I gotta thank the sun for shining down on me.
I’ve got to thank the night for it’s creeping shadows.
The meadow and flowers for giving me liberty
And the honey and sugar for being so sweet
I thank the buzzing bee for its mellow songs
The rainbow for its lovely array of colors.
I thank the fire for burning me and teaching me
To never trust something that looks too delightful.
I thank water as I submerge in its grand body
I thank the lonely nights for keeping me company.
And the crowded subway because it reminds me
That despite being in a big crowd, I’m lonely.
I thanked the morning we met and the night you left
I thanked the tears I wept when you crossed my mind
Because they whispered to me as they fell
They warned me I’d never fall again after that
I thanked my closed fist when I found that you’d fallen again
I thanked the girl that made you feel alive
I thank her now as a newly wed bride
I Thank the happiest day of your life and the darkest of mine
I thank the sleepless nights because they take me someplace else
They take me to my past and let me relive precious moments
I thank the “what-if’s” and the “should-haves”
I thank this constant bitter silence that breaks me continuously
I thank you for being the man that broke my heart
That taught me to never trust a beautiful thing
That held me for a moment too long
That taught me to be thankful of my surroundings
I thank all these things despite the fact
That they will never thank me back.
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Natquin,
Welcome to YWS and thanks for sharing this piece! My name's Snazzy and I'm here to give you a review that will hopefully help with your writings in the future, if not just give you a bit of insight from the reader's perspective. Let's dive in!
Initial Impression:
There were a lot of oxymorons/opposites in this piece that I think worked really well in the end. My favorite was probably -
because it wasn't cliché and it provided something concrete that appealed to my sense of touch. Bravo on delivering that! It's not easy to appeal to touch.
Description:
The one overarching critique I wanted to give you was to focus more on how to say what you want rather than focusing on what you want to say. That is, I think your descriptions in general could be improved upon. There were moments, like the above mentioned, that were fantastic because they were concrete. However, most of this poem is very abstract which makes it vague. There were a few clichés that I think need to be avoided at all costs in the future (like "crowded subway", "sleepless nights", and "creeping shadows"). The images in themselves aren't bad, but show me what makes the subway crowded, and what do the shadows actually look like (or smell, feel, sound, taste like!). Here's an article you can read on YWS that kind of gives an overview on what it means to "show not tell" --> Show and Tell
Originality:
Other than the clichés mentioned above, I thought the idea behind this piece was new! It was kind of the "everyone's treated me awful in life" but instead of just moving on or taking revenge (or just being really sassy lol), you decide to "thank" these things. The turn at the end -
are gorgeous! It was something I wasn't really expecting, and it wrapped up the piece nicely without being too much of a bow on the end.
Thanks again for sharing - I hope this review helps!
-Snazzy
Hey there!
This was a nice read and definitely captured the thoughts and feelings well. However, there are a few mistakes and shortcomings that I noticed in the poem:
1. The capitalization at the beginning of each line in the poem is grammatically incorrect and displays amateurish writing. You can use punctuation at the end of the line to separate two lines, and capitalize only after a period. Of course, I realise that much of the capitalization is because the lines begin with "I", but you could change it when they don't. I suggest you add commas or semicolons at the end of the line to aid the flow. I found the lack thereof quite disorienting from line 13 till the end.
2. "I gotta" in the first line and "I've got to" in the very next line draws unnecessary attention because they don't follow the same pattern (both could have been "I've got to", since it has a more literary approach). Moreover, the subsequent lines begin with "I thank" and not "I've got to thank". So perhaps you could just change the first two lines to "I thank" as well.
3. You could change the period at the end of the second line to a comma, as the third line seems like a clause, grammatically speaking.
4. In the initial lines, you clubbed together 2 or 3 lines under a single "I thank", whereas you used "I thank" at the beginning of every line in the latter half of the poem. This struck me as another break in pattern. You could make them all follow the same pattern (I would suggest that pattern be clubbing under a single "I thank", because after seeing so many "I thank"s one after the other, the reader gets bored and thinks it is all monotonous, even though the content is actually progressing).
The above are, of course, suggestions and it is entirely up to you to decide which ones you want to incorporate. Once again, this was a nice read and had a certain flow in the theme that I liked.
Cheers,
The Golden Bird