumors.
I also enjoy that you were able to sense the power that was being portrayed in this poem, and were able to see the subtleties laid in the background. I am glad that you liked my piece!
It always piques my interest to see how my work speaks to people, every individual will interpret the smallest of parts to something that screams out to their soul.
Hi, Hawinay! That's interesting - now that you mention it the 'supposed rumors' thing makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing your poem!