You've been buried
And I'm on the edge of your grave,
And my own
I reach down to pull the dirt off you
Weakening the edge I stand on
As I dig, you help
Until I turn to throw the dirt away
Then you burrow down
I'm so close to falling in with you
Was that your intention
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139,456 Literary Works • 672,565 Reviews
Nice extended metaphor poem describing a very disconcerting truth, that those whom we sincerely try to help might indeed be maliciously or unintentionally trying to pull us down to their level. This could be motivated by envy. Those being helped might feel inadequate and hopeless. So the helper's confidence and success grates on their nerves. Bringing the helper down to their level alleviates those feelings of inadequacy. I like how the poem depicts the buried person as feigning to help in order to catch the helper off guard. Very typical of such cunning individuals.
Suggestion.
I think that the poem works and looks better with a question mark in the last sentence.
Thanks for the review!
Hey, Junel! Let's talk about your poem!
So one of the things I love about your poem is that you've picked a topic/theme that is very accessible to many people - potentially to people on either side of the situation. It can be a very trying situation when your friend or loved one is in a place where they're "in a grave," going in a direction towards their own demise, and need help to get out. It's even more worrisome and stressful when they don't want help to fix it. Seeing someone going down a destructive path and having them either push you away or pull you down with them can feel like a real storm. There are a lot of different kinds of strong emotions that can come up in situations like that, and I think it would be interesting to see you maybe explore more of those. Albeit, it is a very short poem, but I wonder what it would look like - it you wanted to keep working on it - if you were to try and expand it. If this is stemmed from a personal situation you are facing right now - what are the emotions that come up? How do you feel when you're trying to help the person, but all you feel is that you're being pulled in with them, and no progress is being made? Find those emotions, and begin to put more language to them.
From what I can see in this poem, it looks like you (or simply, the "I" in the poem) is potentially feeling frustrated and/or helpless about being so close to falling in with the other person. I get this from this line:
(Which, by the way, could use a question mark at the end of it, just so we know that this is a question!) This line implies that you are questioning the person in the graves' motives. Did they want to drag you down with them? Did they really want your help?
Apart from this line, the others seem to only dance around the feelings behind what is happening. They're telling me what's happening with this "in the grave/reaching in" imagery but (and this could very well just be me, so take this with a grain of salt) for me, this seems to be lacking the emotive language it could have to really give that gut-punch of "wow, I'm trying to help this person but they're actually really just hurting me in the process."
Also! One thing I did notice while reading this, was that the flow felt a bit choppy. Not that you need an overwhelming amount of flowery language to cushion between every thought or anything, but it feels a bit disjointed, specifically at the end. I think some of this could be solved with adding periods where you want to indicate stops. Cause for me, when I saw semicolons and commas, I thought there would be periods too (but then there wasn't).
The main place that I felt the flow was off was at the end when it jumped from "I'm so close to falling in with you" to "was that your intention." I think if you added a space between those two lines, to make the question it's own line, that might help.
Overall, I think this poem would really shine if you were to expand on it! Of course, don't just add words just to add words, but really find those key emotions that you associate with the imagery and shape the language around that! And maybe even add some more specific details to give us as readers something to grab onto. What kind of bad decisions is this person making? How is it dragging you down with them? That sort of thing.
But yeah! Hopefully this was at least a little helpful, or maybe gave you some thoughts to consider for your poem! Keep writing! : )
-sound
Sound, that is one HUGE review
*Jealous glare
IDK I just had a lot of thoughts ahsdljhgljk. LET ME REVIEW OK
Thanks for the wonderful review!!! This was based on stuff happening in my life and was written in that moment before I really was able to process much more than the basics. I definitely need to work on my punctuation though. The last line is supposed to be separated, but the YWS form doesn't really allow for that so it got taken out.
Hello, LittleLee here for a review!
Well, as usual, I'll start with negatives.
The poem need to be punctuated, as it has become a monotonous read without even so much as a comma.
Starting all the lines with capital letters makes it look better. Most poets do this, but if you choose not to, it's not wrong or something.
Third line : what do mean "and my own"? Do you mean to say "and on my own" perhaps?
It would be nice if you did not add so many "and"s because it looks very incomplete, and is like you can't express yourself without using them.
"As I dig you help" what is this supposed to be? Instead of "help" did you want to write "up"?
The last two lines, frankly speaking, seen rather childish to me, and don't really make the poem especially good.
Please think about what I have written, and you could really write well.
The poem is unique, as many people don't really write about death in this particular manner. Well done!
I hope the review was not too critical! Just trying to help you improve your writing!
Thanks for the review, I think you interpreted my poem in an interesting way, that really different, but cool. For me, it has nothing to do with death. The idea of the grave is a metaphor for a person's bad decisions.
Some of this definitely needs some clarification and work though. I'm really am not much of a poet sticking to writing full-length books most of the time.