I just wanted to start off that the reviews in the earlier version of this poem really moved me to actually revise the piece after I read them, and perhaps from the horror I had as I read over the raw form that I had left it in for far too many months. I honestly think that this is probably way too long, and that it loses its form halfway through, but revision is a process that is done multiple times. Reviews are always greatly appreciated.
"Society fucks up - always."
I can say that not with evidence, but with experience
when I still stand here and watch
as the people around me, who pass me everyday
and continue to move
but do not feel their hearts beating blood
through their repeatedly torn veins.
The ones
that carry broken shards of glass
from the consequences that they had to pay;
glass that is gaping from the wounds in their hands and back still,
along with other sharpened pieces
so brutally jammed in.
Muse often plants ideas in people
so that out come words, rolling off of invisibly venom inked tongues
that pierce the organs
and cut through neatly and messily,
leaving corpses of people as now ghosts
of their former selves.
And I have to help mend what I can
from the cracks in their skin,
the old mends
in their battered and dented armor and shields -
reopened like stitches
on closed-up wounds;
the warriors who once fought
before eventually being consumed
and spat out
like fallen champions.
They've become almost used to this -
almost.
The unimaginable pain that they've suffered
that does not show up physically; and so
it does not heal normally.
And Time is only as giving
before the ones who are considered
"too cowardly" to end it themselves,
live what seems to be a thousand years,
and yet they still cry,
the tears never seeming to ever run out
that will still sink into their skin
as dried, jagged trails.
Their flesh is eating itself away
as they only drape over
what I would hope to think were their bones;
their warmth has gone away,
and they feel as cold as the dead,
but they still breathe.
It's on the sunken look in their faces,
I see it
but I can only embrace them,
become their supporting beam
and the hand that rubs their back
and holds their hand
as they shiver and shudder and sob
while I in turn do the same,
because I have been there before
even if my own circumstances were forunate enough in comparison -
we feel the same pain, even in different amounts.
Because in turn, we all suffer.
We all hurt; we all suffer,
and it goddamn hurts
so
fucking
much
that I can't reach out to them
and tell them, that they're going to be okay,
even if they can't, and that we both know that they won't,
and I can't lie, won't lie -
another life is taken by their own hands,
life wrenched away from the air in their lungs
and from the gleam of their eyes,
with the strings that orchestrated their pain
before death made itself
seem too sweet,
too merciful.
So please, just
look me in the eye,
and tell me with a straight face
if whether or not I do not see what's wrong with the world,
that I'm just a child,
of what could I know
that could ever be more important
than your own word;
because if you can tell me that
what I have been able to see, able to hear,
able to feel, able to touch
were merely some sort of fucked up mess of lies that I strung together,
because I have problem X and problem Y and problem XYZ.
Can you just - or rather,
will you just merely
tell me
face to face, eye to eye, with no lies coming out of those clenched teeth
that society doesn't fuck up
that all is goddamn right with the world and the way it is
and that the body count that continues to go up
were merely the delusion of my own problems X, Y, Z?
Because maybe then,
I could believe you
So that maybe then, I won't have to hold
another broken soldier in this journey of life,
laying them to rest
for another day that they will have to face.
So that maybe then I could play it off as a false belief -
beliefs that I could blindly follow
like the rest of the world,
who says nothing
and continues to live on
in chosen ignorance and silence.
And so that maybe then,
I won't have to hurt with them anymore.
Hi Rainbow.
Wow, I found this really amazing. I was almost crying by the time I got to the end of it. It is long, but the message is really clear. You manage to write beautifly even when writing about something so sad and depressing, so I commend you for that. I don't have a whole lot of experience with many of the things you are talking about hear, but I imagine that this piece would really speak to someone who does.
I agree with most of what Magpie says, so I'm not going to repeat any of that. This piece needs a bit of smoothing out. There are places where my mind trips over the words and the flow is disrupted.
I think that the swear words you use might be a bit off-putting to some people who like cleaner poetry, but I personally think that I adds to the edginess and overall tone of the poem. They do make it less accessable to younger audiences or stricter adults, but I don't think those people were your intended audience anyway.
Like I said before, this is a really beautiful piece. It just needs a bit of polishing. Try not to change too much about it, because I don't think it should lose what it is, if that makes any sense. Hope this was a little bit helpful, at least. I can't wait to read some more of your work!
Hi there, Rainbow.
This is a little wordy. I'd go with "as the people pass around me." Repeatedly doesn't feel like exactly the right word to me.Wow, this is a long poem! I'm going to go stanza by stanza because it helps me organize my thoughts.
1: (counting the first line as part of the next stanza)
2: Consequences are something you pay. omit everything in that line after "consequences" and change "the" to "their." I'm a little confused by this line. If you meant it to be a little mysterious, you should make the lines around it mysterious and a tad bit confusing as well to set the tone. But as it is, glass can't gape, and that doesn't go with your style.
3: I really love the imagery in this stanza. Lovely. The whole muse thing is a little overdone, bordering on the point of cliche. Watch out for cliches. This line is a little redundant. I think you should go with "leaving ghosts where corpses rested" or something like that.
4: Don't start stanzas with "and." It makes them feel like an afterthought. Stitches aren't supposed to open. Also, the second line is redundant. How about this: "reopened like day old scabs / that needed stitches."
5: I think you should say "before they were consumed" because adverbs often weaken things. Also, "spat" should be "spit."
6: This whole bit isn't doing it for me. If you're going to say psychological harm, then say it. You don't need three lines to describe two words. In poetry, less is more.
7: omit "And" and "as." This whole stanza is a little confusing to me. Try to word it in a clearer manner.
8: omit "only."
9: change that first "on" to "in."
10: this line isn't doing it for me. It's so plain suddenly after all the descriptions you've used. Also, it's really tell-y. The rest of your poem is really tell-y, actually.
16: Favorite lines in the poem.
Okay, I skipped a bunch because it was neither right nor wrong. It was just there. You have a rather large tonal shift in here, and I'd work on smoothing that out. At first, you're very descriptive and metaphorical, then all of a sudden, you're telling us what's going on. Show, don't tell. Throughout the whole poem. Also, I think that this poem is overlong. Go through and cut out absolutely everything that you don't explicitly need. Support your ideas with images. Weave them together. You've got a good start, but it still needs work. I hope this review was helpful. Keep writing!