“Put me in your holy war
I will lay my body down…
I will run into the flame”
-Johnathan Rice
I will feel the heat lick my flesh in an
impassioned battle against apathy,
That holy war,
the interminable conflict
of credence and love—
a muffled song of forlorn voices
cry out in waves,
but not a grain rustles
in the wake.
I will lay my body down
for a return of humanity.
we do exist
we do exist
In our remaining breath we will run—
indistinct colors will trail behind
our declarations of life
until we come to rest.
we will drink from the well,
sating thirst,
but perpetually hungry
we are saturated by the light
of the battle
we are restless in
the final moments
we are the last voices
cutting through the smoke.
Engaged in this incessant war,
we continue to search…
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
I actually wasn't bothered by the tenses. I thought that the use of both future tense and present tense was very effective. (Or, perhaps I've just been doing too much Spanish grammar and it has me all screwed up so that I can't properly recognize anything in English.)
What I was really bothered by was the switch between "I" and "we". Pick one.
I LOVE how you used the quote, especially the way the first line seemed to continue it. Perhaps this is the reason for future tense, gummy?
Some parts were too wordy. It's hard to fully experience the poem when you're just trying to maneuver around the words. The poem should have just enough to make the read interesting, but not so many that the reader has difficulty just reading it properly. Stanzas one, two, and five (I'm not including the quote when I count stanzas, by the way) annoyed me the most. It's not just difficulty in reading, it's that some words are completely unnecessary and hang off of your poem like adjective-tumors. >.<
Using the first and second stanzas as examples, here's what I think coould be taken out:
Simply repeating it isn't quite enough. Here are a few ways you could jazz it up or de-dramatize it, whichever you feel is better for the poem. I have used italics but you should also consider removing them. I've kept your no-capping, no-punctuation thing going, but capitalization and punctuation should be considered as well.
#1 .
we exist
#2 .
we do exist
#3 .
we exist
we EXIST
#4 .
we exist
we do exist
#5 .
we do exist
we DO exist
I think this poem is a great start. However, some parts were too abstract. There are some very nice images, and the language is effective, but where is this going? What, specifically, should I take away?
Colleen
The tenses in this poem are distracting. Firstly, future tense is extremely irritating. I can only stand to hear "will" so often. Some stanzas are future, others present. I think present is more powerful, as it represents this as an ongoing problem that has both a past and a future.
How about "we exist", and just once. It's much less repetitive and bulky.
I enjoyed how you used a quote alongside your work.