One-eye said to one with two,
"I have one more eye than you."
Two-eye said, “How can that be?
One eye there is all I see!”
“What you see and what is there
Could be split upon a hair.
I can see where you are blind;
I can see inside your mind.
I can see what you can not;
I can see when you will rot.”
“I do not believe this sight!
Surely you have not the right
To claim to see what I cannot.
Stop this nonsense on the spot!”
One-eye stiffened as though struck.
Her voice called as though through muck,
“It has changed -- it will be now.
Not where or when, only how.”
Two-eye screamed, “It is a lie.
Please stop.” She began to cry.
“It cannot be, what you say.
It cannot be, stay away!”
One-eye said, “It’s drawing close.
Your own hand has made the noose.”
Two-eye struck, she slipped, she fell.
One-eye now is dead as well.
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140,210 Literary Works • 673,042 Reviews
Kafka here to review. Sorry if this is a bit short.
Well, to be honest, I'm not quite sure what to say, Pundit. This is definitely a very powerful piece of poetry, and the story within it is intriguing, but it's the way you tell it that throws me off most. This being a rhyming poem, it has inherent restrictions as far as word choice, but when you choose to let relatively short lines make up the majority of your poem as well, you're really limiting yourself. My main concern is that this seems a bit...basic. When I say this, I'm referring to the word choice, the structure, said rhyme scheme, and the grammatical simplicity, as well as other less obvious factors. It seems to me that this was meant to be some sort of children's horror poem, or something of that nature. Which is fine, except that there's not exactly a huge demand for that genre of poetry, if you know what I mean.
So was this two-eye meant to represent the fortunate? Or perhaps this was meant to take on a more societal viewpoint, and embody the wealthy? Taking it from this perspective, you proceed to describe how the "poor" - one-eye - possess positive characteristics that the wealthy do not. This is verifiable. However, you also state that these attributes give them something of an advantage specifically over the wealthy, and I'm not so sure how this ties in. Perhaps my metaphorical comparison is simply faulty, because from there it just gets more and more nonsensical.
Well, thanks for entering my contest, and I hoped this review helped in some way. Keep writing!
-Kafka
To be honest, I loved it. The rhythm just flowed so 'on time' and the concept was great. The irony of one-eye dying was another positive asset to your work!
I'd love to read another like this!
MissMadHatter
Okay, first off, nice job on a poem that actually gave me the creeps. That's a hard thing to accomplish, as even E.A.P. and Stephen King sometimes struggle with that. Anyways, I like that sort of vague, confused style you started out with, giving the reader no leeway up until the very last stanza:
That one! Right here was where I figured out what this was about. It's someone being hanged, am I correct? One-eye seems to me to be a noose, and two-eye is the person being hanged. Yes, very creepy, very much so indeed. My only worry is that maybe you were forcing it a little in the middle. A poem, especially a creepy, slightly morbid poem needs to flow in a set pattern. The whole point of horror is to hypnotize the reader and pull them into your world, where they will believe everything you write is the truth. Of course, I'm not saying that you're writing horror here, but still, it's creepy. Keep writing.
Well, this was...a little creepy...but I liked it. There was something very old-fashioned fable about it, which was pretty cool. It was like the Brothers Grim. The rhyme scheme struggled in a couple of parts, but other than that I thought this was interesting and I got what you were saying.
Keep writing,
StoryWeaver