Published May 10, 2011
The Blade.
So smooth,
your faithful friend.
Yet if it wanted,
an enemy.
But tonight,
the only danger is you.
You lie on the floor,
the tile cold,
your blood warm.
You carve,
but a single letter.
Her’s.
Seemingly insignificant,
lost amongst the others.
But to you,
a symbol of love.
How ardent,
and unwanted yours is.
Crimson quickly fills,
for a second,
you think.
One day,
you’ll regret it.
One day,
you wont love her.
Maybe,
even resent her.
But now you don’t.
Now all you want
is her to feel the same.
Until then,
you don’t want to feel.
The Blade is all you need,
your faithful friend.
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I'm going to start with some suggestions and "nitpicks", as lily called them.
Your first stanza seems contradictory - a faithful friend and an enemy. I don't know that I'd call the blade a faithful friend, or a friend at all. It doesn't really seem a friend throughout the poem, the poem doesn't paint a picture of the blade as a friend so much as a tool.
Remember, you're painting a picture/experience for your reader. Think this through, why would a person being lying on the floor, if they're cutting? When I think of a person cutting, I think of them kneeling, or slumping against a wall. Lying doesn't make sense, it would be difficult to cut, especially letters or words or anything other than a line.
The last two lines of this stanza don't really fit. They almost flow together too much while the rest of your poem has been short and choppy. Perhaps something like:
"To you,
a symbol of love.
Ardent.
Unwanted."
I don't like this stanza. If you're doing it now so willingly with so much love, you don't think you'll ever regret. You're sure this is the right decision. [My best example does not regard cutting, but my last relationship. My parents hated the boy, and I fought tooth and nail for months for the right to date him. To this day I don't regret it, because I loved him and I wanted to be with him so badly that the conflict with my family was worth it. These are more emotional scars than physical, but I think it makes sense?]
I don't really like this stanza either. It doesn't seem to fit very well. It probably goes with my feelings about the last stanza. This could fit with some reworking though, probably. But I'd make it more wistful, more longing.
I think this poem definitely has potential.
It's not easy to write a poem about something as misunderstood as cutting,
especially because there is a very distinct emotional connection.
If I were you, I'd play around with this idea. Try writing it in first person - I feel like it may have more of an impact that way, and it may make it easier to make emotional connections. Ask yourself how you'd feel to love someone who didn't love you, about the pain inside, the longing, the want.
Also, it may not hurt to flesh this out some more. Details! I can tell you're going for a short, simple style here, but at times it feels like you're trying to edge into something a bit more fleshed out - go for it! Worst comes to worst, you don't like it and you scrap it. But I think some details and pure emotion could do some really good things for this.
This is good
Hey there, Obsessed!
So, I’m not going to sit here and focus much on nitpicks. In fact, I won’t focus on any at all. Really, there aren’t any to focus on. What I do what to focus on is *drum roll please*
Theme!
It’s really one that, unless you do it right, cutting/suicide are very hard to do well and creatively these days. Even if it’s a personal piece, it’s something that people have written about a lot so it’s hard to execute it without seeming to have done the same thing as someone else. Just for the sake of searching, I looked up the use of the word “crimson” plus the word “blade” on YWS. 275 posts return as results including your poem here. I guess what this review is really saying is to be as original as possible. Even if you keep the theme, find a creatively out of this world way to execute it. You have a lovely poem here but it’s hard to feel impressed by this when I’ve read plenty of poems just like it.
Sorry if that seemed a bit mean and even a little bit useless. But I hope you found something useful in this review, ST and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me.