God is a sneaky one
But he left my car running
So, I have to get it out of the parking lot
That my mother and father forbid me from attacking
On all sides of the cylinder
Because being somewhere-seventeen or whatever
Means my rights are ripped out above my heavy figure
And thrown into a white plastic bag
Until America finds a way to euthanize my feelings for good this time
God told me that he created the Earth
But now it's like he lied, and he just made a big paper diorama
Of my home planet
But never told me the materials to truly make Earth
Instead, now the big gunners in white coats
Tell me they created Earth
And that deer aren’t real animals
But headlights are actually just synthetic illusions
Inside my head
And hallucinatory hopes for the future when I cry at night
And all I can think about is how my plants are dying
That my sunflowers are turning stale
I hate screens and TV
I don’t like how it makes me feel
Like life is a well-made simulation
But oh!
God retrieved my car out the garage
Look! Its broken!
I can’t drive
I can’t steer
I can't feel
Because I just crashed my car into a freaking tree
For what I know now
But now you never knew
Romance movies make me feel unsafe
Action movies give me nausea
Emotional movies kill my joy
Drama makes me want to rip my eyes out
And Law & Order is stalking me
Because they make me feel like
I deserve to be ashamed of myself
Because I should have a reason why I let myself get hurt
I hate Law & Order
And I hate true crime!
I hate it
I hate when I believe I am a terrorist
But hey
Bio terrorism is in my head anyways
But I still hate true crime!
And I hate seeing God take my car
So, to God I say
Leave my car alone
And next time you use it
Fill up the gas for me, okay?
Alright?
I guess that’s a yes
Or maybe it's still just a no
Who knows!
THE END
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Canary word: Present
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This is honestly an amazing piece of poetry!! It has teenage angst, a real feeling of powerlessness and disillusionment with society and its structures. I understood the car to basically be metaphor for the lack of control you feel in your life as a teen.
I thought this line, particularly the 'somewhere-seventeen or whatever' was brilliant. It captures that sense of teenage disillusionment through its detached yet frustrated tone.
I want to say I relate, but honestly i'm 22 and i still don't drive, so i suppose i can relate more to the fact that your car is broken and you can no longer drive.
I agree with Liminality's comment that perhaps you could work on the structure/format of the poem, and that would help clarify the tone, but I also think it works as one long flow, like you are so frustrated you are just ranting. You move from more serious topics of being a teenager with no freedom, and American society, and God/religion, to a more lighthearted tone at the end with the slightly sarcastic rhetorical questions aimed at God, so maybe those could be split up or both tones weaved throughout.
A really exemplary piece of poetry though, I look forward to reading anything else you may post in the future!
Hello there Purple67! Lim here to write a review.
I’m assuming by CNF you mean Creative Nonfiction - I’m going to start this review off with an interpretation of your lyrics/ poem before I get into some feedback.
The literal storyline in the poem seems to be that the speaker/narrator lost access to their car and is expressing their frustration about that and other aspects of their life that feel out of control. It seems ambiguous how exactly they lost access to the car: they describe “God” having taken it, but also them having crashed the car into a tree.
In terms of themes, there seems to be a theme of the real vs unreal, the artificial vs the natural. A lot of the imagery seems to be connected by them being things which are ‘unreal’: a diorama of the Earth rather than the actual Earth, TV shows, hallucinations and illusions, whereas the speaker seems to be longing for the real: “the materials to truly make Earth”, “how my plants are dying” - and the fact they crashed the car into a tree seems to highlight this, as well as the line about bio terrorism.
There also seems to be a theme of authority or power. The speaker positions figures like God, their parents and “white coats” (scientists or doctors?) as taking away their car (a metaphor?), their rights (not a metaphor?) and suppressing their feelings or sense of what’s real.
I’m not sure what to make of the emphasis on “true crime”, which is repeated throughout the last third of the poem. Might be something to expand on, if you plan to revise this?
Something I liked about your writing here is how you characterise the speaker. I felt like the speaker was shown to be direct, honest, and even kind of commanding at times. Starting with “God is a sneaky one” conveys the speaker’s defiance or undermining of authority, in calling a god “sneaky”, which comes across as less-than-reverent. Then these lines also convey this personality:
So I think you’ve successfully communicated to the reader what the speaker is like as a person.
Something to think about would be how you’re using fragments - like “But oh!” and “Alright?”. I found that the fragments kind of disrupt the tone of the poem with how often they’re being used. I found them kind of distracting and they seem a lot more playful than the rest of the poem is, which I feel takes away from the more serious, brooding side of the piece.
Meanwhile, another thing I liked about your writing is the book end where you loop back to the first image of God having taken the speaker’s car. I feel like that helps make everything cohere together, which is important when you’re bringing together a lot of different threads of ideas and imagery (from who created the Earth, to hallucinations, to TV genres and sunflowers).
Overall, I think you’ve got a good concept for a poem and an overall structure for it based around the metaphor of the car. My main feedback would be to think about what you want the tone of the piece to sound like: is it brooding and serious? Is it more sarcastic or playful? And if you intend to blend both, I’d recommend maybe trying to make the structure a little more regular (like having one sarcastic line at the beginning of each stanza) so that it doesn’t feel too jarring for the reader. Another idea would be to split your poem up into distinct stanzas, which is easier to do in the ‘Classic Editor’ mode in the Publishing Center before you post. That can help clarify the themes and structure of your poem. Otherwise, I do like the way you’ve put together these different images and how in my interpretation, at least, they link up to form this message about resisting authority and ‘the unreal’.
Hope this helps, and keep writing!
-Lim
I legit forgot this was posted. My apologies.
Actually, the speaker is me. Thank you for the criticism, though. I appreciate it.
holy crap i love this
real. too real