What is that smoke, Mommy?
Like someone burning on an altar.
Oh! My foolish Tommy,
It’s not fire I swear.
Some foolish sweet maker
Just burnt his cake,
Or someone is burning stalks of paper
And my little fool, you thought life was at stake!
.
Is that a crash now?
I can still feel the shock.
No my dear, it’s the bird humming too low,
Or some strong hammer hitting the rock.
“But it was loud enough to be thunder,
Shall I peep out and see?”
No, it was a minor blunder
May be a jackfruit fell off the tree…
.
Oh! I can now almost hear the pathetic yell,
And the sound of bullets firing.
Can I just hear my knell?
Will I not be able to see the next spring?
Oh! My lad, it’s just crackers blast
The men are cheering their players throw
Don’t worry your time on earth will last
Don’t let anxiety chill your brow.
.
But the curiousity could not be restrained,
He peeped out from the window drape
His gaze hit snipers trained,
The merciless whipping, shells that scrape
Soul from fetter, and bodies burring regardless.
He jerked back, awestruck. Now every bit was straight!
He discovered the hellish human unkindness
Believing the holy lie might have been right!
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hello there!
Here is my honest opinion. It's filled with good intentions.
I'm unsure what this poem is about. Snipers looking for a kid? Why would they be looking for a kid? I'm just very confused.
You have a lot of grammatical and spelling errors, some of which Dracula pointed out below. It made the piece jarring to read and difficult to understand at times.
Some of the excuses that the mother gives the boy are odd. A bird humming too low for shaking the ground? Birds rarely even touch the ground.
In the third stanza, you need to watch out for voice. The boy's voice became really sophisticated and high level suddenly, and you need to keep it consistent if the audience is going to continue to suspend their disbelief in this poem. I also found it odd that the mother called him "lad."
Exclamation marks sometimes have the effect of making writing seem immature. I would go a little easier on the exclamation marks, as the excitement in the mother's voice comes off more as bravado than it does fear or any other realistic emotion she might be feeling at the time.
I hope that this review proves useful to yoU! Happy YWSing!
thank you for the review, and i did correct some grammatical errors, if you still spot some please let me know. and the humming bird's excuse is just an instance where we see how desperately the mother is trying to justify the actions going on. i will take care of the points you suggested. thank you
Heya! You have a great storyline in this poem and it's coming along well. I found some errors which you might like to fix (however it's poetry, so you are allowed to mix things up) and I've listed them below.
What is that smoke mommy?
You need a comma between smoke and mommy.
Like someone burring on altar.
I suggest you put an before alter.
Or someone is burring stalks of paper
Burning*
May be a jackfruit fell of the tree…
Instead of using of you should use off.
There you go! Your poem was very enjoyable to read, keep writing more.
thank you for the review, i would definitely make corrections
Heya Rituparna, pretzelsing here for a review.So this is one of my first times reviewing poetry(I usually do prose) but I write poetry so I know all about it.
Let's begin,shall we?
In this first stanza, when you wrote at the end of the first and third line: "Mommy" and "Tommy" I felt like you were just forcing/stuffing words in there to just make them rhyme. When you write Mommy it gives off the impression that this is a little child/kid speaking or narrating this poem. Also, who in the world is Tommy? Is that the kid's name or just thrown into the poem just so it rhymes. Don't try to force rhyme.
Another couple of things, if you decide to keep this then Mommy is capitalized because it is referred to as the name of a person. Also I would put a comma after smoke, since Mommy is a direct object.
I think that you have a typo here: Instead of burring you should have written: "burning"
I generally don't like when the next lines begin with the word and because and is a conjunction, meant to be used in the middle of a sentence and here with the capital at the beginning,it looks weird.
You don't need that extra word "now". You see, poetry is an art of writing(as you well know) that tries to convey the meaning with as little words as possible.We obviously know that it is now because you are using present tense the whole time.
A rock is very very hard and so I don't think any strong hammer could break through it,if you know what I mean.
I think that you should put a comma after "my lad" and then cracker's needs an apostrophe s because it is acting as a possessive noun.
I think that this should be "curiosity" instead of curious.
What is regardless have to do with any of this?I mean it doesn't even rhyme with anything else. I don't think that it makes sense being put here in the end.
Those were my nitpicks, and now I have to comment. Overall, you weren't really clear about the time of events and plotline. I had absolutely no idea what was going on in this poem.I don't understand how you could label it realistic because it kind of didn't seem that to me. It had a other-wordly kind of feel,although as I said before, I don't know what happened here. It was just so rushed and quick and frankly unorganized that there was no way that I could follow along.
I would suggest mapping/planning out every action/verb that is supposed to happen and then slowly take your time in painting the words and a picture of what all of this means. I would really like to know the meaning behind this, because as a reader/reviewer I am curious.
I think that the length was fine, four stanzas seem sufficient enough for a fairly-sized poem.Here is just another thing,which can be tricky for poets. You need to go back and read your poem out loud, and especially try to noticed the end punctuation(or lack of it).Now you should decide, is there a comma/pause in reading here needed or a full stop/period? Or maybe so punctuation at all because the line flows into the next line. I can't critique the ending punctuation,nor will I because every author/poet will read this differently.
I hope that this review truly helps you improve your poem. If you have any questions, you could always just reply below.
KEEP ON WRITING!
i really think you massively misunderstood my poem, here it is an irony in each phrase i use,
the theme of my poem is focusing on the miseries of present day world, wars and terror attacks and even deadly diseases couples with loss of humanity.i think i can s well change the category to a satire.
Tommy is an individual, the name is intentionally used to specify a particular person, a kid, hidden from this harsh realities of the world
the word is burning itself as we see the pile of dead laborers, and the victims of plague and war are being burnt.
yes i know a rock is too hard to break, that is what i used to say that we are trying our utmost much our way of trial is wrong so we are ultimately failing, also when we compare the shock of a rock bring hit by a hammer to that of an air crash there is a gulf of difference in intensity, but either of them is same to the stereotypical eyes of modern emotionless human beings.
i used " regardless" to show the insignificance of human life.
i suppose now you get what i mean, and as he can feel the shock still it means that the terror attacks continue non stop. however your suggestions regarding the punctuation were a help, thank you for this review.